Painting
Portraits That Will Not
Scare Pets or Grandchildren
Philip Mould is a distinguished British art
dealer, television personality, and now, author.
His book, The Art Detective (Penguin
Books, 2009) is totally fascinating and extraordinarily
educational—the reader learns something
of great interest on every page. To quote
a review in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune,
"Mould does an excellent job of bringing
the reader into the high-end circles of the
art world as we learn about the intricacies
of restoration, the importance of provenance,
and the nerve-racking pressures of buying
at auction... His stories remind us that the
world's masterpieces have been, and will continue
to be, uncovered in the most unlikely places."
Mould includes six stories,
involving missing or found paintings by Gainsborough,
Rembrandt, Winslow Homer, and Norman Rockwell.
Each story is a self-contained adventure,
which the reader will find difficult to put
down once they are begun. Chapter Three, the
account of the famous Norman Rockwell hoax
of 2003 is particularly interesting to me,
since I am a part of the narrative.
For now, I would ask the reader's leave to
respond to a passage in the chapter in which
author Mould characterizes my work. Here is
the passage in full:
|
“There was one man, however,
who would not be assuaged. As an artist,
more specifically a portrait painter,
John Howard Sanden was a devotee of
Rockwell and, of all the museums he
had visited, the Norman Rockwell Museum
was his favorite. He loved its elegant
design but also its exclusive focus,
not least (I suspect) because his
own work, with its clean-shaven, traditional
subjects technically owes something
to Rockwell’s style for expressing
the myth of modern America. His sitters
appear to have a good feeling about
themselves, and, although they are
untesting as works of contemporary
art, he composes the sort of family
portraits that comfortably slip into
the middle-class interior in a way
that will never scare pets or grandchildren.
Rated by some as among the ten most
successful portraitists in America,
Sanden, with his two studios, in Connecticut
and New York City, and his smoothly
professional presentation skills,
had become a figure who could not
easily be overlooked.”
|
Let me hurry to assure author
Mould (as I quickly did by email on first
discovering his book in the Metropolitan Museum
bookstore) that I am flattered to be included
in his narrative. I have no illusions, after
fifty years painting portraits all across
America, regarding my place in the grand fabric
of contemporary art. I am a professional practitioner,
and I deliver a professional service and product.
But Mould is simply wrong on several points,
and this is my chance, in a friendly and respectful
way, I hope—to point them out.
| "...family
portraits that comfortably slip into
the middle-class interior..." |
Author Mould has not studied
my work. I have never painted anyone (on commission,
that I can recall), from the "middle
class." My clients are members of the
Forbes listing of the "400 richest Americans;
the CEOs of the largest banks in the world,
presidents of America's greatest universities,
senators and cabinet secretaries, and, more
recently, the President of the United States
and his First Lady.
|
My portraits, like Rockwell's work,
express
"the myth of modern America."
|
America, in spite of the battering
she is taking from her own political leaders,
is still a place of initiative and high personal
achievement. The men and women who sit for
my portraits are high achievers. The portrait
is one of their rewards. High achievement
in America is not a myth – it is still
very real.
|
The kind of portraits that Sanden
paints
"will never scare pets or grandchildren."
|
Studying Mould's Internet site,
one can see that he is an admirer of the work
of Augustus John. I, too, am an admirer of
the great English portraitist whose trenchant
and probing style was pacesetting. Unfortunately,
Augustus John's paintings, if hung in a Manhattan
portrait gallery today, would definitely scare
away potential clients, to say nothing of
pets and grandchildren.
Philip Mould's highest admiration
is reserved for Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788).
Gainsborough is generally regarded as the
greatest English portraitist of the eighteenth
century. However, trenchancy and deep-probing
character delineation was not his strong suit.
His Portrait of Francis Bennett (below)
is about as bland as a portrait can be. Almost
any modern portrait, with a modicum of realism,
when placed alongside, reveals that, whatever
the glorious elegance and style of the Gainsborough
grand manner, the man in the painting (Francis
Bennett) is not a real human being. I here
have the impertinence to place alongside it
my Portrait of Dr. Donald Ferguson
(of the University of Minnesota).
What is the inference that
we are to draw from Mould's observation regarding
portraits that do not scare the grandchildren?
Is it that we are to admire portraits that
will scare them, or at least make them
uneasy? Mould will have to acknowledge that
Picasso's
Self-Portrait makes the Gainsborough
look vapid, and mine positively irrelevant.
But I have noted, over the decades of my own
professional practice, that even the most
sophisticated collector, surrounded by only
the
avante-garde, when commissioning
a portrait of his wife, will select an artist
with traditional skills. The viewer, studying
the collection of early English portraits
offered for sale by author Mould's own London
gallery (including MacPherson's 1758
Portrait
of a Nobleman, pictured here) is conscious
of the artists' eagerness to present their
subjects in the best light possible. And that
is what is normally expected of a portrait
artist.
