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Man with a Blue Scarf: On sitting for a portrait by Martin Gayford

by
November 2010, no. 326

Man with a Blue Scarf: On sitting for a portrait by Martin Gayford

Thames & Hudson, $49.95 pb, 237 pp

Man with a Blue Scarf: On sitting for a portrait by Martin Gayford

by
November 2010, no. 326

‘I kept thinking: if his face looks like this, what must his balls look like?’ David Hockney’s assessment of the craggy countenance of W.H. Auden is clipped and convenient, but I suspect Auden would have been far more interesting on the subject of sitting for Hockney. Given the concentration and quality of the encounters between English portrait painters or sculptors and their subjects, it is slightly odd that more writers have not published accounts of the experience of sitting for their portrait.

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