472. MICHAEL AYRTON (1921-1975). SELF PORTRAIT.

The artist depicted half length, wearing a blue-grey jacket, painting at an easel, oil on aluminium
34.5 x 24.5cm.

* The metal support is aluminium, a material with which Ayrton had experimented the previous year, making some half-dozen paintings inspired by his travels in Italy, including portraits of his friends, writer Norman Douglas and composer William Walton, and several landscape and figure compositions. At that time he was, in his own words, `deeply under the spell of the early Renaissance`, and felt that aluminium primed with gesso gave something approaching the painting feel and visual effect of the frescoes of Masaccio and Piero della Francesca. Ultimately, though, he found it unsatisfactory and this self portrait was a one-off, painted the following year on commission for a collector.

The style and palette are characteristic of Ayrton's late 1940's work (compare his `Portrait of Norman Douglas` in the Sheffield Art Gallery; and the British Council's `Afternoon in Ischia`), a phase which culminated in 1951 in the large `Captive Seven` painted for the Festival of Britain's "60 Pictures for '51" exhibition (now Tate Britain). The choice to show himself in full profile view (the most difficult for self portraiture) and in the act of painting echoes the famous late self portrait by Titian in the Prado, a work which Ayrton knew well.

We are very grateful to Dr Justine Hopkins for providing this footnote.

Provenance: London, Michael Parkin Fine Art Ltd, no date, exhibit no.6, bt. by John Sandoe.