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Borchard acquired the 1958 self portrait from friend and artist Michael Noakes. Noakes graduated from Reigate School of Art in 1954, and then spent two years doing National Service before attending the Royal Academy. Noakes remarked that painting oneself – the most ‘convenient model’ of all – was ‘no problem, it takes the pressure off. All the questions about how to find the form... remain.’ He says that his self portrait was ‘painted fairly low, drained of colour, greenish’. The picture shows the artist with a long, gaunt face and large, penetrating eyes. His pallid, green-hued skin, thick beard and moustache, illumined hair and those disquieting eyes combine to give him a haunted look. ‘At art school,’ he says, ‘we were taught anatomy, and so I caught the last of the traditional training there.
Noakes is now renowned as a portraitist of public figures, these include Gilbert Harding sensitively portrayed as prickly, vulnerable; the Queen standing self-assured; the comic actor Robert Morley, double-chinned, regarding us with perspicacity; Cardinal Basil Hume, a pale, white-haired figure in scarlet robes; a deadpan, enigmatic-looking Sir Alec Guinness; and a life-size Margaret Thatcher depicted on the steps of 10 Downing Street.
Title
Self Portrait with Beard
Date
1958
Medium
oil on board
Measurements
H 72 x W 37.5 cm
Accession number
PCF91
Acquisition method
acquired by Ruth Borchard as part of the original collection
Work type
Painting
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Henry Harris, Professor of Pathology (1963–1979), Regius Professor of Medicine (1979–1992), Head of Sir William Dunn School of Pathology (1963–1993) The Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford -
Professor Sir Martin Roth, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (1971–1975) Royal College of Psychiatrists -
Sir John Hackett (1910–1997), Principal (1968–1975) King's College London -
Frank Thistlewaite, Funding Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts -
Keith Broadwell Griffin (b.1938), Fellow (1965–1979), President (1979–1988) Magdalen College, University of Oxford -
Sir Arthur Vick (1911–1998) Queen's University Belfast -
Sir Derek Burdick Greenaway (1910–1994), Bt, CBE, TD, JP, DL Stationers' Hall - 64 more