Lot 68: HEANEY, SEAMUS (b. 1939, poet, Nobel prize-winner for Literature 1995)

PORTRAIT BY PETER EDWARDS (b. 1955),
oil on canvas, head and shoulders, signed, inscribed and dated by Edwards 'Seamus Peter Edwards July 87', 23½ x 17½ in (59.7 44.5 cm).

PROVENANCE: Acquired from the artist.

EXHIBITED: National Portrait Gallery, Contemporary Poets, 1990; British Library Millennium Exhibition Chapter and Verse: 1000 years of English Literature, 2000.

This portrait of 1987 is an early life study for the full-length portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. It perhaps benefits from being a straightforward representation, less 'brutal' or Post-Modernist' [terms used by critics about Edwards's style] than the final version. It is arguably the best of the very few painted portraits of Heaney to date.

Peter Edwards writes: 'Studies done in his home in Dublin c. 1986/87 during which a bottle of Paddy's was consumed. A drawing (which he kept) reminded him of his father. I stayed at the United Arts Club in Dublin and Seamus would come and pick me up in his car for the sitting.' Also see under Ted Hughes (lot 75) in this catalogue.

Peter Edwards studied Fine Art at Shrewsbury and Gloucester College of Art and Design. In 1990 he held a one-man show of portraits of poets at the National Portrait Gallery, where seven of his portraits are now held. In 1994 he won the BP Portrait Award.