Lot 169: SIR WILLIAM COLDSTREAM 1908-1987

PORTRAIT OF HOWARD GRIFFIN

PORTRAIT OF HOWARD GRIFFIN

91.5 by 61cm.; 36 by 24in.

signed

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Howard Griffin
Nell Blaine
Private Collection, U.K.

EXHIBITED

Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, The Enduring Image: The Tradition of the Human Figure in 20th Century British Art, 12th February - 3rd April 2003, illustrated in colour in the exhibition catalogue;
London, James Hyman Fine Art, From Life: Radical Figurative Art from Sickert to Bevan, 10th September - 18th October 2003, no.17, p.38, illustrated in colour in the exhibition catalogue, pp.36 and 39.

LITERATURE

Bruce Laughton, William Coldstream, Yale University Press, New Haven and Yale, 2004, illustrated in colour, fig.113, p.239.

NOTE

Painted in 1968-9 and listed in Bruce Laughton's working catalogue raisonné as WMC 177.

Texan-born poet, writer and critic John Howard Griffin (1920-1980) is remembered primarily as the author of Black Like Me, a modern classic based on his experiences travelling in the segregated Deep South disguised as a black man in 1959. Griffin's research consisted of chemically dying his skin, shaving his head and documenting over a six week period his transition into the black race, his experiences of racial bigotry and the reactions of those he knew beforehand. After the release of the book, Griffin was personally vilified, hung in effigy in his home town and received death threats for the rest of his life.

It was probably after seeing Coldstream's portrait of his friend W.H. Auden that Griffin commissioned the present work. With its various marks and measurements applied directly onto the canvas, it in many ways typifies Coldstream's methods, yet there is a certain depth of observation and spark of life that implies a greater depth of feeling between artist and sitter than is normally apparent. Certainly the finished work was met with great enthusiasm by Griffin who later wrote to the artist, 'I am delighted with the spirited portrait. It is more alive than I am. I have a feeling it will walk into the room some night and take over'.