Portrait Gallery In Detail

Friends were surprised to learn that we had never visited the Portrait Gallery so we duly obliged this morning, before our bi-monthly catchup nearby with church folk.

We were both impressed by the 1941 portrait by Meredith Frampton of Sir Charles Grant Robertson (1869 - 1948), where he is seen sitting at his desk. Historian, Fellow of All Souls Oxford and Principal and Vice-chancellor of the University of Birmingham, he had interests in music and gardening, which are symbolised in the portrait.

I was particularly taken with this glass with carnation and ?grass poly, set beside a pile of music, whose titles are accurately portrayed, as they all look so real. I couldn't resist blipping this detail rather than the whole portrait.

Indeed, according to the notes, 'Frampton's slightly surrealist style of portraiture was once scorned but the advent of photo-realism brought it back into fashion late in his life'.