Face 2 Face: Exploring the relationship between artist and sitter | Professor Paul Gough

A portrait, wrote society artist John Singer Sargent, ‘is a painting with something a little wrong with the mouth’. Charles Dickens had similar thoughts, categorically declaring there are only two styles of portrait painting – ‘the serious and the smirk.’

There are as many views on portraiture as there are artists willing to take on the exacting task of capturing a likeness in paint, or clay or through the lens. This illustrated talk will explore the diversity of those approaches – from candid self-portraits to flattering family groups – told by a practicing painter who has painted faces and has had his own painted.

Drawing on examples from the ‘People Watching’ exhibition, Paul Gough will look at the techniques used by artists, their starting points, the ploys used to capture the essence of a sitter, and the mistakes made along the way. Reflecting on one painter’s view that ‘Every time I paint a portrait, I lose a friend’, Gough will ask – do portraits often tell you more about the artist than they do the sitter?

About the speaker
Paul Gough, painter and author of books on John and Paul Nash, and Gilbert and Stanley Spencer, has work held in international collections. A broadcaster and regular media commentator on the street artist Banksy, he was the subject of a viral 2022 TikTok film that alleged he was the elusive artist, a clip that drew more than two million views. Both sitter and painter, Gough’s likeness has appeared in the National Portrait Gallery, London, as well as on street vendors’ stalls in Hanoi and New York.