There is a long tradition in which artists include their self portrait within their paintings. Some artists used intriguing tricks to hide themselves, for example, Jan van Eyck, in his painting 'The Arnolfini Portrait' (1434) of a wedding couple, hides his self portrait in the reflection of a mirror above the couple. Henri de Toulouse-Lautec, painted himself in the background of the nightclub scene of 'At The Moulin Rouge' (1892-95). These are just a couple of examples from the tradition which stretches across centuries.
West Street. North Street
Priory Park. East Street.
Nigel Purchase, less self conscious, paints himself in the foreground of four of his commemorative Chichester Scenes paintings! In East Street he is busy in the painting, painting the painting, one of those optical illusions that could go on for infinity. Standing beside Nigel is Mervyn Cutten, who inspired him to start the journey of creating 'commemorative street scene works' (see the previous blog post entitled 'Finding the Perspective'). The added interest here is he also paints another artist in the scene, his lifelong friend and well known Chichester Artist: Peter Iden (1945-2012) (for more on Peter visit www.peteriden.co.uk). In West Street he is perched on a small stool simply sketching, wearing an extraordinary multi-colour jumper which he dutifully wore, not in service to fashion but because it had been knitted by me, his daughter!
Each self portrait reminds me of a story... the Priory Park self portrait shows Nigel painting a wedding scene - although this never existed as a separate painting other than here as an imagined painting. The imagined painting shows the recent wedding of his daughter, and other family members including his wife and son.
The final story of the self portraits is about the life of a painting once it is finished. It is again Nigel sketching in the foreground, presumably doing some pre-work for the eventual painting of North Street. If you look very carefully at the photo, taken from the original, you will see a brown stain running vertically across Nigel's shirt. This was the casualty of the original painting having been hung on the walls of Purchases Wine Bar (now known as Purchases, North Street, Chichester, see http://purchasesrestaurant.co.uk). It is in fact a splash of gravy! Oh dear, that will be a job for an experienced picture restoration professional.