Your favourite portrait of a musician.

[Aubade]

[QUOTE=Hornspieler;159352]The most impressive portrait that I ever saw was a life sized painting of the 'cellist Clara Suggia, in the Opera Theatre of the Royal Academy of Music.

I've always loved this painting but only knew it from books. Life-sized? Wow.

When I was a very young man working at Hamish Hamilton next door to the BM, a taxi pulled up and a rather drunk Jamie Hamilton wobbled out after a birthday luncheon with Diana Mosley. "Ah Paul [not my name but he conflated all young men in the firm to just one or two names], you like mushic — have thish." And he thrust into my hand a wonderful HMV Treasury LP with John McCormack, Hess "Jesu Joy", Heddle Nash singing Moeran, and more. It also has Guilhermina Suggia playing "Kol Nidrei" (1927). I didn't know the piece and was riveted to hear someone apparently playing a tin of treacle. Even by the conventions of the time, the apportimenti are semi-molten and the glissandi leave your stomach behind. Still love it and find more sensible performances a bit staid. Above all, if you want to know what John painted, that music is all in the picture and that picture in the music.

[Angle]

A Ronald Searle Portrait

I have forgotten how to include an illustration but here is an old and good one of Sir Malcolm:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ug1_dR057Ws/TzCAsmLiV8I/AAAAAAAAMbw/UvVFLenTMtk/s640/MalcolmSargentBlog.jpg

Angle

[salymap]

I have forgotten how to include an illustration but here is an old and good one of Sir Malcolm:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ug1_dR057Ws/TzCAsmLiV8I/AAAAAAAAMbw/UvVFLenTMtk/s640/MalcolmSargentBlog.jpg

Angle

Ah yes, I remember that Angle

[John Skelton]

I think my favourite is this http://www.owen-leinert.com/Kagel%20...viertasten.jpg of Mauricio Kagel

Bernardo Strozzi's portrait of Monteverdi http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Monteverdi.jpg

The famous Berlioz caricature is good http://digilander.libero.it/ossurf/c...%20Cajetan.jpg

The Delacroix portraits of Berlioz and Chopin are striking images ...

Luigi Nono

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_HB1mBVe0pDQ/TAmyV0HGiiI/AAAAAAAAAIs/kyTVX3apbzU/s1600/Luigi-Nono-TaR+%281%29.jpg

http://gapyx.com/cmt/2008/12/luigi_silencio.jpg

That's enough portraits, ed.

[umslopogaas]

The portrait of Moussorgsky, painted by Repin in the year in which Moussorgsky died. Those are the eyes of a man who liked a drink ...

[groovydavidii]

All the pen and ink illustrations in "The Oxford Companion To Music, (Percy A. Scholes)–by master illustrator Batt, also that craggy granite head photo of the elderly Sibelius.

[Panjandrum]

I particularly enjoy Schindler's description of the famous Kloeber portrait as making Beethoven look like a "master brewer", "without a trace of intellect". Paradoxically perhaps, Schindler was taken with the Schimon portrait in which Beethoven's eyes have practically rolled out of his sockets, giving him a somewhat demented air.

[Panjandrum]

Benjamin Britten, circa 1920, by his Aunt Queenie (Sarah Fanny Hockey). I'm not pretending it's great art, but I like it all the same. In the National Portrait Gallery. (I'm not convinced they have the date right.)

I'd put BB as being a bit older than seven myself! Looks more like a 12 or 13 year old, IMO.

[Karafan]

Kelly's portraits of RVW really capture him for me...


Karafan (Is it me or could Boris Johnson not 'grow' into this look? I think he has a shoe-in, already!)

[Mary Chambers]

I'd put BB as being a bit older than seven myself! Looks more like a 12 or 13 year old, IMO.

He'd have only been six for most of 1920, so I'm sure the NPG have got the date wrong. The book where I first saw the picture (Donald Mitchell's Pictures from a Life) puts his age at about nine, which I think is possible....but yes, could be any prep school age really.

[salymap]

Kelly's portraits of RVW really capture him for me...


Karafan (Is it me or could Boris Johnson not 'grow' into this look? I think he has a shoe-in, already!)

Thanks for that Karafan. No disrespect to a great man, but with a thick tweed overcoat added he always looked a bit of a shambles when I saw him at the Music Library.

[Panjandrum]

To echo that quote on Sutherland's portrait of Churchill, is there a hint of an undone fly button?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

To echo that quote on Sutherland's portrait of Churchill, is there a hint of an undone fly button?

Isn't that his waistcoat?

[Osborn]

Ingres' graphite & chalk portrait of Paganini is rather beautiful:

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/43.85.10

[aeolium]

And this picture of Carl Maria von Weber:

http://www.last.fm/music/Carl+Maria+von+Weber/+images/4988658