THE MIDLIFE WOMEN WHO SAY YES, YOU ARE WORTH A PORTRAIT
The ultimate in vanity? Or a glorious reflection of women’s confidence? Here, three writers reveal why they decided to risk the blush-inducing process of baring their souls
ARTISTS have long captured the female subject in portraits, whether as muses, wives, models or lovers. Largely painted by men, for men, these paintings give us clues about the culture, status and fashion of a society.
But times have changed. according to the royal society of Portrait Painters, women are now commissioning their own portraits.
‘Not only because they have the spare cash,’ says Philippa stockley, who has painted female academics, artists and architects, ‘but because they feel valuable enough and relevant enough to do so; they feel important and worth recording, whether for their own pleasure or as a marker of themselves and their achievements.’
Many have achieved status in their careers or want memories for family and future generations. Maybe they have survived an illness, married or become a grandmother. Portraiture can be political, too. To mark 100 years since some women achieved the right to vote, last year an allfemale group of photographers created portraits of all 209 women MPs in Parliament.
‘Portraiture has always been very male-oriented,’ says annabel elton, commissions consultant to the royal society of British Painters. ‘But over the years it has got far more balanced.’
But it’s interesting how many women in midlife suddenly discover they want to be captured by a professional painter or photographer. arguably we want to celebrate getting this far. Or maybe we think: ‘This is the best I’m going to look. seize the day.’
Here, three top writers reveal what motivated them . .
My jaw ached from trying to avoid my ‘resting bitch face’ Daisy Goodwin is the writer and creator of iTV’s Victoria
My desire for a portrait began when we were looking for a picture to put on the order of service for my mother’s memorial. There were lots of photographs of her, but the most arresting image, the one that came closest to expressing her vivid complex personality was a watercolour painted by a friend of hers when she was in her 30s.
I realised then that I wanted something equally personal to leave for my children. It sounds macabre, but commissioning the portrait was the moment I came to terms with my mortality.
I decided to have my daughters, aged 28 and 17, painted at the same time; they are after all, my greatest achievements.
I had known Paul Benney, who has painted so many people from the Queen down, and he had once done a charcoal sketch of me which I love, and now use as my Twitter profile picture.
But even though I knew him quite well, there is something
almost unbearably intimate about sitting down to be scrutinised minutely through those intense blue eyes. I was fully clothed, but I might as well have been naked. By the end of the first session, my jaw ached with the effort of not letting my face collapse into what my daughters call my ‘resting bitch face’. But as the sessions continued — there were probably ten in all — I began to relax and to realise that, while I might spend my life inventing fictional characters, this was one image I couldn’t control.
The painting changed a lot from the first session; Paul spent a long time trying to pin down what expression felt genuinely, as he put it, ‘Daisy’.
So my first emotion when Paul finally allowed me to see the portrait was a fluttering of relief.
‘It’s the hardest thing in the world to paint a smile,’ he said as he turned the picture round. ‘ But I felt it wouldn’t be you without one.’
He brought the finished picture to my birthday party, so there was an unplanned public unveiling.
My eldest daughter looked at it for a long time and said, ‘ He’s really got you, Mum.’
My youngest daughter said, ‘I wish you looked like that all the time.’
Some friends were a bit surprised that I had decided to immortalise myself. They didn’t say: ‘Isn’t it tremendously vain to have a portrait done,’ but I could see them thinking it.
But the general feeling was that Paul had got something about me that they recognised. I hope they see what I see, which is a woman who looks out at the world with optimism and goodwill. That is certainly not how I feel every day, but it is me at my best.
In a world full of pouting selfies and rictus smile-for-the- camera grins, this picture is something permanent, a depiction not just of my face but of my essence.
While pictures of my daughters show them at the beginning of their lives at the height of their ambition and beauty: my portrait is a reflection on a life lived and it is how I want to be remembered.
a world full of pouting selfies, this is permanent by DAISY GOODWIN