The Face of Britain
The Nation Through its Portraits
Simon Schama (Viking, 632pp, £30,
Oldie price £25) THE FACE of Britain is part of a package including an exhibition curated by the historian Simon Schama at the National Portrait Gallery and an accompanying BBC series. Schama’s approach is thematic rather than chronological and he has charmed reviewers with his storytelling.
Several reviewers settled on the account of Van Dyck’s ‘deathbed’ image of Venetia, Lady Digby, to reveal, as Martin Gayford in the Daily Telegraph said, ‘One function of the portrait: as a hedge against time, a way of preserving at least the appearance of a person who is lost.’
Graham Sutherland’s doomed 80th birthday portrait of Winston Churchill was also frequently cited as an example of what Gayford identifies as ‘pitfalls for painters of people’: ‘Everybody has strong ideas about how they look; so too do their friends, loved ones, and — if they are famous — adoring public.’
John Carey in the Sunday Times found ‘a work of dazzling panache’ and ‘a book to devour’ but complained that ‘its structure is a mess’. He was niggled by ‘disjointedness’, ‘unsettling jumps’ and omissions, including John Singer Sargent and John Everett Millais (‘a far greater portraitist than Rossetti’).
But overall, Carey said, ‘resentment is soon quelled by the vitality of Schama’s writing. He is a matchless raconteur, and his book is really a series of self-contained stories.’
Michael Prodger in the Times agreed that ‘Schama’s pick and mix approach to artists and themes may not be systematic but it is wonderfully compelling’ and appreciated Schama’s departure from the expected and the familiar. ‘Because the British, he thinks, have always had a “suspicion of the selfpreening of the great” he selects for his case studies instances where the artists didn’t let the great preen or where they helped give common folk their moment in the sun.’
So less of Gainsborough for Schama and more of Augustin Edouart, who made likenesses in hair and, later, paper silhouettes.
For Ekow Eshun in the Independent, Schama shared the ‘transforming empathy’ he attributes to Thomas Lawrence’s sketch of William Wilberforce, revealing ‘the man rather than the reputation’.