Man in the Blue Scarf. A Review in Quotations

What, then, is a portrait painter painting? An individual who persists through time, or merely the way a ceaselessly mutating human organism appears in a particular time and place? It is a good question.

when you have the sort of temperament that is always looking for flaws and trouble [his temperament, in other words], it might stop you from having what you always want, which is to be as audacious as possible. One has to find the courage to keep on trying.’ ‘How?’ ‘Not painting in a stale or predictable way. 

I begin to feel a slight apprehension as to what this picture will look like. Will I look ugly? Will I look old? Facing up to the facts of life, such as ageing and mortality, are precisely the point of LF’s type of painting – of course, we applaud it in Rembrandt, but I’m not sure how I feel about the policy when it is applied to myself. 

‘In a way I work the way I do because I can’t see what I’m doing. I decided long ago not to wear reading glasses when I painted, although I do when I make etchings because that is very close work. It’s only by stepping back that I can see what I’ve been painting, so it’s more like aiming at a target while I’m actually putting the paint on. But I’m sure if I wore glasses it would affect the way I paint. 

Evidently, painting is a physical activity like playing the piano or violin. Touch comes into it, and personal tastes in questions such as the tightness of the canvas, its texture, the variety of brush, and so forth. 

Last July, six years after the final sitting, and two years since I wrote the last word of this book, LF died. His had been an epic life, full of achievement. I shall miss him – his wit, his presence, his intelligence – tremendously. But because he was an artist, and an extraordinary one, quite a lot of his thought and his feelings survive, embedded in his paintings. 

kindle. 193 pgs. 14 June 2025