DAPHNE TODD

Martin Gayford in conversation with Daphne Todd

When you were painting me recently you were constantly measuring the position of my nose, shoulders, hands and so on. You were also extremely attentive to small changes in my position and posture. But afterwards you surprised me by saying that, ultimately, plotting the precise location of anything in a picture – for example, my face – is impossible. What did you mean by that?

I suppose the fundamental reason is that everything is changing all the time. Even if you are sat in front of a still life – the objects in which are not going to change and you’ve got electric light – which isn’t going to alter either, you yourself are going to change. Just in order to stay upright, you are swaying slightly from side to side. Your eyes will be focussing and refocusing on light areas and dark areas.

Usually there is far more change than that going on. If you are in daylight, the light itself will be pulsating and it will be fiercer at sometimes than at others. If you are anywhere near the sun, shadows will be passing over things. If you are looking at people, plants or landscape, they themselves will be altering either through the hours or the seasons. So there is an awful lot of change constantly happening. And it seems to me that what you are trying to do is catch something.

Then what you are trying to catch is a moving target.

Yes. Completely.

And it’s moving faster than you can paint, so why is the answer not to make a photograph as a record in a fraction of a second?

Well, I think for some people it probably is. But in order to catch what you have seen – and that’s the point really – a photograph won’t necessarily do. You cannot catch the thing itself, to do so you would have to be a sort of god. That would involve making it over again, and that’s obviously not remotely possible, because you would have to infuse it with life.

So what you are doing is catching some aspect of what you are looking at, one that means something to you, or has struck you in some particular way or moved you.

Therefore the record you make, either through a photograph or otherwise, is a construct. Now, if it satisfies you to go through the process of taking and printing a photograph, that’s fine. But the photograph will record all sorts of things that you haven’t seen. And it will record a lot of them in ways that you didn’t perceive them.

So you are saying that what the human mind perceives is not what the lens sees?

Yes, whereas, if you are making something from observation, there is a slight element of accident about what gets down on your canvas or board – or doesn’t get down. But it’s a much more conscious series of choices. You are going for this patch of colour and saying something about how it relates to another patch of colour. Although those patches are changing as we’ve said, you are making relatively deliberate decisions about how they are related. Out of finding those patches, an image emerges.

A long time ago when I lived in Clapham I tried to paint the building at the end of the road, just by looking through the window. And I found it very difficult to pin it down. In this instance I couldn’t hold a brush out at the end of my arm because the window was in the way. Ultimately, because I wasn’t sure where anything was, I tried to plot the positions on the window itself with a Chinagraph pencil, tracing the image as it came through the pane of glass. To my horror, it was entirely different. Hugely out from what I was seeing.

So, when you are painting a pictures you are reconstructing something using the materials that human perception provides. And you are doing so over a period of time.

It’s not science, actually. It’s a sort of pointer that you are being accurate. Then the painting takes over, and the painting dictates to a degree how things might go. Another example is what you do with verticals at the edges of your painting.

Man with a Pink Wall (Martin Gayford) (oil on 4 raised panels, 91.5 x 76 cms, 36 x 30 ins)

2. Objects on a Sill, with Pearls oil on birch ply 19 x 22 cms 71⁄2 x 85⁄8 ins

3. Custard Marrow with Winter Windows oil on birch ply 23 x 28 cms 9 x 11 ins

4. Red Apples on a Blue Cloth oil on birch ply 19 x 38 cms 71⁄2 x 15 ins

5. Still-life with Blue Cloth oil on birch ply 58 x 51 cms 227⁄8 x 201⁄8 ins

6. Girl at the Farm oil on 3 raised panels 94 x 78 cms 37 x 303⁄4 ins

55. Michaelmas Border with Standard Rose oil on birch ply 72 x 23 cms 283⁄8 x 9 ins

ISBN 978-1-908486-84-4 Publication No: CCCXCII Published by David Messum Fine Art © David Messum Fine ArtAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means,

electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from the publisher.

The Studio, Lords Wood, Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Tel: 01628 486565 www.messums.com

Photography: Hugh Gilbert Printed by Connekt Colour

CCCXCII

Portrait Commissions

Daphne Todd, President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters 1994–2000, was the first woman to be elected to that office since the Society was founded in 1891. Past presidents include Sir James Jebusa Shannon, Sir William Orpen, Sir John Lavery and Augustus John.

Notable sitters include: HRH The Prince of Wales; HRH The Grand Duke of Luxembourg; Sir Edward Abraham; Lord Adrian, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University; Lord and Lady Armstrong; Lord Ashburton; singer Dame Janet Baker; Tim Card, Vice-Provost of Eton; Sir Neil Cossons, Director of the Science Museum; Lord (Bill) Deedes; the Very Rev John Eastaugh, Lord Bishop of Hereford; Lord Fellowes (formerly Private Secretary to HM The Queen); Lord (Julian) Fellowes; Sir Peter Gwynne-Jones, Garter King of Arms; Lord Kitchener; Baron Klingspor; Bishop Graeme Knowles; Sir Kirby and Lady Laing; Michael Lunt, Captain of the Royal and Ancient; Spike Milligan; Sir Christopher Ondaatje; Dame Anne Mueller; Sir Austin Pearce, Chairman of British Aerospace; Lord Pennock; master-chef Albert Roux; Lord and Lady Sainsbury; Lord Sharman; Stephen Spurr, Head Master of Westminster School; Sir Tom Stoppard OM; Dame Marilyn Strathern; Sir Peter Strawson; Lord and Lady Tebbit; Lord Tugendhat and Past Masters of The Worshipful Company of Weavers and of the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers.

Dame Marilyn Strathern, Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, wrote these words after sitting for the complex picture that won the Royal Society of Portrait Painters’ 2001 Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture: “Daphne was extraordinarily open and generous. She shared with me the emerging picture, which I was able to observe as it happened, and described what she was doing with colour. With the tiniest of brushes, she gradually covered the birchwood on which she painted. Each stroke was intended to be true to what she saw. Coordination and composition seemed to summon themselves through the simplest application of colour, except that it was not simple at all. As she explained, each individual application must work alongside all the other applications, in their company so to speak, and it is from this that the effectiveness of colouring comes. There has to be, she implied, a constant translation between what is observed and the place that each minute brushstroke is going to have within the frame”.

If you would like to discuss commissioning Daphne Todd, please contact the Gallery.

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