FOREWORD
Even by the standards of a full-time portrait painter, John Bellany’s work in this field over the past eighteen months or so would rank as prodigious. I could never have expected to be faced with the almost impossible task of making a selection from a range of portraits of such power and exuberance, all painted within the last year. It has been a rare privilege to observe white-hot creativity in action like this at first hand.
The National Portrait Gallery is deeply grateful to the artist, both for the opportunity to show these works and for his boundless help and enthusiasm.
Equally unexpected has been the extraordinarily generous act of patronage on the part of Mr and Mrs Timothy Hudson in acquiring these pictures and thereby also ensuring the production of this catalogue. The Gallery is grateful to them for the loan of the portraits and no less to lan Botham for agreeing to sit for the Gallery.
Both the artist and the Gallery wish to thank William Packer for his perceptive introduction to the catalogue; and without the kind co-operation of Keith Hartley and Douglas Hall, in the throes of organising their own Bellany retrospective in Edinburgh, I should not have been able to write my short essay. Our thanks are also due to Martin Shirley for designing both the catalogue and the poster, to Judith Shepparc for her capable editing, to Caroline Brown for designing and hanging the exhibition, to John Stirling for making the frames, and to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art for supplying figs. 1 and 2.
Robin Gibson
November 1985
