Prints and Drawings Room
View by appointment- Artist
- Paula Rego 1935 – 2022
- Medium
- Graphite on paper
- Dimensions
- Support: 296 × 420 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by the artist 2002
- Reference
- T07934
Summary
This work is one of a series of preparatory drawings for Rego’s large scale pastel triptych The Betrothal: Lessons: The Shipwreck, after ‘Marriage a la Mode’ by Hogarth, 1999 (Tate T07919). Rego made the triptych for the exhibition Encounters: New Art from Old at the National Gallery, London in 2000. The exhibition curators invited contemporary artists to make new work in response to works in the National Gallery collection. Rego chose as her starting point the satirical narrative painting cycle Marriage A-la-Mode, c.1743 (National Gallery NG113-8) by William Hogarth (1697-1764). Hogarth’s series of six paintings, later reproduced as etchings, tell the story of an arranged marriage between the son of an impoverished aristocrat, the Earl of Squander, and the daughter of a social-climbing alderman. Paired off to satisfy the interests of their parents, the young couple is ill-matched from the start. Both lead dissolute, unhappy lives and die young: the syphilitic husband is murdered by his wife’s lover; she in turn poisons herself. Rego appropriated Hogarth’s subject, an arranged marriage, but transposed the setting to mid-twentieth-century Portugal.
This drawing is a study for The Shipwreck, the right panel of the triptych. This panel is loosely based on the dramatic fifth painting in Hogarth’s series, The Bagnio. In Hogarth’s painting the young husband, now the Earl, has surprised his wife and her lover. The lover has shot the Earl who falls in a fatal swoon. The Countess kneels at his side begging forgiveness. In the final panel of her triptych Rego reconfigures this scene as a modern Pietà. The young girl from the previous panels is now a woman. She sits in a large red armchair cradling her husband in a room containing the last of their possessions after his ill-fated adventures in Brazil.
This drawing is a study for the figure of the husband. It depicts a man lying on a cot, naked except for shorts. He is turned away from the viewer, exposing his back. His legs are curled slightly. His posture is restful; he appears to be asleep. The Earl’s posture in The Bagnio reminded Rego of depictions of the dead Christ. She has said, ‘the pose of the Earl as he collapses wounded looks like a Deposition, in which Christ is taken down from the Cross. It’s like a religious pose and is really rather sacrificial’ (quoted in Judith Bumpus, ‘Paula Rego’, Encounters, p.271). This sacrificial quality inspired her drawing which recalls representations of the recumbent Christ interred in the tomb before the Resurrection. The figure is vulnerable, a fallen hero.
Executed in precise, heavy lines in pencil, this drawing demonstrates the artist’s control of and fluency in her chosen medium. Rego thinks of herself as a draughtsman first and foremost. She claims, ‘I’m not really a painter ... What I’m interested in is drawing’ (quoted in ‘Paula Rego interviewed by Edward King, February 2001’, Celestina’s House, p.11).
Further reading:
Fiona Bradley and Edward King, Paula Rego: Celestina’s House, exhibition catalogue, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, 2001, reproduced no.27 in colour.
Fiona Bradley, Paula Rego, London, 2002.
Richard Morphet, Robert Rosenblum, Judith Bumpus, et al., Encounters: New Art from Old, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery, London, 2000.
Rachel Taylor
November 2003
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