Patrick George

Natalie Dower

1958

Not on display

Artist: Patrick George 1923–2016
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 1524 × 1219 mm
framed: 1544 × 1240 × 31 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1961
Reference: T00421

Display caption

Patrick George studied at Edinburgh College of Art and later Camberwell School of Art under William Coldstream. From 1949 he taught at the Slade School where he was appointed Professor of Fine Art in 1985.

This is a portrait of the painter, Natalie Dower. George uses restrained colours and clear outlines to convey her striking presence as she sits in a stark interior. The artist wrote ‘we sat for each other alternate hours …The portrait Natalie Dower painted of me was abandoned’.

Gallery label, August 2004

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Catalogue entry

T00421 NATALIE DOWER 1958

Inscr. on back of stretcher ‘Patrick George 33 Moreton Terrace S.W.1 of Miss
Natalie Dower’.
Canvas, 60×48 (152.5×122).
Purchased from the artist (Grant-in-Aid) 1961.
Exh: London Group, January–February 1960 (104); Arts Council tour, Modern British Portraits, 1960–1 (13).
Repr: London Magazine, 11, No.1, 1962, facing p.60; Studio, CLXIII, 1962, p.9.

The artist wrote that ‘The picture was painted in 1958. It took a long time to paint, probably most of the year. Natalie Dower is a painter, we sat for each other alternate hours... The portrait Natalie Dower painted of me was abandoned.’ (Letters of 16 June 1961 and 2 July 1961.)

A later portrait of her, half-length, is in the Castle Museum at Norwich.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I