Creative struggles

An examination of the artist’s image is an excellent idea for an exhibition, and it has been thoroughly and effectively realised in this new show of some 70 exhibits at the National. Brainchild of Alexander Sturgis, who has written much of the useful catalogue (£25 in paperback), it explores the ways in which personality and originality have been bound up together in the art of the past 200 years. We are all familiar with the romantic idea of the starving but ennobled artist in the garret; this exhibition questions the plausibility of that myth.

As you enter the subterranean galleries of the Sainsbury Wing, you are greeted by a magnificent self-portrait of the worldly-wise and immensely successful Sir Joshua Reynolds, dressed in the velvet cap and scarlet robes of a Doctor of Civil Law. As the founding father and first president of the Royal Academy, Reynolds did a great deal to promote and augment the change of status enjoyed by artists. No longer should the painter be considered a lowly workman, he must forthwith enjoy the dignity and earning power of the gentleman. This translation from Artisan to Artist was a complex one, and not achieved over-night. And there were special clauses built into it. Artists wanted due respect for their divine creativity, but they also wanted to be free from the constraints which bedevilled most mere mortals. They required a latitude of behaviour which was often shocking to the respectable bourgeois, and frequently acted as if it was theirs by right. So the myth of the bohemian began to take root; the individual who was in some ways a cursed outsider, in others a fortunate rebel.

To Sir Joshua’s right is the superb self-depiction of Elizabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, stylish and elegant with palette in hand but not a dab or flick of paint astray on her costume.