How they saw themselves

Softback edition – £29.95 ISBN 1904537111

Self-portraiture is akin to what used to be called self-abuse: often done for want of anyone else at hand. Artists’ models cost money and, with the invention of colour photography, the demand for oil portraits declined. But, just as every autobiographer is the world authority on his or her subject, so the artist has maximum familiarity with the face in the mirror. Self-portraits give much the same chances as memoirs: they can be vain or modest, revealing or concealing, superficial or deeply introspective. So, when a mass of self-portraits is set before you, as in this finely produced book, you soon begin to work out who is posturing and who is for real — and to decide whether Keats was right in equating truth and beauty.

The core of the book is 100 British self-portraits of the last century collected by the late Mrs Ruth Borchard, of Reigate, Surrey.