Shock and awe

At the age of only ten, Leon Kossoff undertook a momentous journey across London on his own. He travelled from his family home in the East End to Trafalgar Square and, having mounted the steps, entered the National Gallery. At first, the early Christian art he encountered inside filled the boy with fear. But after a while, trepidation gave way to awe. Discovering the existence of paintings was a total revelation, and he subsequently ensured that the works displayed there became an indispensable part of his life.

Today, 70 years after that initial childhood visit, the National Gallery is saluting the intensity of Kossoff’s commitment. For he has made hundreds of unbridled drawings from pictures in the collection, and a selection of these images now becomes a galvanic exhibition. Its impact is immediate. Kossoff has never been afraid of emotion, and one of his earliest chalk studies closes in tight on Rembrandt’s ‘Margaretha de Geer’. The elderly woman’s head may be supported by an immense starched ruff, but she looks traumatised. Her eyes project downwards, as if contemplating her own future with dismay. And Kossoff’s mark-making adds to the sense of unease, slashing at the paper with an alarming combination of funereal black and incendiary orange.

Ever since he studied under David Bomberg in the early 1950s, Kossoff has been one of the most forceful British painters. His graphic work is equally arresting. Even when tackling subjects as beneficent as ‘The Adoration of the Kings’, he insists on transforming Veronese’s altarpiece into an urgent vision. The chalk contours are almost skeletal, while the heavy architecture above the holy family bears down on them with oppressive strength. And when Kossoff responds to Rubens’s sensual ‘The Judgment of Paris’, he makes sure that its ample female nudes flaunt their bodies in a thunderous landscape pummelled by gales.