Why do British galleries shun the humane, generous art of Ruskin Spear?

Where do you see paintings by Ruskin Spear (1911–90)? In the salerooms mostly, because his work in public collections is rarely on display. Until the National Portrait Gallery closed for redevelopment it was, however, possible to study Spear’s splendid portrait of ‘Citizen James’ (Sid James) peering from a black and white TV screen, and his oil sketch of Harold Wilson wreathed in pipe smoke, the epitome of political cunning. Both were strikingly more convincing than their companion array of anodyne commissioned images.

Like his beloved Sickert, Spear painted commissioned portraits but also took to making enigmatic ‘unofficial’ portraits based on press photographs — or, in the case of Sid James, a snap off the telly. The first of these spirited commentaries on the great and the not-so-good was a large unflattering painting of Churchill speechifying at the microphone. This was greeted with hostility when hung at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1957.