Tom Phillips and Iris Murdoch; photo by Leo Phillips, 1986.
 

"Portraiture, I grow more and more to feel, is a very special category of painting and a very particular act of art: it involves two people in a room one of whom is trying to be painted by the other."

The quotation above, taken from Tom Phillips' own preface to the 1989 retrospective of his work at the National Portrait Gallery, underscores his belief in the collaborative aspects of portrait painting. Sustained sessions of sitting drain artifice and vanity from initial poses, and the final product is "an amalgam of many moments and states of mind: the right eyebrow might be resolved on a happy Thursday and the left on some succeeding Monday of gloom."

The online version of the 1989 show includes more than 60 subjects, many rendered in multiple studies and finished portraits. The sheer volume is somewhat daunting for someone new to Tom's portrait works, and likewise the natural desire to "see it all" may not adequately encourage viewers to linger over the images and see them as people rather than merely pictures.

In his NPG preface Tom quotes the novelist HWK Collam, saying, "The great test ... is to turn the picture to the wall and see if it seems that someone has suddenly left the room." With this exhibition we invite you to enter the room and engage in conversation with the subjects, especially the tenth, the artist himself, whose presence is visible in each of them.

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