Double Take: Double Portraits from the Collection (Part One)
8 April, 2014 - 25 May, 2014
Main Galleries
Richard McWhannell, Departure (1981), oil on canvas
The Arts Trust Collection includes a number of remarkable double portraits – works in which two people are portrayed.
Shirley Grace, Portrait of Tony Fomison (1990), silver gelatin photograph
Double portraits are as familiar to us as images of the Virgin and Child at Christmas, social media snaps of couples, friends, family or the formal wedding portrait photograph. Despite the universality of this style of portraiture, there can be powerful forces at work in portraits where more than one figure is represented. Double portraits can often express more dimensions of psychological insight and artistic technique than the single portrait, and evoke more intense responses in the viewer.
The double portrait can be an opportunity for the artist to explore the subtleties of a relationship between two people. Double portraits can also be used to examine two sides of a single personality. Artists often make double images of themselves, to release or resolve some internal conflict, or to reveal different aspects of their inner selves to the viewer. Literary themes such as the doppelganger or physical double also make their way into double portraiture.
New Zealand artists have approached the double portrait in an amazing variety of ways, from joyful images celebrating the magic and fun of friendship, like Toss Woollaston’s Double Portrait, to more searching, analytical works such as Shirley Grace’s photographic Portrait of Tony Fomison. This work features two images of Fomison, one posed as the artist, the other as the model, contrived by Grace as a mock sitting of the artist for himself.
Mary McIntyre has returned again and again to the double portrait throughout her long career as one of New Zealand’s most celebrated portrait painters, and the Collection is especially rich in double portraits by this senior practitioner in the field. Many younger artists have followed her example and double portrait images are as current in contemporary art practice today as ever. Sam Mitchell’s double portrait-style work Janus was the winner of the Paramount Award in the 19th Annual Wallace Art Awards 2010.