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Notes
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Holden’s self portrait is dynamic and tight-knit, the colours earthy but shot through with light, brushstrokes applied with vigour, the face forceful and inspiring. His right eye is seen perhaps to focus on the viewer; the left is a black mark. The area beneath the mouth and around the chin is hard to ‘read’: maybe (as in a 1960 photograph) there is a slight hint of a beard and he is smoking a pipe. The painting is firmly structured yet goes far beyond mere outward form to partake perhaps of ‘something that is boundless & infinite’, a quote from Bomberg who Holden sought as his ‘master’. Art critic Andrew Forge quoted Holden as saying: ‘What a painter has to do is not to recognise either the object or the image but to recognise the kind of sensation that has produced the image.
Holden first encountered Bomberg (and Dorothy Mead) while studying philosophy at London’s City Literary Institute. Holden and Mead later went on to have a close relationship. In 1945, Bomberg and Holden created the Borough Group. Holden was the Group’s President from 1946–1948. Since 1956, Holden has lived and worked as a painter in Sweden.
The Ruth Borchard Collection
Title
Self Portrait
Date
1947
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
H 41.5 x W 33 cm
Accession number
PCF58
Acquisition method
acquired by Ruth Borchard as part of the original collection
Work type
Painting
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