Iris Murdoch portrait studies

Dame Iris Murdoch - Air
conté on paper
138.4 x 101.6 cm
1986

Dame Iris Murdoch - Fire
conté on paper
138.4 x 101.6 cm
1986

Dame Iris Murdoch - Water
conté on paper
138.4 x 101.6 cm
1986

These are studies for Tom Phillips’s portrait of Iris Murdoch. Begun in 1984 there were fifteen or so sittings over three years.

Phillips writes in the catalogue to The Portrait Works, NPG 1989 pp 38-41

My original image of Iris was quickly formed. She has a luminous presence and the visual metaphor that my head created was of an electric light bulb in that gloomy corner (of my studio), glowing, casting out darkness. I suppose this is what people of a mystical bent call an 'aura'.

Unfortunately on the canvas itself I lost this vision about half way through the work. Iris started to shrink and began to lose heavily to the Titian background. Taking advantage of a longish break I thought hard about how to get out of this impasse without faking. By her next visit I had started from memory four very large drawings whose scale challenged the painting. Each one of the drawings seemed to deal with a different element and I came to think of them as representing earth, air, fire and water. In more practical terms they taught me that the historiated aspects of Iris's face, its lines and creases, were not really important to her actual presence. Thus I found my way back to the original light-bulb image.

See the completed portrait in the Paintings section.