Iris Murdoch

The portrait in progress
photograph © Leo Phillips

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

This picture was painted in the usual corner of my studio in Peckham. Iris is sitting in my usual sitter's chair, half looking out of the window: sometimes, if intriguing people passed by, or dogs (a liking for which we do not share), she would lean out of position to get a better look.

Since Iris lives in Oxford and comes to London only for the occasional crowded day or two, sittings were irregular. The work in fact spanned three years and involved about fifteen sittings in all, each lasting a couple of hours or so with a break or two for coffee.

When I first met Iris (at a dinner party given by Michael Kustow) we talked about Titian's Flaying of Marsyas which we had both just seen at the magnificent Venice exhibition at the Royal Academy. When the National Portrait Gallery commissioned me to paint her portrait I recalled our conversation (about whom we most identified with in the picture) and started a fairly hasty copy of the picture to act as a backdrop so that she might sit in front of the head of Marsyas.

See these preparatory studies in the Drawings section.