Lot 178: Stephen Farthing RA (British, born 1950) Duchess of Grosvenor

Duchess of Grosvenor
oil on canvas
250 x 150cm (98 7/16 x 59 1/16in).

Stephen Farthing was Ruskin master at the Ruskin School of Fine Art and Professorial Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford until 2000. He trained at St Martins's School of Art and the Royal College of Art.

The present work belongs to Farthing's 'Monarchs' series in which he painted headless portraits of the royal family and their associates. The scale of the portrait seems to be a visual analogy to a notion of royality and nobility as something above and beyond the ordinary citizen. A sense of aloofness and power is inferred through the sheer scale of the painting. Making the portrait headless serves as another device that reinforces the sense of the aloofness of power, which appears here as purely symbolic and utterly dehumanised. The glorious decoration and style of the Duchess's dress conjures up the work of royal portrait artists such as Nicholas Hilliard who painted exquisite miniatures. The present work seems to be as much a celebration of texture, colour and light as it is a contemplation on power and nobility.