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John Gielgud

2 of 2 portraits by David Remfry

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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John Gielgud

by David Remfry
oil on canvas, 1984
39 7/8 in. x 31 3/4 in. (1012 mm x 807 mm)
Commissioned, 1985
Primary Collection
NPG 5780

Sitterback to top

  • Sir John Gielgud (1904-2000), Actor and theatre director. Sitter in 123 portraits.

Artistback to top

  • David Remfry (1942-), Artist. Artist or producer of 2 portraits, Sitter in 3 portraits.

Linked publicationsback to top

Events of 1984back to top

Current affairs

The Provisional IRA bomb the Grand Hotel in Brighton where various politicians, including the Prime Minister, where staying for the annual Conservative Party conference. The bomb killed five people including a conservative MP, but no members of the cabinet. Thatcher began the next session of the conference the following morning at 9.30 as planned saying: 'all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail.'

Art and science

Dr Alec Jeffreys discovers that patterns in an individual's DNA can be identified and that each person has a unique 'genetic fingerprint'. The technique was soon utilised by forensic scientists to help in criminal investigations, and in order to identify human remains, for paternity testing, and to match organ donors.
Ted Hughes is appointed poet Laureate.

International

Ethiopia suffers severe drought and famine. The Ethiopian government responded by uprooting large numbers of peasants in the worst affected areas and by setting up new villages for the displaced people. However, the planned villages were frequently poorly equipped and many people chose to flee rather than acquiesce with government plans leading to further decline in food production and bringing the total death toll to over 1 million.

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David Remfry

10 June 2022, 15:11

In 1985, only a few years after the National Portrait Gallery had acquired one of David Remfry’s portraits of Jean Muir, they commissioned him to produce another portrait for their collection. Remfry suggested he paint John Gielgud, whom he had met through his friend, the actress Marti Stevens. Remfry and Marti had been to see Gielgud perform in Wotton Underwood, dining with the actor afterwards before returning home to London in a limo.

Gielgud visited the artist in his studio around 18 times over the course of several months, each sitting lasting a couple of hours while his driver waited outside. He would sit in Remfry’s old wicker chair, as seen in the painting. The two developed a close friendship, and Gielgud would regale him with wonderful stories, often of what he had been engaged in the previous evening, and other times with humorous anecdotes from his life on set and in the theatre, as well as the difficulties he had encountered as a gay man.

During one sitting Gielgud confided that he hadn’t enjoyed sitting for David Hockney, who he said would continually smoke ‘wet cigarettes’ and very often screw up drawings he had produced and throw them in the bin. Gielgud was also rather scathing about a sculptural portrait he had once sat for, of which he had only liked ‘the nape of the neck and the ear’.

Gielgud admitted to Remfry that when he had first been contacted by the NPG regarding the portrait, he had hoped it would involve sitting for a ‘more famous’ artist such as Graham Sutherland. He later recalled this during a radio interview, stating that despite this early concern, ’the boy won me round’.

Their friendship continued long after the commission was completed. Remfry was able to complete a few more portraits of Gielgud a number of years later. One was produced on the occasion of the actor receiving an Order of Merit. The portrait is part of The Queen’s private collection. The other was gifted to Gielgud himself, and was hung in the Garrick, where it is still on display today. In 1992, Robin Gibson, then chief curator of the NPG, curated a solo exhibition showing the series of drawings that led to the final Gielgud portrait.