Patrick Heron: studies for a portrait of T.S. Eliot

This display explores the creation of Patrick Heron’s portrait of T.S. Eliot, one of the Gallery’s most celebrated modernist paintings. According to the artist, it was painted in 1949 ‘from memory very slowly, after a period of nearly three years’. For the first time this highly abstracted portrait is being shown alongside a selection of the studies from life and imagination that preceded it. Collectively, these drawings and works in oil illuminate the complex process of depicting one of the twentieth century’s greatest poets.

Supported by the Quercus Trust