Private View
Richard Hamilton
by J.S. Lewinski
1964
NPG x13717
Past display archive
24 September 2007 - 16 March 2008
Room 31 showcase
Free
To coincide with the National Portrait Gallery's major exhibition, Pop Art Portraits, this display presents a fascinating selection of photographic portraits of the key players in the British art scene of the 1960s. Focusing on the Pop artists of the period - among them Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Pauline Boty and Derek Boshier - the display is titled after the ambitious 1965 book Private View by critic John Russell and curator Bryan Robertson, which featured photographs by Lord Snowdon.
Influential at the time it was published, Private View examined just why London had become, along with Paris and New York, one of the three art capitals of the world. Looking at both the senior British artists as well as the new generation of Op, Pop and Abstract artists, the book - with its combination of Lord Snowdon's photographs and Germano Facetti's typography - established a bold, new visual language. Fourteen of Snowdon's portraits from the book are featured in Private View: British Pop and the 60s Art Scene including portraits of Howard Hodgkin, gallery owner John Kasmin and the assembled art critics of the time - David Thompson, Edward Lucie-Smith, Robert Melville, Jasia Reichardt and Norbert Lynton.
As well as these iconic Snowdon portraits, the display will include several works by other leading photographers of the period - Tony Evan's portraits of Pop artists Peter Phillips and Derek Boshier, Jorge Lewinski's studies of Richard Hamilton and Bridget Riley in their studios and David Bailey's classic shot of scenesters including Ringo Starr assembled at an opening at Robert Fraser's gallery in 1968.
Related portraits
- R.B. Kitaj with his wife, Elsi, and their son, Lem (NPG P797(55))
- Michael James Andrews (NPG P797(1))
- Howard Hodgkin (NPG P797(26))
- John Kasmin; Sheridan Frederick Terence Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 5th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava (NPG P797(28))
- Five art critics (NPG P797(56))
- Phillip King (NPG P797(29))
- Robyn Denny (NPG P797(13))
- Leslie Waddington (NPG P797(51))
- Robert Fraser Gallery group (NPG P953)
- Anthony Caro (NPG P797(9))
- Bryan Robertson (NPG x125573)
- Joe Tilson (NPG x4066)
- Derek Boshier (NPG x131145)
- Pauline Boty (NPG x88176)
- Peter Phillips (NPG x131143)
- William Tucker (NPG x129529)
- Bridget Riley (NPG x13745)
- Richard Hamilton (NPG x13717)
- David Hockney (NPG x76732)
- Dick Smith (NPG x131144)
- Patrick Caulfield (NPG x128571)
- Peter Blake (NPG x13708)
Related sitters
- Michael James Andrews
- Sir Peter Thomas Blake
- Derek Boshier
- Pauline Boty
- Sir Anthony Alfred Caro
- Patrick Caulfield
- David Courts
- Lotte Courts
- Robyn Denny
- Sheridan Frederick Terence Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 5th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava
- Robert Fraser
- Richard Hamilton
- David Hockney
- (Gordon) Howard Eliot Hodgkin
- John Kasmin
- Phillip King
- Elsi Kitaj (née Roessler)
- Lem Kitaj
- R.B. Kitaj
- (John) Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith
- Norbert Casper Lynton
- Robert Melville
- Peter Phillips
- Jasia Reichardt
- Bridget Louise Riley
- Bryan Charles Francis Robertson
- Tony Sanchez ('Spanish Tony')
- (Charles) Richard ('Dick') Smith
- Dean Stockwell
- David Morgan Thompson
- Joe Tilson
- William Tucker
- Leslie Waddington