Alex Portner

There is one letter from Alex Portner to Ruth Borchard, of September 2nd, 1963 from 16 Bolton Studios, Gilston Road, London SW10. 'Thank you very much for writing to me. As you say yourself, your 15gns. Max. is well below my price range. Your suggestion to publish my self portrait together with others in book form makes, of course, a difference.

'I accept with pleasure, and wonder whether you would like to visit me at my studio in order to view the painting […]'

Portner's wry self-portrait is undated though signed with a painted monogram (the letter A set above P). Born in 1920 in Berlin, son of a Russian mother and a Polish-Jewish father, he was forty-three in 1963 – it is possible the picture was painted then, especially for Ruth. Here, every wrinkle, every furrow, every 'mark of weakness, mark of woe' is emphatically delineated. The deeply etched lines around the eyes appear to form a kind of undulating landscape. Under his right eye alone, one can count five separate lines or fissures, with up to half a dozen separate so-called 'laughter lines' as tributaries. The artist's features have been somewhat caricaturally emphasised: his domed forehead (with its pools of light, perhaps unconsciously suggesting the inner light of inspiration, above and beyond his shadowed, scowling features) and receding chin, for example, appear much more prominent than photographs of the artist show. His white hair is prominently painted. There are sumptuous background notes of melding pink, green, gold and blue; the range of indigos and blues for his 'sports' shirt endow the painting with a cool vigour.

Given the picture's expressionist character, the artist's German background and artistic training are not surprising. According to a biographical sketch in a 1970 London exhibition catalogue, 'He studied under [Max] Kaus in Berlin and [Hans] Thiemann in Leipzig, later moving to study at Les Beaux Arts in Paris (also studying for a time in Amsterdam). He fled to England in 1939 and after serving with the British Army was granted British nationality.' Another catalogue entry notes that whilst studying art in Berlin, he was 'greatly influenced by the likes of Otto Dix, George Grosz, Otto Nagel and Rudolf Schlichter, members of the artists' association Rote Gruppe [Red Group] during the social political turmoil in 1930’s Germany’.

In the 1970 catalogue ('Gallery Petit presents 'Organic Wood Paintings' by Alex Portner, within Jacey Galleries, Marble Arch [London] W1'), there is a photograph of the artist, his weary-looking head supported by his hand, his eyes glancing obliquely away. Severe lighting casts dark shadows over his left cheek, while illuminating his eyes, nose, hand, strong, deeply-lined forehead and wispy white hair.

A short mid-1960s British Movietone film in colour – 'Alex Portner – Painter of Beauty' pays a visit to Portner's smart London studio, where he is seen painting separate portraits of two young women. The soundtrack announces (in clipped British tones) that 'he has painted people from all walks of life; he is outstandingly successful in portraying beautiful women'. The announcer remarks that he has portrayed many contemporary models and also actresses, including Dorothy Tutin and Audrey Hepburn (he also made portraits of Anna Massey and Shirley Ann Field). These portraits of such glamorous young women now have a 60s period charm about them – the subjects are made to appear unruffled, elegantly coiffed, quite beatifically sweet, sometimes to the point of being saccharine.

Portner also made perceptive portraits of celebrities such as the 'character' actors Margaret Rutherford, Sidney James and Hattie Jacques, and made a striking portrayal of the London socialite Lily Sigall (1914-2011) – whose north London salon attracted many leading artists and intellectuals from around the world – looking stylishly alluring and modish in a low-cut black dress.

This short film then cuts away from Portner's serenely untroubled portraiture of young women to show some extraordinarily different kind of paintings by him: powerful, troubled investigations of scenes of conflict and violence, such as Opposing Forces – in which a group of identical men, with stylised, elongated bald heads, in black garb, are seen attacking each other; some appear belligerent, others as pitiful victims – and Crucifixion, in which Christ and two apparently grieving figures at the foot of the Cross are movingly depicted as grey, sombre, grotesquely countenanced figures.

The film's voice-over continues: 'Portner believes in giving his inspiration complete freedom. Under medical supervision, he underwent an experiment with drugs which opened a window into his subconscious. Point of No Return [a disturbing depiction – partly reminiscent of Art Brut but also of Francis Bacon's art – of a bizarre hybrid human creature: a howling, open-mouthed head with multiple noses, half-encircled by an emerging supporting arm and hand] is one of the results. The experience, inspired by Huxley's experiments with the drug mescaline, has given him a greater sense of freedom, a richer sense of colour.'

At this point, the film suddenly returns to the artist's studio, where he is seen painting another attractive young woman, and the narrator announces (with a jolting change of pace which is almost hilariously disconcerting): 'But now back to the art of the portrait painter, and another beautiful face, Beatrice [...] daughter of the Brazilian ambassador to Bolivia. It seems that Alex Portner has been able to reconcile the rather restricted conventions of portrait painting with the freedom of inspiration which an artist must have if he is to be worth the name.'

This dichotomy in Portner's art – between, on the one hand, conventional if often captivating portrait painting of young actresses and models and society figures, as well as of more characterful stage and film figures such as Rutherford and Jacques (works which earned the artist a good living and fashionable status), and, on the other hand, the visionary, mescaline-inspired expressionism of his paintings of outlandish figures –  is an intriguing one. In his 1963 self-portrait, he seems to have bridged the gap between his more conventional portraiture – retaining a fair likeness – and his more expressive propensities.

Ruth Borchard kept a copy of an invitation to Portner's 1965 one-man show at The New Arts Gallery in London – which included a collection of paintings inspired by Hindu Erotic Sculpture. A note for his 1970 London exhibition explains how 'For the past two years Portner has [exploited] the surface of pinewood for painting on: by applying oil paint translucently into it. He discovered that by transferring onto his pictorial design the intrinsic feeling of wood – that of being organically alive, he [...] elevates his subject matter to be part of life itself [...] particularly, when skin texture is depicted by the grain and by the knots of the wood he uses.' Though not painted in this manner, his self-portrait, acquired by Ruth, certainly makes 'skin texture' feel quite 'organically alive'.

- Text by Philip Vann, updated and revised from the first edition of Face to Face: British Self-Portraits in the Twentieth Century, 2004