PAULA by Anthony Rudolf
This show of my private collection of works given to me by Paula Rego (and a few pieces that Paula gifted to my sister Annie) is well suited to the Ben Uri gallery, whose proposal it was. The Ben Uri, under the inspired, indeed visionary, leadership of David Glasser, has morphed from a gallery concerned with Jewish artists into a museum and research centre, both online and bricksand- mortar, which has broadened its focus to all refugee and immigrant artists in the UK. My family (hailing from what is now West Ukraine and Poland and arriving here at the start of the twentieth century) has been associated with the Ben Uri for three quarters of a century, and Paula was indubitably an immigrant, from Catholic Portugal, who arrived here in 1951 aged sixteen. ‘I am a monarchist in England, a republican in Portugal,’ she once said. On another occasion she said that her patriotic allegiance was to London. Between her and me, we cover the historical and post-historical bases of the gallery.
This is largely a documentary show. Rightly, regular posthumous shows of Paula’s major work are being held around the world. The present show lays no claim to presenting Paula’s finest and/or grandest work, but all are precious to me. The whole is more important than the sum of the parts. It is a collection with a unique raison d’être and all previously unseen, apart from some of the prints and the painting ‘Perch’. All the works were gifts from Paula to me over more than a quarter of a century plus the few to my sister. The crown jewel of the group,
‘Perch’, has been bequeathed to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and in due course the bulk of the collection will go to the Women’s Art Collection at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.
I am not the main reason why the show should be of interest to the many people who are fascinated by Paula Rego, a great artist and glorious personality. The collection’s intellectual interest and organic coherence derive from the peculiar and yet normal circumstances of its ownership: the works were gifts from Paula to me in my privileged capacity as close companion and principal male model for the last twenty-six years of her life, almost to the day. About three weeks before she died, she made her last sketch of me, as Branwell Brontë, a character of great interest to both of us. Perhaps not an outstanding work but precious to me. I was in my own clothes, and the only prop was a bottle.
As was usual in the final phase of Paula’s life, we were in her sitting room and Lila, her chief female model and studio assistant, was there too. Lila and I always departed at the same time and walked down East Heath Road to South Hampstead Station, where she left me to take the Overground while I walked on to Belsize Park Tube. The last visit was on 7th June 2022. That evening, as I had done for more than two years, I read poetry to Paula over the phone when she rang. Twice more that night she had the carers call me, and we read more poems, with her joining in as usual. This was the final manifestation of one of the modalities of our love: the expressiveness of the human voice. Next morning, her children called me early: she had died in the night. A few weeks later I read Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ at her funeral.
It was in the autumn of 1996, a few months after we got together in June that year, that I began trying to think of a reason to go to the studio during working hours and spend more time with her. Then I had a brainwave, almost an epiphany: the way, perhaps the only way, to see my girlfriend more regularly was to become her model. Given that Paula worked regular ‘office hours’, what other reason could I find to interrupt her rigorous creative routine? I tentatively and nervously put it to her that I would be pleased to model for her if this would be of use to her work and at the same time give her pleasure. She flung her arms around me and said she had thought I would never ask, given that I was so busy with my own work. I said that, as a newly inaugurated freelance writer and translator, I could organise my time around her needs.
And so began a collaboration, -- Paula liked to say complicity -- which lasted twenty-six years. I’m not sure how many pastels, sketches and prints she did with me cast as a character in different stories. Surely several hundred; and of Lila, no doubt several thousand. I am proud to have been her principal male model for all those years. Having a male model always available, and knowing me inside and outside the studio, enabled her to centre her work more on the male figure than previously. We both believed that our meeting in 1996 led to a major
turning point in our lives that developed and stood the test of time. When I got too old to play younger characters, she kept me on as a senior and turned to younger men, friends or colleagues of her granddaughters to model.
It is a revealing fact that her best likenesses of me were when I was playing a role, not when she was making a straight portrait. However, more than once she would get a brilliant likeness when I was dressed up in a character’s role and then ‘spoil’ it in the interests of the story and the pictorial design: when the pictorial and the narrational become one, the picture is finished.
I have provided captions for the pictures, giving background detail or commentary. I cannot provide an exact chronology of the collection because sometimes Paula would give me a print done many years before she met me, as a thank you for sitting for her. Sometimes a gift, for example a home-made birthday card or other image, was not dated.
Let me conclude with an anecdote from Celia Paul’s second book, Letters to Gwen John (2022). Celia and Paula were very close. It was a treat to watch them together at private views; Celia writes: ‘As I was returning to my flat [from art supply shops], I noticed a couple walking in front of me: a woman supported by a younger, though grey-haired man. He held onto her arm solicitously. I recognised them as Paula Rego and her partner Anthony Rudolf. They were in deep conversation as they walked, and I thought it would interrupt them if I caught up with them. I stood and waited. I saw them walking slowly to the end of the street. When they turned the corner, I continued my way. I thought how much we need to cherish each other’.
I extend my thanks to my sister Annie for jogging my memory about her small but vital collection of Rego pictures and documents. Much thanks to David Glasser, Merlin James. Elte Rauch and Sophie Lewis for expert support and to Ethan Frieze, Sivan Moaz, Masoom Pincha, and others at Ben Uri for their technical help in making this exhibition happen. Finally, my thanks to the late Tom Rosenthal, to Deryn Rees-Jones and John McEwen whose excellent books I consulted while preparing these notes, and to Paul Coldwell for telephone consultations about printmaking.
