Sarah Howgate: –The contemporary collection
is really dominated by figures from the arts,
but in terms of scientists and other fields
of achievement we were lacking, so the commissioning
process allowed us to redress the balance
if you like.
Like all sitters, Sir Andrew came to the Gallery
and met with the Director and myself and we
discussed possible artists for his commission.
Rupert Alexander, who has been a regular exhibitor
in our BP Portrait Award and who trained at
the Cecil school in Florence in a very traditional
way, seemed the perfect answer to Sir Andrew’s
requirements.
Rupert Alexander: –Well it’s a great honor
to be asked by the National Portrait Gallery
to contribute a painting to the permanent
collection, but beyond that I was thrilled
to be asked to paint Andrew Wiles. Firstly,
because of the enormity of his achievements
in his field, but also because he has simply
got a very paintable face. He has a very aesthetic
face, very fine features and strong bone structure.
He is a very humble man, softly spoken, brilliant,
of course, and entirely devoted to his work,
which is something I greatly admire. And it
was really that that I wanted to convey in
the painting – the idea that he inhabits
an entirely cerebral world. But rather than
do it by, I don’t know, scattering books
around the composition or, god forbid, putting
a blackboard with equations behind him, I
decided to try and convey it simply through
the light and atmosphere.
For me, it’s key to paint under natural
light because natural light has the entire
spectrum of colors in it, whereas electric
light has only its own color cast. And so
I did that by putting blue-green gels, filters,
on the skylights in my studio. I had the blue-green
light cast onto him but then not onto my painting,
so I had natural-colored light on my painting,
The main challenge was understanding how far
I could push the blue-green light before deadening
the skin tones. And so I looked into a certain
amount of color theory to try and figure out
how far I could go with the green-blue light
before killing him stone-dead.
When I paint a larger composition, I tend
to work on a larger canvas than I am going
to need to avoid the possibility of running
out of space, if I decide to extend the composition.
So once I have painted the painting, I will
have to get a smaller frame that’s the size
of the painting that I am ending up with,
and re-stretch it onto that, just to avoid
the headache of having to start again or stitch
on another piece of canvas on the side.
Sarah Howgate: –I think Rupert’s portrait
of Sir Andrew Wiles rather took us by surprise
actually, because he had chosen a completely
different palette to the palette he would
normally work with. It’s an unusual portrait
in that, on the one hand it appears quite
traditional, but the quality of light and
the drama in the painting feels very contemporary.
Rupert Alexander: –It’s great to finally
see the painting on the wall, because it’s
been quite a protracted process from the initial
meeting with Sir Andrew, through the sittings
and discussion with the curators and the director,
to finally see it on the wall on the day of
the unveiling, and my family and the public
and Sir Andrew himself will now finally see
the painting. It’s a very exciting moment.
