London

Douglas Portway 1922 - 1993

Summary

An abstract painting of a scratchy, dry, white canvas with a dark sooty black patch in the top left corner containing black scribbled lines, and a second, paler sooty patch below this immediately to the right. In this painting the shapes are weightless and vague and the colours are muted.With Douglas Portway's particular poetic abstraction, he made visible what was perceived rather than seen. It is a work of the imagination. He painted spontaneously with no preconceived idea of what he was painting, preferring to keep the matter open. By reducing what appears, Portway felt he was able to achieve a complete expression. Portway left South Africa (he was born and educated in Johannesburg) and visited London for the first time in 1957 when he stayed for three months. Despite recommendations from both art critic Herbert Read and National Gallery Director, Kenneth Clark, he could not secure a solo exhibition. He returned to London between 1958 and 59 hoping to take part in a group show. Whilst visiting the Drian Galleries in London, he met the Director, Polish born Halima Nalecz, and secured for himself a three year contract in which he consigned all his work to Drian Galleries in return for a yearly sum. The contract was extended until 1964, the year Manchester Art Gallery purchased this painting. With the title 'London', you may be tempted to look for London in this painting. However Portway only gave titles to his paintings very early in his career and then once during the 1960s. Otherwise he called them all 'Painting' and only dated them occasionally. As he never felt conscious of what he was painting, so he was reluctant to give his works titles. The titles came from his dealer, Halima Nalecz, as she needed titles to be able to identify his work. Certain forms in his paintings suggested the titles to her.

Display Label

Absent Presence 19 June 2015 – 3 January 2016 Manchester Art Gallery recently acquired Exposed Painting Green Lake, 2012, by contemporary artist Callum Innes. This new display of works from our collection takes its inspiration from this painting. It looks at how art captures a moment in time and asks how a subject can be present in an artwork, yet absent at the same time. Innes created this Exposed Painting by a process of ‘unpainting’: brushing off the top layer of black paint to reveal the deep green colour underneath, leaving traces of brushstrokes behind. In this way, he both removes the image and leaves its presence visible. The paintings in this gallery all require a similar heightened level of looking, a searching for traces of the absent. The artists are often playing with the concept of time, adding presences from the past into scenes of the present. A literal example is this Victorian family photograph. The image of the boy has been inserted after his death to show that for his family, he remains forever present. When the subject is absent, we try to find the missing presence in what remains.