Pietro Annigoni: First English Commission

 Portrait of an Elderly Woman by Annigoni

"About this time I was introduced to the first of my English portrait subjects, Betty Howard. At first Miss Howard wanted me to make a painting of her mother and a drawing of herself, but I persuaded her to spare her mother the strain of many sittings by reversing the commissions - a drawing of her mother, a painting of herself. I did both of them in England that autumn.

Upon my success with the portrait of that charming and beautiful young English woman hung - or so it seemed to me then - my whole future in Britain, and there were several times while I was painting it that I despaired of ever getting it right.  On the last of those occasions I left my rooms at Earls Court and went by the Underground to Leicester Square to my usual eating-place. That evening there was added to my loneliness a conviction that the portrait had defeated me. Miserably I walked back to Earls Court, hoping to make myself so tired that I would be able to sleep, and vowing not to look at the painting. I failed on both counts. 

Irresistibly I was drawn into my painting-room and began to work by the light of a so-called 'daylight' bulb. In what must have been a near trancelike state I worked right through the night and at about six o'clock fell on to my bed and slept until midday. Waking, I rushed to see by daylight what good or terrible thing I had done to Betty Howard. I could have cried - with joy and relief - the picture was just as I had always hoped it would be. In later years I was often to experience similar periods of panic and despair, not all of them with such happy endings."

To be continued) 

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)