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Don't go.

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Don't change.

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Stay with me.

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Don't grow up.

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Don't disappear.

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Be mine.

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The craving to keep the ones we love close to us

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never goes away, even when they do.

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They can't be with us, but their second self can - their likeness.

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It can turn absence into presence, close distance, defeat time...

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even death.

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If you believe Pliny the Elder, all art began this way.

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Corinth, Ancient Greece -

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the boyfriend is going.

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His girl is distraught.

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She sits him down, and in the candlelight,

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traces the outline of his shadow face on the wall.

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Now, wherever he was, she would not lose him completely.

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Most portraits, whether they're building power or making fame,

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face outwards into the world,

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but love portraits point in the opposite direction -

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towards the body of our emotions,

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to be taken out and gazed on whenever we can't do without the look of love.

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It never quite works, though, does it?

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Paintings can't stop time.

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Those precious moments just run away from us like beads of mercury,

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but it helps.

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It's a May morning, 1633,

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and Sir Kenelm Digby, in his house in Charterhouse Yard,

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is listening to a friend tell him all about the Odes of Horace -

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the favourite subject for this learned aristocrat,

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courtier, gentleman.

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But his mind on this beautiful morning is wandering.

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It's wandering to his wife Venetia,

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and he wonders why she's not up yet.

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He'd actually worked late the previous night,

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and had slept in a different room so as not to disturb her,

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and he's very impatient for her to rise.

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And then, there is a terrible scream, and Kenelm races to her room

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to find her maidservant on her knees, sobbing hysterics,

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and Kenelm puts his hand to her face,

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touches her arm, and then her hand,

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as he wrote, "that lay outside the bedclothes

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"and all was cold and stiff".

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And a piece of Kenelm Digby's life,

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the piece that truly mattered to him, was over.

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Venetia, Kenelm's wife,

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was one of the most dazzling beauties of her age,

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and her romance with Kenelm Digby, adventurer,

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courtier and scientist, is the great love story of the 17th century.

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They really were star-crossed lovers.

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They had been childhood sweethearts, but their love was thwarted

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by Kenelm's family, who thought Venetia beneath them.

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Nothing, though, could keep them apart.

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They married in secret, and by 1633,

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they were darlings of the Stuart court,

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proud parents of two boys, a lifetime to look forward to...

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and then came this sudden death.

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No-one could say why she died,

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so an autopsy was ordered by the King.

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Desperate to preserve what he could of Venetia

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before her dismemberment beneath the surgeon's knife,

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Kenelm begged his close friend Anthony Van Dyck to come quickly

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and paint her on her deathbed.

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Van Dyck was the greatest portrait painter of his day -

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the King's painter.

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This would be perhaps the most unusual portrait

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he would ever undertake.

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I wonder how many of you have looked on the face of a loved one

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after they've passed away,

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because if you have, you know that

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what you're looking at isn't really them, is it?

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It's just the dry husk of them -

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a shell, a body casing.

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Van Dyck was not going to paint that of Venetia -

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it was not her husk that the distraught Kenelm wanted.

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He wanted to find Venetia as he expected to find her -

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beautifully asleep.

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And we know from Kenelm's account

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that he and Van Dyck go up to her lovely face,

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and because Kenelm had this theory that her blood, quote,

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"had not yet settled two days after the death",

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they pinch her cheeks to give them the roses in the cheeks.

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It's horrible and it's deeply touching at the same time.

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So, Van Dyke gets to work, and he's Mr Tenderness.

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The style of the brushstrokes are feathery, light.

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It's almost as though he's whispering over her dead body,

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to his friend, while he's working.

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Her lips are the lips of those we love when they're asleep.

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They're full-blown, they're cushiony...

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Her hair is still lustrous.

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So this version of Venetia was for her endlessly sorrowing husband,

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still with us.

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She was not cold.

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She would always be with him.

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When Van Dyck had finished,

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the painting was delivered to Kenelm at Charterhouse Yard.

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For Kenelm, this was no mere memento of his love for her -

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the painting had so captured her that this was Venetia herself.

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He wrote how the painting became his constant companion,

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how he would gaze at it for hours on end,

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and how at night, he'd prop it up by his bedside,

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and by candlelight, would talk to her as if she was still with him.

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While Kenelm lost himself in grief,

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court gossip swirled around the circumstances of Venetia's death.

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Why had she died so young?

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Had she overdosed on viper's wine -

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a beauty aid made from the guts of snakes?

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Or worse still, in some circles,

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it was whispered that Kenelm himself had poisoned her

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on discovering she had been unfaithful.

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In her youth, Venetia had had a name as a bit of a flirt -

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the accusations even persisted after her death.

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Kenelm's response was to summon Van Dyck again.

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This time, he wanted art not to revive a dead body,

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but to preserve a reputation.

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Well, that last thing Kenelm in his terrible grief wanted was that

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people should be sniggering over the tomb of his departed beloved.

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He was well aware that she had a notorious reputation

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for favouring many men,

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so he wants a painting which is going to be an allegory of everything the

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gossips say she is not.

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It has to be an allegory of Venetia as chaste.

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She's in a particular pose - she's in the pose of prudence.

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The doves are the symbol of prudence and chastity,

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as are the pearls around Venetia's neck,

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as is this beautiful white silky shift.

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And down at the bottom left-hand corner

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is this kind of skulking, swarthy figure.

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It's very important that he's sort of faintly dirty and repulsive.

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And so, he's deceit, fraud -

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the rotten scoundrels who dare to defame

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the beautiful Venetia's reputation.

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Below him is... Van Dyke is Mr Cupid,

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so we've got the Cupid,

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and Lady Venetia's perfectly pedicured foot is actually

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standing right on his chubby belly, so lust, in the form of Cupid,

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perfectly under the control of the perfectly pedicured foot.

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And if, you know, you hadn't kind of passed your O-level in decoding

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symbols, you can bet that Kenelm himself would give you

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the guided tour, should you not be quite clear at this point that his

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wife was just absolutely, as he said, "the perfectest of all her sex".

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Twice now, Kenelm had called on the power of the love portrait - once

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to preserve Venetia's likeness, once to preserve her public reputation.

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Neither, in the end, could stem the tide of his grief.

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Well, Kenelm's not just shocked and distraught at the loss

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of his wife, he's destroyed by it, he's completely undone.

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He can't sleep, he can't eat.

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Friends, in fact, are worried for his mental health -

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he won't shave his beard or trim it, he goes round in a long black

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robe, he's just simply lost to the world.

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Remember, at that time, you were supposed to -

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whether you were Catholic or Protestant, didn't make any

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difference - bend your head before the inscrutable

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will of the Almighty, and Kenelm does not seem to want to do that.

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So a well-intentioned friend - he had many - writes to him to say,

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just stop, and Kenelm writes the most extraordinary response back.

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"I must lay for a ground that the noblest

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"and worthiest operation of a rational creature is love."

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"If love be, then, the noblest action in man, it is impossible to

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"commit any excess in the exercise of it.

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"The perfectest, natural, blessed state mankind can attain upon Earth

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"is the height of love and friendship between a man and a woman."

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And the well-intentioned friends back off

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Kenelm had used portraiture to bring Venetia back to life.

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His devotion to her

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and his soul-destroying grief marked him as a man out of time in an age

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when you were meant to surrender to the will of the Almighty.

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But as the 17th century turned to the 18th, the expression

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of spontaneous, extravagant, romantic love became fashionable.

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Kenelm would have felt quite at home in this new

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world of starry-eyed passion.

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Romantic love found expression in novels, music,

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poetry and, of course, in art - in particular, in an art that you

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could wear next to your heart - the miniature portrait.

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Now, of course, the great thing about the miniature is that you

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wear it, it's portable, it goes where you go.

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So this is the 18th century equivalent of your phone picture.

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You can wear it as jewellery, you can wear it - and we know that men did -

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inside their shirt, on a bracelet, you can wear it as a locket.

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They're intensely of you.

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A miniature is art that you wear on your body.

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Miniatures had been around since the Tudors, but it was

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only in the 18th century that they became part of the love industry.

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If you were anyone in society in Georgian England

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and you wanted a miniature of your loved one, there was really

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only one person you wanted to paint it.

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His name was Richard Cosway and, yes, everybody had their favourite

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joke, which was that Richard Cosway was himself a miniature.

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He was known as Tiny Cosmetic.

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And to raise himself up in dignity - high heels, naturally,

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swept-back powdered hair or wig,

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looked like a kind of crested grebe or something like that.

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But as far as skill goes, Tiny Cosmetic was no joke.

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He was absolutely fantastic.

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And when you look at these miniatures, you can really see why.

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He used delicate water colour and translucent paint on ivory.

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He was the master of what's called stippling, which is a fancy name

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for tiny, tiny dots which enabled him to do texture and shadow.

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00:14:40,440 --> 00:14:42,840
Here's a naughty one. She's gorgeous.

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She has falling blonde hair, one rather beautiful breast exposed

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and, as in all Cosways, it's set against a blue sky with clouds

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because, even in love, there are going to be cloudy days.

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This is a lovely thing, probably an inside-the-shirt number.

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And here's another one, which is fantastic, of a man called

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Andrew Stuart and, like the first one, the eyes are everything.

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The eyes are big, intense and charming so that when you took

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it out, when you took your mobile phone miniature portrait out, you

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really had a sense of this person looking at you and just at you.

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And this particular one, like a lot of them,

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has an actual piece of your loved one's hair.

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00:15:28,960 --> 00:15:32,880
So here are locks of Andrew Stuart's hair -

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blonde hair in lovely little curls.

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So he is very, very good at this. This is genuinely portable art,

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so it's no wonder that his trade was fantastic.

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He was said to get through 12-14 sitters a day. If you were

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anyone in London society and you had a passionate love and, let's face

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it, in late 18th century England, there were few people who didn't,

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you made a beeline for the studio of Tiny Cosmetic, Richard Cosway.

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One eminent figure who beat a path to Cosway's door to exploit

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this craze for the love miniature was

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the embodiment of the 18th-century obsessive, love-sick romantic,

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and he turned out to be a very significant customer for Tiny.

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So I'm holding in my hand a wonderful

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miniature of Richard Cosway's most important repeat customer -

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the Prince of Wales, who goes to him over and over and over again

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because the Prince of Wales never tires of having a new love,

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and his standard operating procedure was to have a miniature painted

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and to send it to the object of his ardent affection.

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And Cosway obliges him beautifully. It's an informal picture, but

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he's got himself up in as ceremonious grandeur as he possibly could.

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He's wearing the Order of the Garter, that star there,

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but you know that's not the kind of garter

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George was usually thinking about!

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Alongside his gambling, his drinking and his gluttony, the young

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Prince of Wales was notorious for his serial amorous adventures.

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George was a regular at the theatre

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and opera, where all of London society would be on display.

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It was at the opera one night in 1784 that his most extreme

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seduction campaign began.

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His eye was caught by this woman - Maria Fitzherbert -

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and he was instantly smitten.

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But she wasn't playing ball.

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Twice widowed, six years older than the Prince and a good Catholic,

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she was not about to audition for the job of royal mistress.

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But George was not going to take no for an answer.

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He even started to talk about marriage,

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despite the fact that it was forbidden to marry a Catholic.

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Maria resisted him and decided she had better depart for Europe,

250
00:18:24,160 --> 00:18:29,160
but while packing her bags, she got a visit from the Prince's entourage.

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"The Prince has stabbed himself!" they announced.

252
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"Only you can save his life! Come quickly and come now!"

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00:18:39,440 --> 00:18:42,160
So Maria enters the bedroom and what does she see?

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00:18:42,160 --> 00:18:45,000
Well, it is not a pretty sight.

255
00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:47,400
The Prince of Wales is deathly white, there is

256
00:18:47,400 --> 00:18:51,640
blood absolutely everywhere, his eyes are kind of mad,

257
00:18:51,640 --> 00:18:55,520
he's foaming at the mouth, he's screaming and moaning.

258
00:18:55,520 --> 00:19:00,040
He's also said that he's going to tear bandages off unless

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00:19:00,040 --> 00:19:04,080
she agrees to marry him. That's the only way he's going to live.

260
00:19:04,080 --> 00:19:08,520
So what a nightmare for Maria, you know, how frightening, how

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00:19:08,520 --> 00:19:11,000
hopeless it all is. And then,

262
00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:13,320
the coup de grace - he produces a ring, slips

263
00:19:13,320 --> 00:19:19,080
it on her finger. She has to agree to do this. What else can she do?

264
00:19:19,080 --> 00:19:22,920
The thing about Maria Fitzherbert, she has a fantastic head,

265
00:19:22,920 --> 00:19:25,240
she's amazingly strong and in control.

266
00:19:25,240 --> 00:19:29,120
So when she goes back home, the first thing she does is draw up

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00:19:29,120 --> 00:19:33,840
a document to say that any promise to marry is completely void

268
00:19:33,840 --> 00:19:39,120
when extorted under those conditions of duress - the word was used.

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00:19:39,120 --> 00:19:42,240
And then, do you know what I think she started to do? Continue to pack

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00:19:42,240 --> 00:19:47,360
her bags! She needs to get out of there and head off to Europe, fast!

271
00:19:52,600 --> 00:19:55,600
Up to now, George had made a habit of sending a Cosway

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00:19:55,600 --> 00:19:58,600
miniature to the object of his affections,

273
00:19:58,600 --> 00:20:01,840
but with his attempts to capture Maria reaching desperation,

274
00:20:01,840 --> 00:20:07,080
he demanded from Cosway something which would overwhelm her.

275
00:20:07,080 --> 00:20:10,840
The genius of the miniature came up with a simple solution -

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00:20:10,840 --> 00:20:12,960
just painting George's eye.

277
00:20:14,280 --> 00:20:17,200
Well, this has to be one of the most extraordinary

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00:20:17,200 --> 00:20:21,880
objects in the whole history of the depiction of the human face.

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00:20:21,880 --> 00:20:25,320
Normally, we're in control when we look at a face -

280
00:20:25,320 --> 00:20:27,640
yes, the face of the portrait looks back at us.

281
00:20:27,640 --> 00:20:33,160
When it's a single eye, it's strangely possessive.

282
00:20:33,160 --> 00:20:35,640
First of all, you have to be able to see

283
00:20:35,640 --> 00:20:38,600
the rest of the face, even though you're only looking at one eye.

284
00:20:38,600 --> 00:20:42,200
And what Cosway has done, he's provided a kind of swirling

285
00:20:42,200 --> 00:20:47,320
mist, out of which the eye appears.

286
00:20:47,320 --> 00:20:50,120
And the killer touch -

287
00:20:50,120 --> 00:20:55,480
what makes it a remarkable little piece of art - is the catch light.

288
00:20:55,480 --> 00:20:57,760
The catch light is a reflection of the light

289
00:20:57,760 --> 00:21:03,360
we all see in one another's eyes. So instead of a dead eye, a fish

290
00:21:03,360 --> 00:21:08,000
eye, this is an eye that's alive

291
00:21:08,000 --> 00:21:10,840
with burning ardour.

292
00:21:10,840 --> 00:21:14,440
How could Maria possibly refuse it?

293
00:21:16,560 --> 00:21:21,280
She didn't. They were married in secret in December 1785.

294
00:21:23,920 --> 00:21:27,920
Suddenly, full-on British lovers, especially any separated by

295
00:21:27,920 --> 00:21:32,800
distance or social disapproval, were giving each other eye miniatures.

296
00:21:36,160 --> 00:21:40,280
If your girl was playing hard-to-get, you gave her an eyeful

297
00:21:40,280 --> 00:21:42,640
until she was stared into surrender.

298
00:21:47,920 --> 00:21:51,320
For a man as prone to bravado as George was,

299
00:21:51,320 --> 00:21:56,000
keeping his marriage to Maria a secret was almost an impossibility,

300
00:21:56,000 --> 00:21:59,920
even if it got him into deep trouble with his father, George III.

301
00:22:00,960 --> 00:22:05,520
Where better to let the world know but from your own private box?

302
00:22:06,640 --> 00:22:08,120
So what does he do?

303
00:22:08,120 --> 00:22:12,840
He stands up and he flashes, for all to see,

304
00:22:12,840 --> 00:22:15,080
a miniature of the beloved Maria.

305
00:22:17,200 --> 00:22:20,240
He's playing to the hoi polloi up there, he's playing to high

306
00:22:20,240 --> 00:22:26,360
society and the gossip hacks down in the orchestra. And what the Prince of

307
00:22:26,360 --> 00:22:31,880
Wales is saying is, yes, here we are together, but we're not just

308
00:22:31,880 --> 00:22:38,360
a couple out on an opera date. We are Mr and Mrs Prince of Wales, as it

309
00:22:38,360 --> 00:22:40,840
were, even if my awful, stuffy,

310
00:22:40,840 --> 00:22:43,920
boring mother and father don't believe it.

311
00:22:43,920 --> 00:22:46,960
We are a happily married couple. We are

312
00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:52,080
George and Maria of Park Street. Now get used to it!

313
00:22:52,080 --> 00:22:54,520
Everybody celebrate!

314
00:22:59,280 --> 00:23:02,920
By George's standards, their relationship was amazingly

315
00:23:02,920 --> 00:23:07,840
long-lasting, but eventually, they parted for good in 1811.

316
00:23:07,840 --> 00:23:12,160
However, the power of Maria's image never let up its hold on him.

317
00:23:13,200 --> 00:23:18,560
George IV died in June 1830. It had been almost 20 years

318
00:23:18,560 --> 00:23:24,120
since he'd separated from Maria Fitzherbert. And yet,

319
00:23:24,120 --> 00:23:27,080
when he was being laid out for burial, the Duke of Wellington

320
00:23:27,080 --> 00:23:33,120
noticed that he was wearing a miniature of Maria around his neck.

321
00:23:33,120 --> 00:23:35,480
He was not called the Iron Duke for nothing,

322
00:23:35,480 --> 00:23:37,600
but he knew a lot about love and he was

323
00:23:37,600 --> 00:23:41,880
so moved that he went to Maria's adopted daughter, Minney,

324
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:44,760
and told her that the King had been buried

325
00:23:44,760 --> 00:23:48,960
with the image of Maria on his person.

326
00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:52,640
The daughter then went to her mum and repeated the story

327
00:23:52,640 --> 00:23:57,960
and what she saw was a big, fat tear fall down her cheek.

328
00:24:00,800 --> 00:24:05,320
Vain, selfish, gluttonous, serial philanderer though he was,

329
00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:09,480
George thought of himself as a child of nature.

330
00:24:09,480 --> 00:24:13,520
He grew up in a culture, for the first time, where the playfulness

331
00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:19,000
of children was seen as something to be cherished and, of course, painted.

332
00:24:19,000 --> 00:24:23,480
This portrait of the Edgeworths by Adam Buck captures perfectly

333
00:24:23,480 --> 00:24:28,120
the carefree hurly-burly of an 18th-century family.

334
00:24:28,120 --> 00:24:32,320
By the way, it only features ten of the 22 children

335
00:24:32,320 --> 00:24:36,680
sired by Richard Edgeworth, who sits at the heart of the portrait.

336
00:24:42,120 --> 00:24:47,280
In 1756, or thereabouts, a painter, the one who would paint

337
00:24:47,280 --> 00:24:51,360
children like no-one ever before and perhaps since, was

338
00:24:51,360 --> 00:24:56,480
watching his two little girls, Mary and Margaret, chase a butterfly.

339
00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:02,360
He was Thomas Gainsborough.

340
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:10,440
Well, this is the house that Gainsborough was born and grew up in.

341
00:25:10,440 --> 00:25:16,520
As you can see, even the grandeur of its rooms is rather modest.

342
00:25:18,640 --> 00:25:21,320
That's the way Gainsborough grew up.

343
00:25:23,040 --> 00:25:26,920
His dad, John, was a sort of Jack of all rustic trades,

344
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:29,360
a master of none - he went broke,

345
00:25:29,360 --> 00:25:32,480
it may be at the point that he was broke

346
00:25:32,480 --> 00:25:35,880
that young Thomas was sent to London to a drawing school,

347
00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:39,600
and the dad became, as best he might, a post master.

348
00:25:41,680 --> 00:25:46,080
When Gainsborough comes back to Suffolk, he is very conscious

349
00:25:46,080 --> 00:25:50,520
that being a painter was a way of putting bread on the table,

350
00:25:50,520 --> 00:25:53,240
for his own two daughters in particular.

351
00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:56,480
All his life, actually, he's one of those artists

352
00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:59,840
who is a little neurotic, not to say anxious, about money,

353
00:25:59,840 --> 00:26:03,400
however successful, and he'd become very successful indeed.

354
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:09,320
And how does he make his money?

355
00:26:09,320 --> 00:26:11,840
He makes money by painting portraits

356
00:26:11,840 --> 00:26:14,400
of the local social grandees.

357
00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:18,880
Vicars and judges and property owners,

358
00:26:18,880 --> 00:26:21,800
and merchants, who want to be represented

359
00:26:21,800 --> 00:26:25,720
in the full swell of their social self-congratulation.

360
00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:38,320
Gainsborough might become the painter society flocks to

361
00:26:38,320 --> 00:26:42,080
for its portrait, but he grinds his teeth while he's doing it.

362
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:45,840
He calls it "that cursed face business".

363
00:26:47,440 --> 00:26:52,560
"Damn, gentlemen. There is not such a set of enemies to a real artist

364
00:26:52,560 --> 00:26:57,640
"in the world, if not kept at a proper distance.

365
00:26:57,640 --> 00:27:04,360
"They have but one part worth looking at, and that is their purse."

366
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:09,680
Inside all that exercise of social,

367
00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:11,840
as well as artistic obligation,

368
00:27:11,840 --> 00:27:16,080
was a much greater painter, who one day would paint for love.

369
00:27:22,080 --> 00:27:25,720
This is what happens when you paint for love, not money.

370
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:31,400
What you get is one of the great masterpieces of English painting

371
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:34,840
and masterpiece is not a word I use lightly, I promise you.

372
00:27:36,760 --> 00:27:39,480
Painting his daughters meant a lot to Gainsborough.

373
00:27:39,480 --> 00:27:43,160
He clearly had immense abundance of tenderness towards them.

374
00:27:43,160 --> 00:27:47,360
Not least because the first child that he and his wife had

375
00:27:47,360 --> 00:27:51,440
had died very early on, when she was just a baby.

376
00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:55,520
Gainsborough presumably has gone out sketching,

377
00:27:55,520 --> 00:28:01,240
and seen the two girls chasing a cabbage white butterfly.

378
00:28:02,600 --> 00:28:05,000
There it is, right at the edge of the picture frame.

379
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:06,560
How brilliant is that?

380
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:09,080
Because it's right at the edge of the picture frame,

381
00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:13,960
they have to reach towards it, and, in the excitement of the moment,

382
00:28:13,960 --> 00:28:18,000
they're holding hands - they've clasped hands together,

383
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:23,040
so that they've become a butterfly themselves,

384
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:25,240
a gold wing on the right,

385
00:28:25,240 --> 00:28:30,520
a beautiful creamy, wonderful kind of ivory coloured white on the left,

386
00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:32,320
and what does that tell us?

387
00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:36,360
Because Gainsborough is not just a natural painter,

388
00:28:36,360 --> 00:28:38,680
he's also mighty of mind.

389
00:28:38,680 --> 00:28:41,480
But the mind all comes through feelings,

390
00:28:41,480 --> 00:28:44,960
and so what that tells us is that his own children

391
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:47,640
are as fragile as the butterfly,

392
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:51,240
that this perfect moment of happy glee and excitement -

393
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:53,760
"Are we going to get it, are we going to get it?" -

394
00:28:53,760 --> 00:28:55,760
is also ephemeral.

395
00:28:58,040 --> 00:29:01,560
This butterfly has alighted on a thistle.

396
00:29:01,560 --> 00:29:05,480
Can you all see that they have come out of this kind of dark wood?

397
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:11,720
The dark wood of their dad's sorrow about a lost earlier child.

398
00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:21,640
You've all felt this, mums and dads out there,

399
00:29:21,640 --> 00:29:24,720
your heart being about to burst with happiness

400
00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:26,280
when you look at your children

401
00:29:26,280 --> 00:29:30,680
and this incredible kind of wrench that they are going to grow up,

402
00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:32,480
they are going to go eventually -

403
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:34,560
it's your job to make them leave you.

404
00:29:36,560 --> 00:29:39,480
They're caught in this blaze of sunshine

405
00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:40,960
that's not going to last,

406
00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:44,480
and the butterfly is alighting on a thorny thing.

407
00:29:45,560 --> 00:29:48,960
So this is a poignant painting, as well as a happy one.

408
00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:56,200
Gainsborough used all his skill as a painter

409
00:29:56,200 --> 00:29:58,960
to capture the innocence of his young daughters.

410
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:01,760
But there was little he could do about the tragedy

411
00:30:01,760 --> 00:30:04,000
waiting for them in adult life.

412
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:08,560
Mary had a brief, unhappy marriage and descended into madness.

413
00:30:08,560 --> 00:30:13,560
She was looked after by her spinster sister Margaret until her death.

414
00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:20,280
Gainsborough's portrait of his daughters

415
00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:23,960
poignantly captured the fragility of children's lives.

416
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:28,600
100 years later, a Victorian writer and photographer

417
00:30:28,600 --> 00:30:31,800
used the new technology of photography to record

418
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:35,800
his obsession with young children, trying to capture in images

419
00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:39,200
their innocence before the passage to adulthood.

420
00:30:40,240 --> 00:30:44,200
His stories for children featured a little girl called Alice,

421
00:30:44,200 --> 00:30:48,160
and are saturated with an anxiety about growing up.

422
00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:51,000
"Here's a question for you, said Humpty Dumpty.

423
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:52,880
"How old did you say you were?

424
00:30:52,880 --> 00:30:55,160
"Alice made a short calculation and said,

425
00:30:55,160 --> 00:30:56,800
"Seven years and six months.

426
00:30:56,800 --> 00:31:00,200
"Seven years and six months? An uncomfortable sort of age.

427
00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:02,120
"Now, if you would have asked my advice,

428
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:06,200
"I would have said to leave off at seven, but it's too late now."

429
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:11,960
The author was an Oxford mathematics don, Charles Dodgson.

430
00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:14,880
Everyone knows him as the writer Lewis Carroll,

431
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:18,400
but he was also a keen amateur photographer.

432
00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:20,880
His favourite subjects were the three daughters

433
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:24,840
of the Dean of Christ Church - Lorina, Edith and Alice,

434
00:31:24,840 --> 00:31:28,640
who would become his muse for the fictional Alice.

435
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:34,280
If you think about it, all photography is an attempt

436
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:35,840
to fix the moment,

437
00:31:35,840 --> 00:31:40,080
and what Dodgson wanted to do when he photographed

438
00:31:40,080 --> 00:31:43,120
these three marvellous little girls

439
00:31:43,120 --> 00:31:44,880
was to stop time,

440
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:49,360
stop time in that special moment between the age of four and nine,

441
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:54,800
when there was a kind of artless, little-animal high-spirits vitality.

442
00:31:56,480 --> 00:32:00,160
Later on, Alice would say Lewis Carroll was a kind of friend of hers

443
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:03,920
and the mark of that friendship is that they were having a good time,

444
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:07,960
and Alice is something of a little actress, even at six years old -

445
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:11,200
she's posing asleep in one picture,

446
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:13,680
she knows she's being photographed,

447
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:16,280
and she's having a very good time doing it.

448
00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:21,760
Dodgson's fondness for photographing the Liddell girls in coy poses

449
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:25,680
has opened him up to accusations of closet paedophilia.

450
00:32:25,680 --> 00:32:29,640
But look around and you'll see images of childhood innocence

451
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:34,080
were a Victorian obsession - they wanted to keep children as children

452
00:32:34,080 --> 00:32:36,400
in an age where, through child labour,

453
00:32:36,400 --> 00:32:40,040
they were dragged into the adult world all too quickly.

454
00:32:41,400 --> 00:32:45,080
Other photographers, including women like Julia Margaret Cameron,

455
00:32:45,080 --> 00:32:48,720
created images similar to Dodgson's, uncontroversially,

456
00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:52,920
though the line between artless innocence and something darker

457
00:32:52,920 --> 00:32:54,720
was always a shadowy one.

458
00:32:55,840 --> 00:32:58,600
Dodgson's relationship with the Liddell children

459
00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:01,480
was brought to a sudden and unexplained end

460
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:03,360
by their mother in 1863.

461
00:33:03,360 --> 00:33:07,120
There were to be no more photographs of them as children,

462
00:33:07,120 --> 00:33:11,440
but Dodgson still had one more picture to take of Alice.

463
00:33:12,520 --> 00:33:14,200
In the summer of 1870,

464
00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:18,720
Charles Dodgson writes in his diary that a wonderful thing has happened.

465
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:20,520
It's clearly a surprise to him.

466
00:33:21,840 --> 00:33:27,040
Seven years before, in 1863, Mrs Liddell has banned Dodgson

467
00:33:27,040 --> 00:33:31,080
from taking any more photographs of her daughters.

468
00:33:31,080 --> 00:33:33,920
In 1870, she's brought them back -

469
00:33:33,920 --> 00:33:36,600
she brought Alice and her sister back.

470
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:38,040
Why has she done that?

471
00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:41,560
In order to have marriage photos taken.

472
00:33:41,560 --> 00:33:45,280
Photos of young women who have become of a marriageable age.

473
00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:51,520
The standard pose in this romantic dreaminess is the gaze upwards,

474
00:33:51,520 --> 00:33:53,520
the gaze in the far distance.

475
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:55,480
Something like that.

476
00:33:55,480 --> 00:33:57,880
That's not what we're looking at, is it?

477
00:33:57,880 --> 00:34:01,920
Alice is looking down, her brows are slightly furrowed.

478
00:34:01,920 --> 00:34:04,120
Her lips are pursed.

479
00:34:04,120 --> 00:34:07,440
She's an unhappy bunny, there's no doubt about this.

480
00:34:07,440 --> 00:34:10,040
She feels awkward in her womanliness.

481
00:34:10,040 --> 00:34:13,040
Or has Dodgson posed her,

482
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:17,320
so that he loads her with a sense of his regret,

483
00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:20,560
his regret for her vanished girlhood?

484
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:28,080
We'll never know what's going through her head and her heart.

485
00:34:28,080 --> 00:34:30,360
What this picture says

486
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:34,480
is Alice is no longer in Wonderland.

487
00:34:37,760 --> 00:34:40,280
Dodgson's photographs of Alice

488
00:34:40,280 --> 00:34:43,680
were about trying to capture something he couldn't have.

489
00:34:43,680 --> 00:34:47,320
The permanent girl-child who had been his friend and muse.

490
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:53,360
So it was with some of the most powerful love images

491
00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:55,000
of the Victorian era -

492
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:58,400
they were driven by thwarted desire.

493
00:35:02,600 --> 00:35:07,160
This is not just a portrait of a strikingly beautiful woman,

494
00:35:07,160 --> 00:35:09,800
it's also a portrait of a relationship.

495
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:14,360
One of the most spectacularly tormented menage a trois

496
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:16,640
in all of English history.

497
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:18,760
The woman is Jane Morris.

498
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:21,680
Her husband, who commissioned the portrait,

499
00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:25,880
is designer, writer, socialist, William Morris.

500
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:30,320
The painter is Dante Gabriel Rossetti, not her husband.

501
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:35,520
The painter wants the sitter very badly indeed,

502
00:35:35,520 --> 00:35:36,920
and he can't have her,

503
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:38,600
and the way he can have her,

504
00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:40,320
the way he can possess her,

505
00:35:40,320 --> 00:35:43,200
is to paint her, to paint this.

506
00:35:49,360 --> 00:35:51,280
Rossetti - painter and poet -

507
00:35:51,280 --> 00:35:54,040
was a founder member of the Victorian art movement,

508
00:35:54,040 --> 00:35:56,040
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

509
00:35:57,160 --> 00:36:01,040
He first saw Jane Morris when she was just 17.

510
00:36:01,040 --> 00:36:02,760
He was a young painter,

511
00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:05,680
she was a stableman's daughter from Oxford.

512
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:09,040
Enchanted by her beauty, he asked her to model for him.

513
00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:13,080
But they weren't fated to be together.

514
00:36:15,120 --> 00:36:18,440
Jane very soon married one of Rossetti's closest friends,

515
00:36:18,440 --> 00:36:20,080
William Morris.

516
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:23,400
Rossetti also married, but his wife, Lizzie Siddal,

517
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:26,200
tragically died young of a laudanum overdose.

518
00:36:27,880 --> 00:36:32,480
After Lizzie's death, Rossetti used any pretext to be with Jane

519
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:33,920
and to gaze at her.

520
00:36:33,920 --> 00:36:36,800
In 1865, at his house in Chelsea,

521
00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:39,360
he commissioned a series of photographs

522
00:36:39,360 --> 00:36:41,200
in preparation for her portrait.

523
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:48,400
These extraordinary photographs are records of a passion,

524
00:36:48,400 --> 00:36:51,520
which was starting to smoulder and burn,

525
00:36:51,520 --> 00:36:55,920
and eventually will burst, for Rossetti, into full flame.

526
00:37:00,560 --> 00:37:04,600
She's already been made love to, intensely,

527
00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:06,680
by the way Rossetti is lighting her.

528
00:37:08,560 --> 00:37:10,440
What's being made love to?

529
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:12,720
The swan-like throat,

530
00:37:12,720 --> 00:37:16,360
the extraordinary waves of her hair,

531
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:18,120
the thickness of the eyebrow.

532
00:37:19,440 --> 00:37:23,880
And, above all, an obsession in Rossetti's poetry, her mouth.

533
00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:28,040
This mouth, which at once is curved like a lyre

534
00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:30,840
and full of promise for Rossetti.

535
00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:37,680
Take a look - this is not the product of my overheated imagination.

536
00:37:37,680 --> 00:37:39,840
This is Rossetti on fire.

537
00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:53,440
Despite being hemmed in

538
00:37:53,440 --> 00:37:57,000
by the suffocating rules of Victorian society,

539
00:37:57,000 --> 00:37:59,600
Rossetti found a way of being with Jane,

540
00:37:59,600 --> 00:38:02,600
here at Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire,

541
00:38:02,600 --> 00:38:05,960
a summer home jointly rented by Morris and Rossetti.

542
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:11,680
In the summer of 1871, William Morris went off to Iceland,

543
00:38:11,680 --> 00:38:15,560
leaving Rossetti alone with Janey and her two children.

544
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:19,440
So, William Morris, who rented Kelmscott Manor,

545
00:38:19,440 --> 00:38:23,480
where we are, called it heaven on earth, and, boy, he was right.

546
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:28,560
Morris's beautiful idea was that everybody should be surrounded,

547
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:32,000
even in the day and age of the industrial world,

548
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:33,920
by things that were of nature.

549
00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:39,240
Rossetti could not possibly have applauded that more,

550
00:38:39,240 --> 00:38:42,400
but his nature was amorous, sensual,

551
00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:44,560
it was the nature of the body,

552
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:48,880
and so you feel this kind of desperate union

553
00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:52,680
between two different kinds of nature almost in every room.

554
00:39:07,160 --> 00:39:09,480
We have three bedrooms.

555
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:12,800
On my left is Jane Morris' bedroom.

556
00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:15,840
It's the symphony in green.

557
00:39:20,880 --> 00:39:23,280
And then there is William's room.

558
00:39:23,280 --> 00:39:26,320
So you'll have to imagine that summer of '71,

559
00:39:26,320 --> 00:39:28,280
this room is empty,

560
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:30,720
and then there's Rossetti's studio here.

561
00:39:33,800 --> 00:39:36,280
And this is one of the most beautiful rooms ever,

562
00:39:36,280 --> 00:39:38,120
anywhere in the world.

563
00:39:46,760 --> 00:39:49,200
Here's Rossetti's paint box.

564
00:39:49,200 --> 00:39:52,200
It's covered in dust, it's old, it is extraordinary.

565
00:39:52,200 --> 00:39:54,600
Again, it's not gussied up in any way.

566
00:39:54,600 --> 00:39:59,320
So, this is the paint box as it was left.

567
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:02,720
This is actually a box of memory.

568
00:40:04,120 --> 00:40:06,640
The paint is caked and clotted.

569
00:40:06,640 --> 00:40:10,360
Some of those gorgeous kind of Pre-Raphaelite colours -

570
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:12,240
greens and yellows and ochres -

571
00:40:12,240 --> 00:40:14,920
are the colours they favoured most.

572
00:40:35,040 --> 00:40:37,160
This is like a graveyard of passion.

573
00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:45,800
What lay at the heart of Rossetti's obsessive painting of Jane?

574
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:48,280
It was the only way he could possess her,

575
00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:53,760
something he made explicit in one of his poems, called The Portrait.

576
00:40:53,760 --> 00:40:59,800
It was written in the full early swell of Rossetti's passion.

577
00:40:59,800 --> 00:41:03,320
And listen to its last line.

578
00:41:04,600 --> 00:41:07,880
Above the long lithe throat

579
00:41:07,880 --> 00:41:13,280
The mouth's mould testifies of voice and kiss

580
00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:16,240
The shadowed eyes remember and foresee.

581
00:41:16,240 --> 00:41:20,680
Her face is made her shrine.

582
00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:22,920
Let all men note

583
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:26,920
That in all years (O Love, thy gift is this!)

584
00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:32,440
They that would look on her must come to me.

585
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:39,280
So, it couldn't last. Of course, it didn't last.

586
00:41:39,280 --> 00:41:43,680
And, eventually, he goes. In the autumn, his poetry volume comes out.

587
00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:48,640
It's viciously attacked as being indecently sensual.

588
00:41:48,640 --> 00:41:54,280
And he's affected by this, and in despair he hits the laudanum bottle

589
00:41:54,280 --> 00:41:56,000
in a horrendous way.

590
00:41:56,000 --> 00:41:58,880
He downs an entire bottle of laudanum.

591
00:41:58,880 --> 00:42:02,520
He survives, but some of the wiring is unstuck.

592
00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:10,880
Rossetti suffered a nervous breakdown,

593
00:42:10,880 --> 00:42:14,120
and his time with Jane at Kelmscott came to an end.

594
00:42:14,120 --> 00:42:16,920
His latter years were racked by illness, drug addiction

595
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:21,200
and alcoholism, but he continued to paint portraits of Jane.

596
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:26,520
There is painting after painting, grandiose paintings.

597
00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:30,920
Astarte, the Syrian goddess. More of them,

598
00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:36,520
all of which feature the extraordinary image of Janie.

599
00:42:36,520 --> 00:42:39,000
That strong nose,

600
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:40,960
those waves of raven hair.

601
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:44,720
That mouth...like a bow.

602
00:42:44,720 --> 00:42:48,880
They would never leave him, right to the point where he dies.

603
00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:53,680
Rossetti was a child of Victorian culture.

604
00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:58,240
Even in the throes of sexual desire for Jane, he idealised her body.

605
00:42:58,240 --> 00:43:00,680
He made it at once unattainable,

606
00:43:00,680 --> 00:43:04,520
and desirable. He's always outside it.

607
00:43:09,320 --> 00:43:13,880
But there were other sort of love. Violent love. Mutually savage love.

608
00:43:13,880 --> 00:43:16,560
And there were other types of love portrait,

609
00:43:16,560 --> 00:43:18,880
where harshness replaced tenderness.

610
00:43:18,880 --> 00:43:21,720
Where flesh was turned inside out.

611
00:43:23,720 --> 00:43:25,960
Portraits, including love portraits,

612
00:43:25,960 --> 00:43:30,960
are, as many of its practitioners had always said, face painting.

613
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:34,040
That's exactly what you don't get from Francis Bacon.

614
00:43:34,040 --> 00:43:36,160
He chews up the face

615
00:43:36,160 --> 00:43:41,560
so that we can never actually really get that eyeballing connection.

616
00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:44,560
And if you think the face is the location of tenderness

617
00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:48,800
in love portrait, that's what he prevents us from reaching.

618
00:43:50,560 --> 00:43:53,920
For Bacon, love was indistinguishable from sex,

619
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:57,000
and it was hard love.

620
00:43:57,000 --> 00:44:00,760
It was painful, atrocious, cruel, mutually destructive,

621
00:44:00,760 --> 00:44:04,840
but, insofar as it was destructive, it was profound.

622
00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:06,840
It was getting inside the body.

623
00:44:06,840 --> 00:44:09,080
And in Bacon's great paintings,

624
00:44:09,080 --> 00:44:13,840
there's no boundary between the inside and the outside of the body.

625
00:44:15,640 --> 00:44:18,840
When Francis Bacon did these kinds of paintings,

626
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:22,800
it was all about spilling his guts.

627
00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:26,400
That's what I think he felt we do,

628
00:44:26,400 --> 00:44:29,640
however sentimental we might get about love.

629
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:34,840
It's a terrible insight and it has a great deal of truth in it.

630
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:43,040
In the early 1960s, Francis Bacon was at the height of his powers.

631
00:44:43,040 --> 00:44:46,560
As a portraitist, he would paint from within his own circle of Soho

632
00:44:46,560 --> 00:44:49,680
bohemians, gay friends and lovers.

633
00:44:49,680 --> 00:44:52,200
But he would only work from photographs.

634
00:44:52,200 --> 00:44:56,680
It allowed him free rein to pull their faces apart.

635
00:44:56,680 --> 00:45:02,080
If I like them, I don't want to practise the injury that I do

636
00:45:02,080 --> 00:45:06,600
to them in my work before them.

637
00:45:06,600 --> 00:45:08,440
If I like them.

638
00:45:08,440 --> 00:45:12,880
I would rather... I would rather practice the injury in private,

639
00:45:12,880 --> 00:45:20,200
by which I think I can record the facts of them more clearly.

640
00:45:20,200 --> 00:45:24,960
There was one model who Francis Bacon painted more obsessively than

641
00:45:24,960 --> 00:45:28,640
anybody else. And his name was George Dyer.

642
00:45:28,640 --> 00:45:32,560
He was about 30-something when they met. Bacon was in his 50s.

643
00:45:32,560 --> 00:45:34,640
They met in a pub like this.

644
00:45:34,640 --> 00:45:38,000
Just who picked who up, history will never finally tell us,

645
00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:39,600
but it doesn't matter.

646
00:45:39,600 --> 00:45:43,840
They fell deeply and pretty much immediately in lust.

647
00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:47,800
Dyer was quite good looking in a way that we used to call

648
00:45:47,800 --> 00:45:51,520
the wideboy look. Bit of pompadour going on.

649
00:45:51,520 --> 00:45:53,240
And Bacon was attracted to him

650
00:45:53,240 --> 00:45:56,560
because he saw something other than the tough, even though

651
00:45:56,560 --> 00:46:00,040
Dyer was a small-time crook who'd done a bit of time in prison.

652
00:46:03,400 --> 00:46:06,160
George was completely spellbound

653
00:46:06,160 --> 00:46:09,360
and overawed by the very successful Francis Bacon.

654
00:46:09,360 --> 00:46:12,960
All that money, all this beer money, loads of parties,

655
00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:14,760
all the posh friends.

656
00:46:14,760 --> 00:46:18,120
You could sort of feel the spell he was under.

657
00:46:18,120 --> 00:46:20,440
But they became intimate.

658
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:24,040
It's not stupid or sentimental to sort of use that word.

659
00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:28,920
Bacon only liked to paint people he knew really, really well.

660
00:46:28,920 --> 00:46:32,880
And he got to know George Dyer very well indeed.

661
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:35,200
And great art came out of that.

662
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:41,400
But the relationship soon soured.

663
00:46:41,400 --> 00:46:46,920
Bacon and his circle became tired of George's neediness and drinking.

664
00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:50,800
The more insecure George became, the more he drank.

665
00:46:50,800 --> 00:46:56,560
The relationship reached its tragic climax in October 1971,

666
00:46:56,560 --> 00:47:00,440
when Bacon and Dyer travelled to Paris to attend a full-scale

667
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:03,080
retrospective of his work.

668
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:07,800
Two days before the opening, Dyer was found dead at their hotel,

669
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:11,760
apparently of an overdose of drink and drugs.

670
00:47:11,760 --> 00:47:16,480
Bacon barely broke his stride. He attended the show as normal.

671
00:47:16,480 --> 00:47:19,160
He wasn't going to pour out his emotions in public.

672
00:47:19,160 --> 00:47:21,960
That, he saved for his art.

673
00:47:21,960 --> 00:47:23,800
Everything escapes you.

674
00:47:23,800 --> 00:47:25,960
You know that perfectly well.

675
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:30,240
You know even if you're in love with somebody, everything escapes you.

676
00:47:30,240 --> 00:47:32,720
You'd want to be nearer that person.

677
00:47:32,720 --> 00:47:37,320
How can you cut your flesh open and join it with the other person?

678
00:47:37,320 --> 00:47:40,040
It's an impossibility to do.

679
00:47:40,040 --> 00:47:44,120
You may love somebody very much, but how near can you get to them?

680
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:48,400
You're still always unfortunately sort of strangers.

681
00:47:50,680 --> 00:47:54,600
Not long after Dyer had died, he began to think

682
00:47:54,600 --> 00:47:58,360
and then execute enormous works, which was the way

683
00:47:58,360 --> 00:48:03,040
he dealt with this immense surge of guilt about the way he behaved

684
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:08,520
and also the after-shock, the trauma, really, of what had happened.

685
00:48:08,520 --> 00:48:13,160
And the results of what are called the Black Triptychs,

686
00:48:13,160 --> 00:48:16,800
these astonishing sacred pieces,

687
00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:19,280
these gay altarpieces,

688
00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:22,480
are really among the most profound things ever painted

689
00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:24,880
by anyone in this country.

690
00:48:27,000 --> 00:48:30,520
And we go immediately to the heart of the triptych - in the middle,

691
00:48:30,520 --> 00:48:34,560
there is the coupling of Francis and George.

692
00:48:34,560 --> 00:48:40,440
The tangled writhing of bodies, engaged in this dance of death.

693
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:43,240
Horizontal out on the floor.

694
00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:47,520
On one side is George himself

695
00:48:47,520 --> 00:48:51,200
with the whole of his central part eaten away.

696
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:55,480
Bacon has painted him with closed eyes,

697
00:48:55,480 --> 00:48:58,000
as if his eyes had been closed in death.

698
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:03,760
As much in a state of communion with the afterlife,

699
00:49:03,760 --> 00:49:08,080
not in the process of actually committing suicide.

700
00:49:10,280 --> 00:49:15,240
And there on that side is Bacon himself.

701
00:49:18,040 --> 00:49:23,760
He, too, in his underwear, is leaking the life out of himself.

702
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:30,160
And this whole thing, like the tradition of triptychs,

703
00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:32,080
is a great theatre,

704
00:49:32,080 --> 00:49:37,120
a profound theatre of physical torment.

705
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:38,920
And distress.

706
00:49:40,120 --> 00:49:44,120
And Bacon did it, I think... I hate this word "closure",

707
00:49:44,120 --> 00:49:46,240
but that's what he was trying to do.

708
00:49:46,240 --> 00:49:49,320
We're very lucky that he could almost never find it

709
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:51,720
because he went on doing these great pieces.

710
00:50:15,560 --> 00:50:18,800
Bacon's triptych was a lament for his former lover,

711
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:22,720
but registering the muscular force of love doesn't always have to be

712
00:50:22,720 --> 00:50:26,640
a picture of destruction - something that occurred to British artist

713
00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:30,360
Jenny Saville at a life-changing moment in her own career.

714
00:50:31,400 --> 00:50:33,760
This time it was birth, not death,

715
00:50:33,760 --> 00:50:35,880
that was the spur for a love portrait.

716
00:50:36,880 --> 00:50:40,240
Well, I was pregnant, so I had two babies in a 12-month period.

717
00:50:40,240 --> 00:50:43,280
- Wow. 
- And I was painting as usual, you know, painting bodies,

718
00:50:43,280 --> 00:50:47,880
but the sensation of producing a body inside my body

719
00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:52,360
and painting flesh was so powerful that the sense of reproduction

720
00:50:52,360 --> 00:50:55,200
or the, you know... When I was trying to articulate flesh

721
00:50:55,200 --> 00:50:59,040
on the outside, my body was trying to articulate flesh on the inside.

722
00:51:02,400 --> 00:51:04,000
I had comments with people saying,

723
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:05,840
"Oh, well, your life is different now".

724
00:51:05,840 --> 00:51:09,200
And that begins to grate because you think, what's happened?

725
00:51:09,200 --> 00:51:11,680
And a lot of people say women lose their creativity,

726
00:51:11,680 --> 00:51:14,920
and I felt completely the opposite of that - I felt absolutely on fire.

727
00:51:18,320 --> 00:51:23,160
So I just thought, I have to address this front-on.

728
00:51:23,160 --> 00:51:24,560
You know, I actually thought,

729
00:51:24,560 --> 00:51:26,280
Picasso, Leonardo, Michelangelo,

730
00:51:26,280 --> 00:51:29,040
none of them had felt this because they didn't have a baby, so I've

731
00:51:29,040 --> 00:51:31,960
got this insider view. I've just got to go for this, I've got to do

732
00:51:31,960 --> 00:51:35,200
everything I can to articulate this in the best way I can.

733
00:51:36,440 --> 00:51:39,400
And I started to feel the same sensation that I felt

734
00:51:39,400 --> 00:51:41,800
when I was growing flesh, which is key to me.

735
00:51:44,200 --> 00:51:47,920
When you can match your material qualities with the sensations

736
00:51:47,920 --> 00:51:51,160
you feel, either by looking or feeling, then you know you've

737
00:51:51,160 --> 00:51:53,040
got something you can work with.

738
00:51:54,520 --> 00:51:56,600
Was there anything at all about saying,

739
00:51:56,600 --> 00:52:00,840
"I want to get this particular moment of robust ferocity"?

740
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:03,800
I knew through the whole thing, the whole pregnancy, the birth,

741
00:52:03,800 --> 00:52:05,920
everything, I thought, this is a moment.

742
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:09,720
You know, if you pick up a child that's one year old, it's like an

743
00:52:09,720 --> 00:52:13,120
octopus, you've got to hold on to them, their legs are heavy

744
00:52:13,120 --> 00:52:15,960
or they can be completely exhausted or frantic.

745
00:52:15,960 --> 00:52:18,000
You know, it's quite a shock when you

746
00:52:18,000 --> 00:52:20,160
have a child scream at full pelt.

747
00:52:20,160 --> 00:52:22,160
You know, if you had an adult screaming

748
00:52:22,160 --> 00:52:25,040
like that, you'd have a completely different opinion of that.

749
00:52:25,040 --> 00:52:26,080
You'd be shocked.

750
00:52:26,080 --> 00:52:28,320
As a parent, you have to get used to the fact that the

751
00:52:28,320 --> 00:52:31,760
child is absolutely screaming and what they want is your protection.

752
00:52:34,680 --> 00:52:37,400
All through my life I've seen things that are

753
00:52:37,400 --> 00:52:41,680
the touchstone of what it's like to be alive. Those moments

754
00:52:41,680 --> 00:52:44,760
when you think, "This has got condensed humanity in it,"

755
00:52:44,760 --> 00:52:48,200
and that's what drives you as a painter if you work like that.

756
00:52:51,080 --> 00:52:54,120
I mean, it was a survival tool, too, because that's the way that

757
00:52:54,120 --> 00:52:56,560
I deal with everything, that I deal with whatever is

758
00:52:56,560 --> 00:52:59,520
happening in my life - making art is a way to survive.

759
00:53:02,320 --> 00:53:05,880
It's my language, really. Drawing or painting is my language.

760
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:19,040
The power of love portraits comes from their yearning to catch

761
00:53:19,040 --> 00:53:22,320
for ever the most precious moments of our lives

762
00:53:22,320 --> 00:53:27,280
and the foreknowledge that, in the end, time can't be stopped.

763
00:53:29,360 --> 00:53:32,360
Though the way it gets expressed changes over the centuries,

764
00:53:32,360 --> 00:53:34,960
the heart of the story is the same.

765
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:42,400
Even the one in my own lifetime, which captured that poignancy

766
00:53:42,400 --> 00:53:47,520
most intensely, has something of the eternal heartache about it.

767
00:53:48,960 --> 00:53:52,360
I said at the beginning of the film that all love portraiture is

768
00:53:52,360 --> 00:53:56,240
essentially a private thing. It's just meant for the delight

769
00:53:56,240 --> 00:53:59,480
of the parties concerned, the lovers, but it's not the whole truth,

770
00:53:59,480 --> 00:54:04,720
is it? Inside every passionate relationship, there is something

771
00:54:04,720 --> 00:54:09,320
which wants to skywrite it, to show it off to absolutely everyone.

772
00:54:09,320 --> 00:54:14,600
This was the case with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the most famous

773
00:54:14,600 --> 00:54:18,280
love relationship of the late '60s and '70s.

774
00:54:18,280 --> 00:54:22,360
But they weren't staging their love as a public event out of any

775
00:54:22,360 --> 00:54:26,880
sense of vulgar celebrity exhibitionism.

776
00:54:26,880 --> 00:54:32,880
It was exactly because John knew that the Great British public blamed

777
00:54:32,880 --> 00:54:38,720
Yoko Ono for breaking up the Beatles and felt so malicious towards

778
00:54:38,720 --> 00:54:44,160
her that he wanted to say, not just is my love none of your business,

779
00:54:44,160 --> 00:54:50,240
but, actually, open yourselves up to how sweet and innocent it is.

780
00:54:50,240 --> 00:54:52,960
Some of the things people have said about you haven't been very

781
00:54:52,960 --> 00:54:56,480
kind lately, does this get you down?

782
00:54:56,480 --> 00:54:59,640
Well, it's so much that it got past being depressing

783
00:54:59,640 --> 00:55:01,400
and it's gone into a joke again.

784
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:04,240
It was a bit depressing, the way that they kept picking on Yoko

785
00:55:04,240 --> 00:55:07,800
and saying that she was ugly and all personal things like that,

786
00:55:07,800 --> 00:55:10,000
but I know she isn't, so...

787
00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:11,640
After the break-up of the Beatles,

788
00:55:11,640 --> 00:55:15,680
John and Yoko finally settled in New York in 1971.

789
00:55:17,360 --> 00:55:19,800
Their relationship went through a rocky patch,

790
00:55:19,800 --> 00:55:23,520
but by the end of the decade they were together again.

791
00:55:23,520 --> 00:55:27,040
Rolling Stone magazine wanted a cover shot, and sent

792
00:55:27,040 --> 00:55:31,520
photographer Annie Leibovitz to their Manhattan apartment.

793
00:55:31,520 --> 00:55:34,040
It was the last picture taken of John alive.

794
00:55:35,040 --> 00:55:36,800
Hours later, he was shot dead.

795
00:55:37,840 --> 00:55:42,160
I was in America when John was shot and killed, and a month

796
00:55:42,160 --> 00:55:46,160
later, like everybody else, I bought this copy of the Rolling Stone.

797
00:55:46,160 --> 00:55:48,360
And look at it, you know, the thing is so battered

798
00:55:48,360 --> 00:55:51,080
and bruised. It brings back this great

799
00:55:51,080 --> 00:55:57,920
surge of desolation that we all felt and, it's ridiculous,

800
00:55:57,920 --> 00:56:00,960
everybody was so proprietary about the Beatles, we just

801
00:56:00,960 --> 00:56:04,240
felt what you feel when someone very close to you has been taken

802
00:56:04,240 --> 00:56:09,680
from you - you feel cross with them, you feel angry at being abandoned.

803
00:56:09,680 --> 00:56:13,440
And I remember when I first saw the photo, I think, part of the

804
00:56:13,440 --> 00:56:18,880
sense in which it became such an overwhelming vehicle for our sense

805
00:56:18,880 --> 00:56:24,720
of loss is this astonishing kind of tenderness that hangs over it.

806
00:56:27,680 --> 00:56:31,760
And what it says to us, of course, is it's not just

807
00:56:31,760 --> 00:56:33,680
a sort of love of two lovers,

808
00:56:33,680 --> 00:56:37,400
husband and wife. It's also the love of mother and child.

809
00:56:42,120 --> 00:56:47,680
John was abandoned by his mother Julia as a child,

810
00:56:47,680 --> 00:56:51,040
but she was still so important to him.

811
00:56:51,040 --> 00:56:57,920
He talked about her as his muse, the only other muse apart from Yoko.

812
00:56:57,920 --> 00:57:01,760
And, of course, I am not doing rubbish psychiatry on you all.

813
00:57:01,760 --> 00:57:07,560
It wasn't that Yoko Ono was the mother he never had, but, clearly

814
00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:13,280
the toughest, most laconic, darkest of the Beatles

815
00:57:13,280 --> 00:57:16,000
was looking for a home.

816
00:57:20,320 --> 00:57:23,240
He was looking for the peace that love gives...

817
00:57:25,280 --> 00:57:27,200
..and he found it with her.

818
00:57:30,400 --> 00:57:33,480
He found it with her. He found the home.

819
00:57:33,480 --> 00:57:36,640
He found a place to give peace a chance, they had a child.

820
00:57:38,200 --> 00:57:39,920
That was it.

821
00:57:39,920 --> 00:57:46,000
So I think, actually, even if what was going to happen to him

822
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:49,400
five hours after this picture was taken had never

823
00:57:49,400 --> 00:57:53,080
happened, it would have been an overwhelming thing to see

824
00:57:53,080 --> 00:57:58,120
the overwhelming love portrait in my lifetime, as it still feels.

825
00:57:59,520 --> 00:58:05,240
Because within it is the love of mother and child, of husband

826
00:58:05,240 --> 00:58:07,560
and wife, of lover and lover.

827
00:58:08,720 --> 00:58:12,600
This is the portrait of every kind of love.

828
00:58:14,320 --> 00:58:16,160
MUSIC: Eternity's Sunrise