The woman has stopped peeling potatoes. Her hand grips the knife, her brows are low and knitted, and her mouth is a hard, perfectly straight line. One of her eyes looks around in irritation, while the other gazes directly at us, as if to say "do you see the sort of thing I have to deal with"?
She is Mrs M (My Landlady), painted by John Fuller in 1956, and it looks like her tenant has just said one of the most ridiculous things she's ever heard. We understand, for all of us have been in her shoes at some point.
Mrs M is one of many portraits in the Te Manawa art collection, and she's on display as part of Ngā Whakaahua – Portraits, open now in the art gallery. The show includes paintings by renowned Kiwi artists Rita Angus, Gretchen Albrecht and Robyn Kahukiwa.
It is said a good portrait instantly communicates the essence of a person. The sardonic smirk of the man in Frans Hals' famous The Laughing Cavalier (1624) adds an extra layer of meaning to his already-expensive attire. The realistic style of Gottfried Lindauer and Charles Goldie's work effortlessly conveys the character and mana of its Māori subjects. Yet minute detail is not the hallmark of the portraitist; with but a handful of cubist lines, John Fuller lets us know that Mrs M is not to be trifled with!
Some artists are content to leave the work of interpretation to the viewer. Michael Illingworth's Portrait of Alan Thornton (1968) depicts the subject at a window, a flowerbed below. But Illingworth's signature approach boils the human form down to an oval head and a couple of triangles. What can we tell about Mr Thornton other than his garden is quite nice? That's up to you.
