Humfry Gilbert Garth Payne, 1935
Oil on canvas. 27 x 14in. (68.5 x 35.5cm.)
Signed and dated 1935 and inscribed on the tacking edge.
Provenance
London, National Portrait Gallery. Accession No. NPG 6230. Bequeathed by Mrs Arthur H.S. Megaw, 1993. An image is available on the NPG web site.
Exhibited
Cheltenham, Municipal Art Gallery, 1936, No. 10.
Literature
Ratcliffe (2007) illus. b/w, pl 41.
See Humfry Gilbert Garth Payne (1934) for a study for this work, and Portrait of HG Payne (1933) for an unrelated drawing of the same sitter.
Payne [1902-1936] was an archaeologist. He died suddenly following an infection at a very early age. He was the Director of the British School of Archaeology in Athens where Colquhoun met him whilst studying and painting. Payne’s major publication was Neocorinthia (1931) in which a large body of important information on archaic vase painting and other arts practiced in Corinth was gathered and classified.
Correspondence between Colquhoun and the NPG about the purchase of this work is at TGA 929/1/1201-1222. Correspondence between Colquhoun and Payne between 1933-1935, with whom she had a strong romantic attchment, is at TGA 929/1/1402-1552. Payne latter married Dilys Powell.
In 1981 Powell must have seen the painting of her late husband as she wrote to Colquhoun on July 16: ‘I admit that I hadn’t seen Humfry in that Pudovkin light, but of course it is interesting.’ She later elaborated ‘The Pudovkin movie that I was thinking is Storm over Asia – not any particular face, but the general effect of slav physiognomy.’ (TGA 929/1/1683-1685).
Ribeiro (2000) discusses this portrait from the perspective of an historian of costume. Payne is “dressed simply and informally in a blue open-necked cotton shirt and a leather belt around the waist of his turn-up slacks. Turn-ups, first appearing in sporting trousers in the 1860s were in general use by the turn of the century and were especially favoured in the 1920s by the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII for both formal and informal wear. Blue became popular for men’s shirts in the 1920s and 1930s; such garments were worn by men of liberal and progressive views, for the colour had been, since at least the Eighteenth century, associated with working-class clothing” (p.223).
See note to Elektra Magnoletsi (ikon) 1933 for more information about Elektra Megaw, who bequeathed the painting to the National Portrait Gallery.
References
Ratcliffe, E. Ithell Colquhoun. Mandrake, Oxford. 2007.
Ribeiro, A. The Gallery of Fashion. National Portrait Gallery, London, 2000.