Search
Portrait of Vivian Richards
- Date:
- 2006
- Object Number:
- M.2009.26
- Creator
- Brendan Kelly (artist)
- Production reason
- Commissioned as part of the Lord’s Portrait Project (2005 – 2011)
- Production notes
- The artist was inspired by the drip (or chance) technique employed by American Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock. Although Kelly gives the impression of spontaneity through his dynamic paintwork, he actually carefully planned every mark. The result is an incredible likeness of the sitter combined with immediacy. Painted with a hand-drill and paint brush loaded with paint, this is only the second time the artist painted in this style. The first was a painting of his brother Paul (2005) who had been in a car crash. Painted in the artist’s London-based studio from photographs. The artist met and photographed the sitter in Antigua. The warm Antiguan light is important to the choice of colour and sense of bounced light in the composition.
- Material
- oil
- Size
- 193 x 193cm
- Digital reference
- Object name
- painting
- Object category
- pictures
Description
Head and shoulders, large-scale, frontal portrait of Richards.Display caption
In his first Test appearance at Lord’s in 1980 'Viv’ Richards scored 145 from 159 balls; he only once failed to pass 50 here in 5 Test innings, averaging 71.60. In 9 ODIs here (including two World Cup Finals) he scored 1 hundred and 3 fifties averaging 87.33. His 138* in the 1979 final against England earned him the Man of the Match award. He also played in 4 domestic Cup Final victories for Somerset between 1979 and 1983, scoring 117, 132*, 51* and 51. The massive scale, direct pose and explosion of paint creates arguably the most powerful portrait in the collection. The dynamic splashes of colour are applied with a force and energy intended to mirror the connotations of the great cricketer’s nickname: `Master Blaster’. Kelly described the technique as ‘slamming and whipping the paint over the canvas to echo that “crack” as he hit the ball’. This stylistic idea originated in the artist’s monumental 2005 portrait of his brother Paul, who had been injured in a car accident; the broken brushwork of that visceral image is here transposed to suggest invincibility rather than vulnerability. MCC Collections: Commissioned by MCC, 2006 MCC Number: M.2009.26- Association:
-
Vernon Seymour Ransford (sitter)
Brendan Kelly (artist)
- Related objects:
-
M.2009.25 : Portrait of Inzamam-ul-Haq
TN.2008.94 : West Indies Test Cap of Sir Vivian Richards
M.04.03 : White Ball signed by Sir Vivian Richards, ??
TN.2008.329 : Vivian Richards wearing West Indies Cap Portrait