Back to Clippings Archive main page

What painting have you chosen?
It is called ‘Walk to the Mountains’, and was painted by Olwen Tarrant. She is President of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, and is the first women to be elected to that post. I saw the painting when I opened the Institute’s annual exhibition at The Mall galleries in London a few years ago. Afterwards I was presented with a copy of the work as a ‘Thank You’, and now it hangs in my house.

Why have you chosen it?
I like the perspective of it. There are the mountains at the back, the cluster of houses in the middle and the solitary figure in the foreground. I also like the fact that who the person is, and what they are doing, is open to interpretation. It could be a tourist, strolling along; it could be anyone going about their day’s business; or it could be someone that - like the mountains before them - has a distant objective in mind. I believe the painting is of somewhere in Majorca. It’s not a place that I know or anything; I just like what the painting conveys.

What type of paintings do you like?
I tend to like paintings of rural scenes, and in particular traditional landscapes. Most of what I have on my walls tends to be paintings of a church, a few cattle, that sort of thing. In fact Olwen Tarrant does rather a lot of rural landscapes, although this is the only work of hers that I have.

I don’t claim to have a very educated eye, and I don’t really like modern art. I like things that have a clear structure, where things are the right size and painted from the normal perspective. I don’t have the time to go to art galleries. But I did sit for artist once – June Mendoza, who I met at the same exhibition as above. She asked if she could paint me and did a lovely painting of me sitting on a chair, at home. I am very pleased with it, and that too hangs on my walls.

Do you have any other favourite paintings?
There is only one painting that really sticks out in my mind and that is ‘Fidelity’ by Briton Rivière (1840-1920). It is quite a departure from the rural landscapes that I usually like. It is a painting of a man in prison, slumped into despair, with a dog faithfully at his side, resting his mouth on his master’s knee. (Rivière painted it in 1869, and named it Prisoners, but it was renamed after it was purchased by William Hesketh Lever in 1903.)

I saw the painting when I worked as a trainee for Unilever, in Birkenhead and, years later, I thought of it many times when I was Prisons Minister (1995-97). It took me a while to locate it – it now hangs in the Lever Art Gallery, in Port Sunlight – but it is years since I last saw it. I do at least have a fridge magnet of it, but that’s all. So I very much hope to see it again one day.

Artist Profile
Olwen Tarrant (born 1927) is a painter and sculptor. She trained at Sir John Cass College of Art in East London and has won many prizes for her work including the Alan Gourley, Cornelissen and Llewellyn Alexander awards. She paints from her studios overlooking the famous Malvern Hills, Worcestershire, but for much of the summer lives in Puerto Pollensa, in the north of Majorca, where she says she tries ‘to convey the excitement of the sunlight dancing over the landscape.’ She was first woman to be elected President of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in its 121-year history.


 

Back to Clippings Archive main page
top of page