‘The moment that he opened the door of his studio to me, I recognised him as one of the landmarks of the district. I had often witnessed him in King’s Road wearing a huge black hat and a stiff pointed beard … He was the first real artist that I had ever met. I was delighted that he looked so perfectly the part’ ~ Quentin Crisp
This quote seems a little unfair towards Angus McBean, who began photographing Crisp circa 1938; but indeed, Clifford Hall does have the distinction of being the first of numerous artists to have painted Quentin Crisp’s portrait – and now one of his “legendary” portraits of Crisp, that a few years ago were being described as “lost” on wikipedia, has turned up on the open market and is to be sold at auction on Saturday, February 8th, 2020 by:
The Canterbury Auction Galleries
40 Station Road West
Canterbury
Kent
CT2 8AN
Nigel Kelly, in his book: Quentin Crisp: The Profession of Being. A Biography (2011)
Writes of Hall’s painting of Crisp – “Very regrettably, the whereabouts of these are now unknown.”
No doubt, this expression of cultural grief is what prompted an overly dramatic wikipedian to describe the paintings as “lost”.
It will be very interesting to see how this portrait (LOT 298) does on Feb. 8th.