Portraiture has been at the heart of Leon Kossoff’s artistic practice since he first stumbled in on a life drawing class at Toynbee Hall as a teenager in 1943. His portrait paintings are the result of a close and exacting scrutiny of the model, and numerous preparatory drawings from life. Throughout his career Kossoff has drawn and painted a core group of models; family members, close friends and sitters with whom he has established long-standing friendships, as he has commented:

‘The fabric of my work through the last forty years has been dependent on those people who have so patiently sat for me, each one uniquely transforming my space by their presence.’

Kossoff began painting Fidelma in the mid-1970s, and, alongside the artist’s wife (Rosalind) and his father, she is one of his most important and regular models. Frequently appearing nude, Fidelma is most often depicted in a seated position, or rising from a chair. In portraits of the sitter dating from the late 1970s through to the mid-1980s, her form is described by pale fleshy tones and she is set against a background of murky greys, browns, greens or blues, conveying a sense of intimacy and introspection, as can be seen here in the present work. In the late 1980’s however, there is a dramatic shift in mood and she is portrayed in a palette of non-local colours whose effect is evocative rather than descriptive, see Fidelma No.1, 1986 and Potrait of Fidelma, 1986.

While some of Kossoff's paintings might take shape in a matter of hours, some take considerably longer, as Marina Vaizey described in 1972, 'Each painting has been worked on for months, perhaps years, but what we see is not the result of a careful, build-up, slowly drying out layer upon layer of paint applied over a considerable length of time. Rather each painting is finally painted in a day. What happens is rather like a continual, unceasing dress rehearsal - and then the final performance, opening night. Each time Kossoff works on a painting he paints it entire. Then, not satisfied (and he rarely is) the paint is entirely scraped off ... This process of start, finish, obliterate, begin again may go on for months. One day the image will emerge as near to what this ardent perfectionist wants as he feels possible and then that particular dance, that special choreography, will be stopped and the painting created. The image has emerged in a process of reclamation'. Indeed, the present work - an unidealised portrait of Fidelma, - appears to be the result of a multitude of Kossoff’s encounters with her over time, distilled into one transcendent moment.

Frances Spalding describes Kossoff's approach to portraiture as akin to a 'restless attack...the paint dripped, dragged, flicked or coagulated, leaving the impression that the surface of the canvas is still moving, heaving and re-forming like boiling tar.' In Fidelma, 1981, this is particularly evident. Here she is presented nude, seated, in a three-quarter pose, her right arm reaching over to her left, gazing off into the distance, but before one can make out her figure, one is struck by the sheer physicality of the painted surface, which protrudes from the backboard and escapes around its edges. At this small scale, the depth of paint is highly apparent - a single brushstroke denoting the curve of her breast, or the bend in her knee – these emphatic marks leaving behind delicate tendrils of paint.

We are presented with an image which has been chased and pinned down, a perfect visual metaphor for the fleeting nature of appearances. By insisting upon the materiality of the paint, Kossoff creates a work of art where the image is inseparable from the means and labour of its making. At this point in his career Kossoff's paintings are as close to sculpture as they are to painting, objects as much as images. And they are objects which are which are still forming, as the thickness of the paint means they could take up to a decade to dry, subject to change as underlying colours come through and the surface settles.

1 The artist cited in Paul Moorhouse, Leon Kossoff, Tate Gallery, 1996, p36
2 Marina Vaizey, Leon Kossoff, Art International, vol.23, Sept. 1972, p104
3 Frances Spalding, British Art Since 1900, Thames and Hudson, London, 1986, p164