Wits Art Museum
27.02 - 09.03.2024
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the colored canvas, reveals himself.” – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Through a portrait, an artist can capture the likeness of their subject as well as their way of being —their spirit. In other cases, the portrait becomes a mirror onto which the artist paints herself.
Marlene Dumas’ Portrait of Elisabeth Eybers hung starkly on a wall at the Wits Art Museum (WAM) during a special viewing, following its recent donation by the artist to the WAM permanent collection. The donation was facilitated by auteur Ena Jansen, an internationally recognised expert on South African poet Elisabeth Eybers; the viewing a tribute to Eybers, not only as a poet but also as Dumas’ subject and muse to some extent. Dumas offers a unique insight into her process as an artist through the artwork capturing the poet’s character. Painted in 2007, the year of Eybers’ death, the work reflects the gaze of someone who knows their fate of mortality, which is something Dumas seems inspired by. In a later work, Einder, named after one of Eybers’ poems, Dumas painted the flowers on Eybers’ grave. Einder serves as an alternative portrait; capturing the writer in death.
Marlene Dumas with Portrait of Elisabeth Eybers, 2007. Wits Art Museum in 2023.
A film included in the exhibition sees Duma in conversation with Jansen. Among other things, they speak of the significance of death, not only in Eybers’ poems but also in painting, including the portrait itself. Dumas references Richard Avedon, an American photographer who captured his father’s portrait shortly before he died. She reflects on her portrait of Eybers in a similar light. Divided into sections to create stanzas or chapters, the documentary draws connections between Dumas and Eybers through literary traditions, facilitated by Jansen’s insights into Eybers’ work. Recorded as one of the first few women to publish in the Afrikaans language in South Africa, Eybers’ life shows her commitment to language and creative practice, perhaps paralleled in Dumas’ own career as a painter.
Portrait of Elisabeth Eybers is large in scale and seems exaggerated, almost confrontational. Because of their scale, Dumas refers to her portraits as ‘landscapes,’ stating that she does not use live models for her work. The only way to reach the detail she desires is to work from a close-up reference photograph of her subject. This makes for a compelling painting of Eybers, at once a likeness of the poet and a ‘psychological portrait,’ as Dumas puts it.
Marlene Dumas, Portrait of Elisabeth Eybers, 2007. Oil on Canvas. (h)130 x (l)110cm. Presented by Marlene Dumas to Wits Art Museum in 2023.
The colours used are muted, with a limited tonal palette. The use of pale yellow, and shades of grey, black and green, imbue the portrait with a melancholic spirit. The subject almost looks sickly, with pale yellowish skin foregrounding a pallid background. Contrastingly, the lines are loose and curved, giving the painting movement and rhythm. In this way, the viewer can see Dumas’ hand at work. The simple composition forces the viewer to focus only on the subject, the exaggerated dark irises emphasizing the intensity of the subject’s gaze. There is an honesty and vulnerability present in the work which makes it particularly enrapturing.
The public viewing of Dumas’ Portrait of Elisabeth Eybers affords audiences the opportunity to experience the portrait in person and to recognise the significance of both Eybers’ and Dumas’ work to South Africa’s cultural history. Dumas, being one of South Africa’s most important visual artists, provides a unique opportunity for viewers to see the poet through her eyes. The portrait inadvertently reveals the artist’s soul while capturing the likeness of another.
Portrait of Elisabeth Eybers is open to public viewing at the Wits Arts Museum until 9th March.
