0:00:04 > 0:00:06Don't go.
0:00:09 > 0:00:11Don't change.
0:00:11 > 0:00:13Stay with me.
0:00:15 > 0:00:17Don't grow up.
0:00:19 > 0:00:21Don't disappear.
0:00:24 > 0:00:26Be mine.
0:00:29 > 0:00:31The craving to keep the ones we love close to us
0:00:31 > 0:00:35never goes away, even when they do.
0:00:35 > 0:00:40They can't be with us, but their second self can - their likeness.
0:00:40 > 0:00:46It can turn absence into presence, close distance, defeat time...
0:00:46 > 0:00:48even death.
0:00:53 > 0:00:57If you believe Pliny the Elder, all art began this way.
0:00:59 > 0:01:01Corinth, Ancient Greece -
0:01:01 > 0:01:04the boyfriend is going.
0:01:04 > 0:01:05His girl is distraught.
0:01:05 > 0:01:08She sits him down, and in the candlelight,
0:01:08 > 0:01:11traces the outline of his shadow face on the wall.
0:01:15 > 0:01:20Now, wherever he was, she would not lose him completely.
0:01:25 > 0:01:28Most portraits, whether they're building power or making fame,
0:01:28 > 0:01:30face outwards into the world,
0:01:30 > 0:01:34but love portraits point in the opposite direction -
0:01:34 > 0:01:37towards the body of our emotions,
0:01:37 > 0:01:44to be taken out and gazed on whenever we can't do without the look of love.
0:01:44 > 0:01:47It never quite works, though, does it?
0:01:47 > 0:01:51Paintings can't stop time.
0:01:51 > 0:01:56Those precious moments just run away from us like beads of mercury,
0:01:56 > 0:01:59but it helps.
0:02:24 > 0:02:27It's a May morning, 1633,
0:02:27 > 0:02:31and Sir Kenelm Digby, in his house in Charterhouse Yard,
0:02:31 > 0:02:35is listening to a friend tell him all about the Odes of Horace -
0:02:35 > 0:02:39the favourite subject for this learned aristocrat,
0:02:39 > 0:02:41courtier, gentleman.
0:02:41 > 0:02:45But his mind on this beautiful morning is wandering.
0:02:45 > 0:02:48It's wandering to his wife Venetia,
0:02:48 > 0:02:52and he wonders why she's not up yet.
0:02:52 > 0:02:55He'd actually worked late the previous night,
0:02:55 > 0:02:58and had slept in a different room so as not to disturb her,
0:02:58 > 0:03:01and he's very impatient for her to rise.
0:03:03 > 0:03:08And then, there is a terrible scream, and Kenelm races to her room
0:03:08 > 0:03:12to find her maidservant on her knees, sobbing hysterics,
0:03:12 > 0:03:16and Kenelm puts his hand to her face,
0:03:16 > 0:03:19touches her arm, and then her hand,
0:03:19 > 0:03:22as he wrote, "that lay outside the bedclothes
0:03:22 > 0:03:26"and all was cold and stiff".
0:03:26 > 0:03:29And a piece of Kenelm Digby's life,
0:03:29 > 0:03:33the piece that truly mattered to him, was over.
0:03:38 > 0:03:40Venetia, Kenelm's wife,
0:03:40 > 0:03:44was one of the most dazzling beauties of her age,
0:03:44 > 0:03:48and her romance with Kenelm Digby, adventurer,
0:03:48 > 0:03:53courtier and scientist, is the great love story of the 17th century.
0:03:53 > 0:03:56They really were star-crossed lovers.
0:03:56 > 0:04:00They had been childhood sweethearts, but their love was thwarted
0:04:00 > 0:04:05by Kenelm's family, who thought Venetia beneath them.
0:04:05 > 0:04:08Nothing, though, could keep them apart.
0:04:08 > 0:04:11They married in secret, and by 1633,
0:04:11 > 0:04:14they were darlings of the Stuart court,
0:04:14 > 0:04:19proud parents of two boys, a lifetime to look forward to...
0:04:19 > 0:04:23and then came this sudden death.
0:04:23 > 0:04:26No-one could say why she died,
0:04:26 > 0:04:30so an autopsy was ordered by the King.
0:04:30 > 0:04:32Desperate to preserve what he could of Venetia
0:04:32 > 0:04:36before her dismemberment beneath the surgeon's knife,
0:04:36 > 0:04:40Kenelm begged his close friend Anthony Van Dyck to come quickly
0:04:40 > 0:04:42and paint her on her deathbed.
0:04:44 > 0:04:48Van Dyck was the greatest portrait painter of his day -
0:04:48 > 0:04:49the King's painter.
0:04:49 > 0:04:53This would be perhaps the most unusual portrait
0:04:53 > 0:04:54he would ever undertake.
0:04:59 > 0:05:03I wonder how many of you have looked on the face of a loved one
0:05:03 > 0:05:05after they've passed away,
0:05:05 > 0:05:08because if you have, you know that
0:05:08 > 0:05:11what you're looking at isn't really them, is it?
0:05:11 > 0:05:15It's just the dry husk of them -
0:05:15 > 0:05:17a shell, a body casing.
0:05:19 > 0:05:25Van Dyck was not going to paint that of Venetia -
0:05:25 > 0:05:31it was not her husk that the distraught Kenelm wanted.
0:05:33 > 0:05:39He wanted to find Venetia as he expected to find her -
0:05:39 > 0:05:42beautifully asleep.
0:05:42 > 0:05:45And we know from Kenelm's account
0:05:45 > 0:05:49that he and Van Dyck go up to her lovely face,
0:05:49 > 0:05:54and because Kenelm had this theory that her blood, quote,
0:05:54 > 0:05:57"had not yet settled two days after the death",
0:05:57 > 0:06:02they pinch her cheeks to give them the roses in the cheeks.
0:06:02 > 0:06:07It's horrible and it's deeply touching at the same time.
0:06:09 > 0:06:16So, Van Dyke gets to work, and he's Mr Tenderness.
0:06:16 > 0:06:21The style of the brushstrokes are feathery, light.
0:06:21 > 0:06:24It's almost as though he's whispering over her dead body,
0:06:24 > 0:06:26to his friend, while he's working.
0:06:28 > 0:06:32Her lips are the lips of those we love when they're asleep.
0:06:32 > 0:06:35They're full-blown, they're cushiony...
0:06:35 > 0:06:38Her hair is still lustrous.
0:06:39 > 0:06:47So this version of Venetia was for her endlessly sorrowing husband,
0:06:47 > 0:06:48still with us.
0:06:48 > 0:06:51She was not cold.
0:06:51 > 0:06:53She would always be with him.
0:06:58 > 0:06:59When Van Dyck had finished,
0:06:59 > 0:07:04the painting was delivered to Kenelm at Charterhouse Yard.
0:07:04 > 0:07:09For Kenelm, this was no mere memento of his love for her -
0:07:09 > 0:07:15the painting had so captured her that this was Venetia herself.
0:07:16 > 0:07:21He wrote how the painting became his constant companion,
0:07:21 > 0:07:23how he would gaze at it for hours on end,
0:07:23 > 0:07:26and how at night, he'd prop it up by his bedside,
0:07:26 > 0:07:31and by candlelight, would talk to her as if she was still with him.
0:07:40 > 0:07:42While Kenelm lost himself in grief,
0:07:42 > 0:07:48court gossip swirled around the circumstances of Venetia's death.
0:07:48 > 0:07:51Why had she died so young?
0:07:51 > 0:07:54Had she overdosed on viper's wine -
0:07:54 > 0:07:57a beauty aid made from the guts of snakes?
0:07:57 > 0:07:59Or worse still, in some circles,
0:07:59 > 0:08:03it was whispered that Kenelm himself had poisoned her
0:08:03 > 0:08:06on discovering she had been unfaithful.
0:08:08 > 0:08:12In her youth, Venetia had had a name as a bit of a flirt -
0:08:12 > 0:08:15the accusations even persisted after her death.
0:08:17 > 0:08:21Kenelm's response was to summon Van Dyck again.
0:08:21 > 0:08:25This time, he wanted art not to revive a dead body,
0:08:25 > 0:08:27but to preserve a reputation.
0:08:27 > 0:08:31Well, that last thing Kenelm in his terrible grief wanted was that
0:08:31 > 0:08:35people should be sniggering over the tomb of his departed beloved.
0:08:35 > 0:08:39He was well aware that she had a notorious reputation
0:08:39 > 0:08:41for favouring many men,
0:08:41 > 0:08:47so he wants a painting which is going to be an allegory of everything the
0:08:47 > 0:08:49gossips say she is not.
0:08:49 > 0:08:53It has to be an allegory of Venetia as chaste.
0:08:58 > 0:09:02She's in a particular pose - she's in the pose of prudence.
0:09:05 > 0:09:09The doves are the symbol of prudence and chastity,
0:09:09 > 0:09:12as are the pearls around Venetia's neck,
0:09:12 > 0:09:15as is this beautiful white silky shift.
0:09:16 > 0:09:20And down at the bottom left-hand corner
0:09:20 > 0:09:22is this kind of skulking, swarthy figure.
0:09:22 > 0:09:27It's very important that he's sort of faintly dirty and repulsive.
0:09:27 > 0:09:29And so, he's deceit, fraud -
0:09:29 > 0:09:33the rotten scoundrels who dare to defame
0:09:33 > 0:09:35the beautiful Venetia's reputation.
0:09:37 > 0:09:41Below him is... Van Dyke is Mr Cupid,
0:09:41 > 0:09:42so we've got the Cupid,
0:09:42 > 0:09:48and Lady Venetia's perfectly pedicured foot is actually
0:09:48 > 0:09:54standing right on his chubby belly, so lust, in the form of Cupid,
0:09:54 > 0:09:58perfectly under the control of the perfectly pedicured foot.
0:09:58 > 0:10:01And if, you know, you hadn't kind of passed your O-level in decoding
0:10:01 > 0:10:06symbols, you can bet that Kenelm himself would give you
0:10:06 > 0:10:10the guided tour, should you not be quite clear at this point that his
0:10:10 > 0:10:16wife was just absolutely, as he said, "the perfectest of all her sex".
0:10:23 > 0:10:28Twice now, Kenelm had called on the power of the love portrait - once
0:10:28 > 0:10:34to preserve Venetia's likeness, once to preserve her public reputation.
0:10:34 > 0:10:38Neither, in the end, could stem the tide of his grief.
0:10:39 > 0:10:44Well, Kenelm's not just shocked and distraught at the loss
0:10:44 > 0:10:47of his wife, he's destroyed by it, he's completely undone.
0:10:47 > 0:10:50He can't sleep, he can't eat.
0:10:50 > 0:10:54Friends, in fact, are worried for his mental health -
0:10:54 > 0:10:56he won't shave his beard or trim it, he goes round in a long black
0:10:56 > 0:11:01robe, he's just simply lost to the world.
0:11:02 > 0:11:04Remember, at that time, you were supposed to -
0:11:04 > 0:11:06whether you were Catholic or Protestant, didn't make any
0:11:06 > 0:11:09difference - bend your head before the inscrutable
0:11:09 > 0:11:14will of the Almighty, and Kenelm does not seem to want to do that.
0:11:14 > 0:11:19So a well-intentioned friend - he had many - writes to him to say,
0:11:19 > 0:11:24just stop, and Kenelm writes the most extraordinary response back.
0:11:26 > 0:11:29"I must lay for a ground that the noblest
0:11:29 > 0:11:35"and worthiest operation of a rational creature is love."
0:11:36 > 0:11:41"If love be, then, the noblest action in man, it is impossible to
0:11:41 > 0:11:46"commit any excess in the exercise of it.
0:11:46 > 0:11:52"The perfectest, natural, blessed state mankind can attain upon Earth
0:11:52 > 0:11:58"is the height of love and friendship between a man and a woman."
0:11:58 > 0:12:02And the well-intentioned friends back off
0:12:05 > 0:12:10Kenelm had used portraiture to bring Venetia back to life.
0:12:10 > 0:12:12His devotion to her
0:12:12 > 0:12:16and his soul-destroying grief marked him as a man out of time in an age
0:12:16 > 0:12:20when you were meant to surrender to the will of the Almighty.
0:12:23 > 0:12:27But as the 17th century turned to the 18th, the expression
0:12:27 > 0:12:32of spontaneous, extravagant, romantic love became fashionable.
0:12:32 > 0:12:36Kenelm would have felt quite at home in this new
0:12:36 > 0:12:37world of starry-eyed passion.
0:12:40 > 0:12:43Romantic love found expression in novels, music,
0:12:43 > 0:12:48poetry and, of course, in art - in particular, in an art that you
0:12:48 > 0:12:52could wear next to your heart - the miniature portrait.
0:13:00 > 0:13:04Now, of course, the great thing about the miniature is that you
0:13:04 > 0:13:08wear it, it's portable, it goes where you go.
0:13:08 > 0:13:12So this is the 18th century equivalent of your phone picture.
0:13:12 > 0:13:17You can wear it as jewellery, you can wear it - and we know that men did -
0:13:17 > 0:13:21inside their shirt, on a bracelet, you can wear it as a locket.
0:13:21 > 0:13:24They're intensely of you.
0:13:24 > 0:13:28A miniature is art that you wear on your body.
0:13:28 > 0:13:32Miniatures had been around since the Tudors, but it was
0:13:32 > 0:13:36only in the 18th century that they became part of the love industry.
0:13:38 > 0:13:41If you were anyone in society in Georgian England
0:13:41 > 0:13:44and you wanted a miniature of your loved one, there was really
0:13:44 > 0:13:48only one person you wanted to paint it.
0:13:48 > 0:13:53His name was Richard Cosway and, yes, everybody had their favourite
0:13:53 > 0:13:58joke, which was that Richard Cosway was himself a miniature.
0:13:58 > 0:14:02He was known as Tiny Cosmetic.
0:14:02 > 0:14:07And to raise himself up in dignity - high heels, naturally,
0:14:07 > 0:14:10swept-back powdered hair or wig,
0:14:10 > 0:14:14looked like a kind of crested grebe or something like that.
0:14:14 > 0:14:19But as far as skill goes, Tiny Cosmetic was no joke.
0:14:19 > 0:14:21He was absolutely fantastic.
0:14:21 > 0:14:25And when you look at these miniatures, you can really see why.
0:14:25 > 0:14:32He used delicate water colour and translucent paint on ivory.
0:14:32 > 0:14:35He was the master of what's called stippling, which is a fancy name
0:14:35 > 0:14:40for tiny, tiny dots which enabled him to do texture and shadow.
0:14:40 > 0:14:42Here's a naughty one. She's gorgeous.
0:14:42 > 0:14:47She has falling blonde hair, one rather beautiful breast exposed
0:14:47 > 0:14:52and, as in all Cosways, it's set against a blue sky with clouds
0:14:52 > 0:14:55because, even in love, there are going to be cloudy days.
0:14:55 > 0:14:59This is a lovely thing, probably an inside-the-shirt number.
0:15:00 > 0:15:03And here's another one, which is fantastic, of a man called
0:15:03 > 0:15:07Andrew Stuart and, like the first one, the eyes are everything.
0:15:07 > 0:15:12The eyes are big, intense and charming so that when you took
0:15:12 > 0:15:16it out, when you took your mobile phone miniature portrait out, you
0:15:16 > 0:15:22really had a sense of this person looking at you and just at you.
0:15:22 > 0:15:25And this particular one, like a lot of them,
0:15:25 > 0:15:28has an actual piece of your loved one's hair.
0:15:28 > 0:15:32So here are locks of Andrew Stuart's hair -
0:15:32 > 0:15:35blonde hair in lovely little curls.
0:15:35 > 0:15:40So he is very, very good at this. This is genuinely portable art,
0:15:40 > 0:15:43so it's no wonder that his trade was fantastic.
0:15:47 > 0:15:53He was said to get through 12-14 sitters a day. If you were
0:15:53 > 0:16:00anyone in London society and you had a passionate love and, let's face
0:16:00 > 0:16:05it, in late 18th century England, there were few people who didn't,
0:16:05 > 0:16:10you made a beeline for the studio of Tiny Cosmetic, Richard Cosway.
0:16:17 > 0:16:21One eminent figure who beat a path to Cosway's door to exploit
0:16:21 > 0:16:23this craze for the love miniature was
0:16:23 > 0:16:29the embodiment of the 18th-century obsessive, love-sick romantic,
0:16:29 > 0:16:34and he turned out to be a very significant customer for Tiny.
0:16:34 > 0:16:36So I'm holding in my hand a wonderful
0:16:36 > 0:16:41miniature of Richard Cosway's most important repeat customer -
0:16:41 > 0:16:44the Prince of Wales, who goes to him over and over and over again
0:16:44 > 0:16:48because the Prince of Wales never tires of having a new love,
0:16:48 > 0:16:53and his standard operating procedure was to have a miniature painted
0:16:53 > 0:16:57and to send it to the object of his ardent affection.
0:16:57 > 0:17:03And Cosway obliges him beautifully. It's an informal picture, but
0:17:03 > 0:17:07he's got himself up in as ceremonious grandeur as he possibly could.
0:17:07 > 0:17:11He's wearing the Order of the Garter, that star there,
0:17:11 > 0:17:14but you know that's not the kind of garter
0:17:14 > 0:17:16George was usually thinking about!
0:17:18 > 0:17:22Alongside his gambling, his drinking and his gluttony, the young
0:17:22 > 0:17:27Prince of Wales was notorious for his serial amorous adventures.
0:17:29 > 0:17:32George was a regular at the theatre
0:17:32 > 0:17:35and opera, where all of London society would be on display.
0:17:38 > 0:17:43It was at the opera one night in 1784 that his most extreme
0:17:43 > 0:17:45seduction campaign began.
0:17:47 > 0:17:52His eye was caught by this woman - Maria Fitzherbert -
0:17:52 > 0:17:54and he was instantly smitten.
0:17:56 > 0:17:59But she wasn't playing ball.
0:17:59 > 0:18:03Twice widowed, six years older than the Prince and a good Catholic,
0:18:03 > 0:18:08she was not about to audition for the job of royal mistress.
0:18:08 > 0:18:11But George was not going to take no for an answer.
0:18:11 > 0:18:13He even started to talk about marriage,
0:18:13 > 0:18:17despite the fact that it was forbidden to marry a Catholic.
0:18:19 > 0:18:24Maria resisted him and decided she had better depart for Europe,
0:18:24 > 0:18:29but while packing her bags, she got a visit from the Prince's entourage.
0:18:29 > 0:18:32"The Prince has stabbed himself!" they announced.
0:18:32 > 0:18:37"Only you can save his life! Come quickly and come now!"
0:18:39 > 0:18:42So Maria enters the bedroom and what does she see?
0:18:42 > 0:18:45Well, it is not a pretty sight.
0:18:45 > 0:18:47The Prince of Wales is deathly white, there is
0:18:47 > 0:18:51blood absolutely everywhere, his eyes are kind of mad,
0:18:51 > 0:18:55he's foaming at the mouth, he's screaming and moaning.
0:18:55 > 0:19:00He's also said that he's going to tear bandages off unless
0:19:00 > 0:19:04she agrees to marry him. That's the only way he's going to live.
0:19:04 > 0:19:08So what a nightmare for Maria, you know, how frightening, how
0:19:08 > 0:19:11hopeless it all is. And then,
0:19:11 > 0:19:13the coup de grace - he produces a ring, slips
0:19:13 > 0:19:19it on her finger. She has to agree to do this. What else can she do?
0:19:19 > 0:19:22The thing about Maria Fitzherbert, she has a fantastic head,
0:19:22 > 0:19:25she's amazingly strong and in control.
0:19:25 > 0:19:29So when she goes back home, the first thing she does is draw up
0:19:29 > 0:19:33a document to say that any promise to marry is completely void
0:19:33 > 0:19:39when extorted under those conditions of duress - the word was used.
0:19:39 > 0:19:42And then, do you know what I think she started to do? Continue to pack
0:19:42 > 0:19:47her bags! She needs to get out of there and head off to Europe, fast!
0:19:52 > 0:19:55Up to now, George had made a habit of sending a Cosway
0:19:55 > 0:19:58miniature to the object of his affections,
0:19:58 > 0:20:01but with his attempts to capture Maria reaching desperation,
0:20:01 > 0:20:07he demanded from Cosway something which would overwhelm her.
0:20:07 > 0:20:10The genius of the miniature came up with a simple solution -
0:20:10 > 0:20:12just painting George's eye.
0:20:14 > 0:20:17Well, this has to be one of the most extraordinary
0:20:17 > 0:20:21objects in the whole history of the depiction of the human face.
0:20:21 > 0:20:25Normally, we're in control when we look at a face -
0:20:25 > 0:20:27yes, the face of the portrait looks back at us.
0:20:27 > 0:20:33When it's a single eye, it's strangely possessive.
0:20:33 > 0:20:35First of all, you have to be able to see
0:20:35 > 0:20:38the rest of the face, even though you're only looking at one eye.
0:20:38 > 0:20:42And what Cosway has done, he's provided a kind of swirling
0:20:42 > 0:20:47mist, out of which the eye appears.
0:20:47 > 0:20:50And the killer touch -
0:20:50 > 0:20:55what makes it a remarkable little piece of art - is the catch light.
0:20:55 > 0:20:57The catch light is a reflection of the light
0:20:57 > 0:21:03we all see in one another's eyes. So instead of a dead eye, a fish
0:21:03 > 0:21:08eye, this is an eye that's alive
0:21:08 > 0:21:10with burning ardour.
0:21:10 > 0:21:14How could Maria possibly refuse it?
0:21:16 > 0:21:21She didn't. They were married in secret in December 1785.
0:21:23 > 0:21:27Suddenly, full-on British lovers, especially any separated by
0:21:27 > 0:21:32distance or social disapproval, were giving each other eye miniatures.
0:21:36 > 0:21:40If your girl was playing hard-to-get, you gave her an eyeful
0:21:40 > 0:21:42until she was stared into surrender.
0:21:47 > 0:21:51For a man as prone to bravado as George was,
0:21:51 > 0:21:56keeping his marriage to Maria a secret was almost an impossibility,
0:21:56 > 0:21:59even if it got him into deep trouble with his father, George III.
0:22:00 > 0:22:05Where better to let the world know but from your own private box?
0:22:06 > 0:22:08So what does he do?
0:22:08 > 0:22:12He stands up and he flashes, for all to see,
0:22:12 > 0:22:15a miniature of the beloved Maria.
0:22:17 > 0:22:20He's playing to the hoi polloi up there, he's playing to high
0:22:20 > 0:22:26society and the gossip hacks down in the orchestra. And what the Prince of
0:22:26 > 0:22:31Wales is saying is, yes, here we are together, but we're not just
0:22:31 > 0:22:38a couple out on an opera date. We are Mr and Mrs Prince of Wales, as it
0:22:38 > 0:22:40were, even if my awful, stuffy,
0:22:40 > 0:22:43boring mother and father don't believe it.
0:22:43 > 0:22:46We are a happily married couple. We are
0:22:46 > 0:22:52George and Maria of Park Street. Now get used to it!
0:22:52 > 0:22:54Everybody celebrate!
0:22:59 > 0:23:02By George's standards, their relationship was amazingly
0:23:02 > 0:23:07long-lasting, but eventually, they parted for good in 1811.
0:23:07 > 0:23:12However, the power of Maria's image never let up its hold on him.
0:23:13 > 0:23:18George IV died in June 1830. It had been almost 20 years
0:23:18 > 0:23:24since he'd separated from Maria Fitzherbert. And yet,
0:23:24 > 0:23:27when he was being laid out for burial, the Duke of Wellington
0:23:27 > 0:23:33noticed that he was wearing a miniature of Maria around his neck.
0:23:33 > 0:23:35He was not called the Iron Duke for nothing,
0:23:35 > 0:23:37but he knew a lot about love and he was
0:23:37 > 0:23:41so moved that he went to Maria's adopted daughter, Minney,
0:23:41 > 0:23:44and told her that the King had been buried
0:23:44 > 0:23:48with the image of Maria on his person.
0:23:48 > 0:23:52The daughter then went to her mum and repeated the story
0:23:52 > 0:23:57and what she saw was a big, fat tear fall down her cheek.
0:24:00 > 0:24:05Vain, selfish, gluttonous, serial philanderer though he was,
0:24:05 > 0:24:09George thought of himself as a child of nature.
0:24:09 > 0:24:13He grew up in a culture, for the first time, where the playfulness
0:24:13 > 0:24:19of children was seen as something to be cherished and, of course, painted.
0:24:19 > 0:24:23This portrait of the Edgeworths by Adam Buck captures perfectly
0:24:23 > 0:24:28the carefree hurly-burly of an 18th-century family.
0:24:28 > 0:24:32By the way, it only features ten of the 22 children
0:24:32 > 0:24:36sired by Richard Edgeworth, who sits at the heart of the portrait.
0:24:42 > 0:24:47In 1756, or thereabouts, a painter, the one who would paint
0:24:47 > 0:24:51children like no-one ever before and perhaps since, was
0:24:51 > 0:24:56watching his two little girls, Mary and Margaret, chase a butterfly.
0:25:00 > 0:25:02He was Thomas Gainsborough.
0:25:07 > 0:25:10Well, this is the house that Gainsborough was born and grew up in.
0:25:10 > 0:25:16As you can see, even the grandeur of its rooms is rather modest.
0:25:18 > 0:25:21That's the way Gainsborough grew up.
0:25:23 > 0:25:26His dad, John, was a sort of Jack of all rustic trades,
0:25:26 > 0:25:29a master of none - he went broke,
0:25:29 > 0:25:32it may be at the point that he was broke
0:25:32 > 0:25:35that young Thomas was sent to London to a drawing school,
0:25:35 > 0:25:39and the dad became, as best he might, a post master.
0:25:41 > 0:25:46When Gainsborough comes back to Suffolk, he is very conscious
0:25:46 > 0:25:50that being a painter was a way of putting bread on the table,
0:25:50 > 0:25:53for his own two daughters in particular.
0:25:53 > 0:25:56All his life, actually, he's one of those artists
0:25:56 > 0:25:59who is a little neurotic, not to say anxious, about money,
0:25:59 > 0:26:03however successful, and he'd become very successful indeed.
0:26:07 > 0:26:09And how does he make his money?
0:26:09 > 0:26:11He makes money by painting portraits
0:26:11 > 0:26:14of the local social grandees.
0:26:15 > 0:26:18Vicars and judges and property owners,
0:26:18 > 0:26:21and merchants, who want to be represented
0:26:21 > 0:26:25in the full swell of their social self-congratulation.
0:26:34 > 0:26:38Gainsborough might become the painter society flocks to
0:26:38 > 0:26:42for its portrait, but he grinds his teeth while he's doing it.
0:26:42 > 0:26:45He calls it "that cursed face business".
0:26:47 > 0:26:52"Damn, gentlemen. There is not such a set of enemies to a real artist
0:26:52 > 0:26:57"in the world, if not kept at a proper distance.
0:26:57 > 0:27:04"They have but one part worth looking at, and that is their purse."
0:27:05 > 0:27:09Inside all that exercise of social,
0:27:09 > 0:27:11as well as artistic obligation,
0:27:11 > 0:27:16was a much greater painter, who one day would paint for love.
0:27:22 > 0:27:25This is what happens when you paint for love, not money.
0:27:25 > 0:27:31What you get is one of the great masterpieces of English painting
0:27:31 > 0:27:34and masterpiece is not a word I use lightly, I promise you.
0:27:36 > 0:27:39Painting his daughters meant a lot to Gainsborough.
0:27:39 > 0:27:43He clearly had immense abundance of tenderness towards them.
0:27:43 > 0:27:47Not least because the first child that he and his wife had
0:27:47 > 0:27:51had died very early on, when she was just a baby.
0:27:52 > 0:27:55Gainsborough presumably has gone out sketching,
0:27:55 > 0:28:01and seen the two girls chasing a cabbage white butterfly.
0:28:02 > 0:28:05There it is, right at the edge of the picture frame.
0:28:05 > 0:28:06How brilliant is that?
0:28:06 > 0:28:09Because it's right at the edge of the picture frame,
0:28:09 > 0:28:13they have to reach towards it, and, in the excitement of the moment,
0:28:13 > 0:28:18they're holding hands - they've clasped hands together,
0:28:18 > 0:28:23so that they've become a butterfly themselves,
0:28:23 > 0:28:25a gold wing on the right,
0:28:25 > 0:28:30a beautiful creamy, wonderful kind of ivory coloured white on the left,
0:28:30 > 0:28:32and what does that tell us?
0:28:32 > 0:28:36Because Gainsborough is not just a natural painter,
0:28:36 > 0:28:38he's also mighty of mind.
0:28:38 > 0:28:41But the mind all comes through feelings,
0:28:41 > 0:28:44and so what that tells us is that his own children
0:28:44 > 0:28:47are as fragile as the butterfly,
0:28:47 > 0:28:51that this perfect moment of happy glee and excitement -
0:28:51 > 0:28:53"Are we going to get it, are we going to get it?" -
0:28:53 > 0:28:55is also ephemeral.
0:28:58 > 0:29:01This butterfly has alighted on a thistle.
0:29:01 > 0:29:05Can you all see that they have come out of this kind of dark wood?
0:29:05 > 0:29:11The dark wood of their dad's sorrow about a lost earlier child.
0:29:19 > 0:29:21You've all felt this, mums and dads out there,
0:29:21 > 0:29:24your heart being about to burst with happiness
0:29:24 > 0:29:26when you look at your children
0:29:26 > 0:29:30and this incredible kind of wrench that they are going to grow up,
0:29:30 > 0:29:32they are going to go eventually -
0:29:32 > 0:29:34it's your job to make them leave you.
0:29:36 > 0:29:39They're caught in this blaze of sunshine
0:29:39 > 0:29:40that's not going to last,
0:29:40 > 0:29:44and the butterfly is alighting on a thorny thing.
0:29:45 > 0:29:48So this is a poignant painting, as well as a happy one.
0:29:52 > 0:29:56Gainsborough used all his skill as a painter
0:29:56 > 0:29:58to capture the innocence of his young daughters.
0:29:58 > 0:30:01But there was little he could do about the tragedy
0:30:01 > 0:30:04waiting for them in adult life.
0:30:04 > 0:30:08Mary had a brief, unhappy marriage and descended into madness.
0:30:08 > 0:30:13She was looked after by her spinster sister Margaret until her death.
0:30:17 > 0:30:20Gainsborough's portrait of his daughters
0:30:20 > 0:30:23poignantly captured the fragility of children's lives.
0:30:23 > 0:30:28100 years later, a Victorian writer and photographer
0:30:28 > 0:30:31used the new technology of photography to record
0:30:31 > 0:30:35his obsession with young children, trying to capture in images
0:30:35 > 0:30:39their innocence before the passage to adulthood.
0:30:40 > 0:30:44His stories for children featured a little girl called Alice,
0:30:44 > 0:30:48and are saturated with an anxiety about growing up.
0:30:48 > 0:30:51"Here's a question for you, said Humpty Dumpty.
0:30:51 > 0:30:52"How old did you say you were?
0:30:52 > 0:30:55"Alice made a short calculation and said,
0:30:55 > 0:30:56"Seven years and six months.
0:30:56 > 0:31:00"Seven years and six months? An uncomfortable sort of age.
0:31:00 > 0:31:02"Now, if you would have asked my advice,
0:31:02 > 0:31:06"I would have said to leave off at seven, but it's too late now."
0:31:07 > 0:31:11The author was an Oxford mathematics don, Charles Dodgson.
0:31:11 > 0:31:14Everyone knows him as the writer Lewis Carroll,
0:31:14 > 0:31:18but he was also a keen amateur photographer.
0:31:18 > 0:31:20His favourite subjects were the three daughters
0:31:20 > 0:31:24of the Dean of Christ Church - Lorina, Edith and Alice,
0:31:24 > 0:31:28who would become his muse for the fictional Alice.
0:31:31 > 0:31:34If you think about it, all photography is an attempt
0:31:34 > 0:31:35to fix the moment,
0:31:35 > 0:31:40and what Dodgson wanted to do when he photographed
0:31:40 > 0:31:43these three marvellous little girls
0:31:43 > 0:31:44was to stop time,
0:31:44 > 0:31:49stop time in that special moment between the age of four and nine,
0:31:49 > 0:31:54when there was a kind of artless, little-animal high-spirits vitality.
0:31:56 > 0:32:00Later on, Alice would say Lewis Carroll was a kind of friend of hers
0:32:00 > 0:32:03and the mark of that friendship is that they were having a good time,
0:32:03 > 0:32:07and Alice is something of a little actress, even at six years old -
0:32:07 > 0:32:11she's posing asleep in one picture,
0:32:11 > 0:32:13she knows she's being photographed,
0:32:13 > 0:32:16and she's having a very good time doing it.
0:32:16 > 0:32:21Dodgson's fondness for photographing the Liddell girls in coy poses
0:32:21 > 0:32:25has opened him up to accusations of closet paedophilia.
0:32:25 > 0:32:29But look around and you'll see images of childhood innocence
0:32:29 > 0:32:34were a Victorian obsession - they wanted to keep children as children
0:32:34 > 0:32:36in an age where, through child labour,
0:32:36 > 0:32:40they were dragged into the adult world all too quickly.
0:32:41 > 0:32:45Other photographers, including women like Julia Margaret Cameron,
0:32:45 > 0:32:48created images similar to Dodgson's, uncontroversially,
0:32:48 > 0:32:52though the line between artless innocence and something darker
0:32:52 > 0:32:54was always a shadowy one.
0:32:55 > 0:32:58Dodgson's relationship with the Liddell children
0:32:58 > 0:33:01was brought to a sudden and unexplained end
0:33:01 > 0:33:03by their mother in 1863.
0:33:03 > 0:33:07There were to be no more photographs of them as children,
0:33:07 > 0:33:11but Dodgson still had one more picture to take of Alice.
0:33:12 > 0:33:14In the summer of 1870,
0:33:14 > 0:33:18Charles Dodgson writes in his diary that a wonderful thing has happened.
0:33:18 > 0:33:20It's clearly a surprise to him.
0:33:21 > 0:33:27Seven years before, in 1863, Mrs Liddell has banned Dodgson
0:33:27 > 0:33:31from taking any more photographs of her daughters.
0:33:31 > 0:33:33In 1870, she's brought them back -
0:33:33 > 0:33:36she brought Alice and her sister back.
0:33:36 > 0:33:38Why has she done that?
0:33:38 > 0:33:41In order to have marriage photos taken.
0:33:41 > 0:33:45Photos of young women who have become of a marriageable age.
0:33:47 > 0:33:51The standard pose in this romantic dreaminess is the gaze upwards,
0:33:51 > 0:33:53the gaze in the far distance.
0:33:53 > 0:33:55Something like that.
0:33:55 > 0:33:57That's not what we're looking at, is it?
0:33:57 > 0:34:01Alice is looking down, her brows are slightly furrowed.
0:34:01 > 0:34:04Her lips are pursed.
0:34:04 > 0:34:07She's an unhappy bunny, there's no doubt about this.
0:34:07 > 0:34:10She feels awkward in her womanliness.
0:34:10 > 0:34:13Or has Dodgson posed her,
0:34:13 > 0:34:17so that he loads her with a sense of his regret,
0:34:17 > 0:34:20his regret for her vanished girlhood?
0:34:23 > 0:34:28We'll never know what's going through her head and her heart.
0:34:28 > 0:34:30What this picture says
0:34:30 > 0:34:34is Alice is no longer in Wonderland.
0:34:37 > 0:34:40Dodgson's photographs of Alice
0:34:40 > 0:34:43were about trying to capture something he couldn't have.
0:34:43 > 0:34:47The permanent girl-child who had been his friend and muse.
0:34:50 > 0:34:53So it was with some of the most powerful love images
0:34:53 > 0:34:55of the Victorian era -
0:34:55 > 0:34:58they were driven by thwarted desire.
0:35:02 > 0:35:07This is not just a portrait of a strikingly beautiful woman,
0:35:07 > 0:35:09it's also a portrait of a relationship.
0:35:11 > 0:35:14One of the most spectacularly tormented menage a trois
0:35:14 > 0:35:16in all of English history.
0:35:16 > 0:35:18The woman is Jane Morris.
0:35:18 > 0:35:21Her husband, who commissioned the portrait,
0:35:21 > 0:35:25is designer, writer, socialist, William Morris.
0:35:25 > 0:35:30The painter is Dante Gabriel Rossetti, not her husband.
0:35:31 > 0:35:35The painter wants the sitter very badly indeed,
0:35:35 > 0:35:36and he can't have her,
0:35:36 > 0:35:38and the way he can have her,
0:35:38 > 0:35:40the way he can possess her,
0:35:40 > 0:35:43is to paint her, to paint this.
0:35:49 > 0:35:51Rossetti - painter and poet -
0:35:51 > 0:35:54was a founder member of the Victorian art movement,
0:35:54 > 0:35:56the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
0:35:57 > 0:36:01He first saw Jane Morris when she was just 17.
0:36:01 > 0:36:02He was a young painter,
0:36:02 > 0:36:05she was a stableman's daughter from Oxford.
0:36:05 > 0:36:09Enchanted by her beauty, he asked her to model for him.
0:36:10 > 0:36:13But they weren't fated to be together.
0:36:15 > 0:36:18Jane very soon married one of Rossetti's closest friends,
0:36:18 > 0:36:20William Morris.
0:36:20 > 0:36:23Rossetti also married, but his wife, Lizzie Siddal,
0:36:23 > 0:36:26tragically died young of a laudanum overdose.
0:36:27 > 0:36:32After Lizzie's death, Rossetti used any pretext to be with Jane
0:36:32 > 0:36:33and to gaze at her.
0:36:33 > 0:36:36In 1865, at his house in Chelsea,
0:36:36 > 0:36:39he commissioned a series of photographs
0:36:39 > 0:36:41in preparation for her portrait.
0:36:43 > 0:36:48These extraordinary photographs are records of a passion,
0:36:48 > 0:36:51which was starting to smoulder and burn,
0:36:51 > 0:36:55and eventually will burst, for Rossetti, into full flame.
0:37:00 > 0:37:04She's already been made love to, intensely,
0:37:04 > 0:37:06by the way Rossetti is lighting her.
0:37:08 > 0:37:10What's being made love to?
0:37:10 > 0:37:12The swan-like throat,
0:37:12 > 0:37:16the extraordinary waves of her hair,
0:37:16 > 0:37:18the thickness of the eyebrow.
0:37:19 > 0:37:23And, above all, an obsession in Rossetti's poetry, her mouth.
0:37:23 > 0:37:28This mouth, which at once is curved like a lyre
0:37:28 > 0:37:30and full of promise for Rossetti.
0:37:32 > 0:37:37Take a look - this is not the product of my overheated imagination.
0:37:37 > 0:37:39This is Rossetti on fire.
0:37:51 > 0:37:53Despite being hemmed in
0:37:53 > 0:37:57by the suffocating rules of Victorian society,
0:37:57 > 0:37:59Rossetti found a way of being with Jane,
0:37:59 > 0:38:02here at Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire,
0:38:02 > 0:38:05a summer home jointly rented by Morris and Rossetti.
0:38:07 > 0:38:11In the summer of 1871, William Morris went off to Iceland,
0:38:11 > 0:38:15leaving Rossetti alone with Janey and her two children.
0:38:15 > 0:38:19So, William Morris, who rented Kelmscott Manor,
0:38:19 > 0:38:23where we are, called it heaven on earth, and, boy, he was right.
0:38:24 > 0:38:28Morris's beautiful idea was that everybody should be surrounded,
0:38:28 > 0:38:32even in the day and age of the industrial world,
0:38:32 > 0:38:33by things that were of nature.
0:38:34 > 0:38:39Rossetti could not possibly have applauded that more,
0:38:39 > 0:38:42but his nature was amorous, sensual,
0:38:42 > 0:38:44it was the nature of the body,
0:38:44 > 0:38:48and so you feel this kind of desperate union
0:38:48 > 0:38:52between two different kinds of nature almost in every room.
0:39:07 > 0:39:09We have three bedrooms.
0:39:09 > 0:39:12On my left is Jane Morris' bedroom.
0:39:14 > 0:39:15It's the symphony in green.
0:39:20 > 0:39:23And then there is William's room.
0:39:23 > 0:39:26So you'll have to imagine that summer of '71,
0:39:26 > 0:39:28this room is empty,
0:39:28 > 0:39:30and then there's Rossetti's studio here.
0:39:33 > 0:39:36And this is one of the most beautiful rooms ever,
0:39:36 > 0:39:38anywhere in the world.
0:39:46 > 0:39:49Here's Rossetti's paint box.
0:39:49 > 0:39:52It's covered in dust, it's old, it is extraordinary.
0:39:52 > 0:39:54Again, it's not gussied up in any way.
0:39:54 > 0:39:59So, this is the paint box as it was left.
0:39:59 > 0:40:02This is actually a box of memory.
0:40:04 > 0:40:06The paint is caked and clotted.
0:40:06 > 0:40:10Some of those gorgeous kind of Pre-Raphaelite colours -
0:40:10 > 0:40:12greens and yellows and ochres -
0:40:12 > 0:40:14are the colours they favoured most.
0:40:35 > 0:40:37This is like a graveyard of passion.
0:40:40 > 0:40:45What lay at the heart of Rossetti's obsessive painting of Jane?
0:40:45 > 0:40:48It was the only way he could possess her,
0:40:48 > 0:40:53something he made explicit in one of his poems, called The Portrait.
0:40:53 > 0:40:59It was written in the full early swell of Rossetti's passion.
0:40:59 > 0:41:03And listen to its last line.
0:41:04 > 0:41:07Above the long lithe throat
0:41:07 > 0:41:13The mouth's mould testifies of voice and kiss
0:41:13 > 0:41:16The shadowed eyes remember and foresee.
0:41:16 > 0:41:20Her face is made her shrine.
0:41:20 > 0:41:22Let all men note
0:41:22 > 0:41:26That in all years (O Love, thy gift is this!)
0:41:26 > 0:41:32They that would look on her must come to me.
0:41:35 > 0:41:39So, it couldn't last. Of course, it didn't last.
0:41:39 > 0:41:43And, eventually, he goes. In the autumn, his poetry volume comes out.
0:41:43 > 0:41:48It's viciously attacked as being indecently sensual.
0:41:48 > 0:41:54And he's affected by this, and in despair he hits the laudanum bottle
0:41:54 > 0:41:56in a horrendous way.
0:41:56 > 0:41:58He downs an entire bottle of laudanum.
0:41:58 > 0:42:02He survives, but some of the wiring is unstuck.
0:42:08 > 0:42:10Rossetti suffered a nervous breakdown,
0:42:10 > 0:42:14and his time with Jane at Kelmscott came to an end.
0:42:14 > 0:42:16His latter years were racked by illness, drug addiction
0:42:16 > 0:42:21and alcoholism, but he continued to paint portraits of Jane.
0:42:22 > 0:42:26There is painting after painting, grandiose paintings.
0:42:26 > 0:42:30Astarte, the Syrian goddess. More of them,
0:42:30 > 0:42:36all of which feature the extraordinary image of Janie.
0:42:36 > 0:42:39That strong nose,
0:42:39 > 0:42:40those waves of raven hair.
0:42:40 > 0:42:44That mouth...like a bow.
0:42:44 > 0:42:48They would never leave him, right to the point where he dies.
0:42:50 > 0:42:53Rossetti was a child of Victorian culture.
0:42:53 > 0:42:58Even in the throes of sexual desire for Jane, he idealised her body.
0:42:58 > 0:43:00He made it at once unattainable,
0:43:00 > 0:43:04and desirable. He's always outside it.
0:43:09 > 0:43:13But there were other sort of love. Violent love. Mutually savage love.
0:43:13 > 0:43:16And there were other types of love portrait,
0:43:16 > 0:43:18where harshness replaced tenderness.
0:43:18 > 0:43:21Where flesh was turned inside out.
0:43:23 > 0:43:25Portraits, including love portraits,
0:43:25 > 0:43:30are, as many of its practitioners had always said, face painting.
0:43:30 > 0:43:34That's exactly what you don't get from Francis Bacon.
0:43:34 > 0:43:36He chews up the face
0:43:36 > 0:43:41so that we can never actually really get that eyeballing connection.
0:43:41 > 0:43:44And if you think the face is the location of tenderness
0:43:44 > 0:43:48in love portrait, that's what he prevents us from reaching.
0:43:50 > 0:43:53For Bacon, love was indistinguishable from sex,
0:43:53 > 0:43:57and it was hard love.
0:43:57 > 0:44:00It was painful, atrocious, cruel, mutually destructive,
0:44:00 > 0:44:04but, insofar as it was destructive, it was profound.
0:44:04 > 0:44:06It was getting inside the body.
0:44:06 > 0:44:09And in Bacon's great paintings,
0:44:09 > 0:44:13there's no boundary between the inside and the outside of the body.
0:44:15 > 0:44:18When Francis Bacon did these kinds of paintings,
0:44:18 > 0:44:22it was all about spilling his guts.
0:44:23 > 0:44:26That's what I think he felt we do,
0:44:26 > 0:44:29however sentimental we might get about love.
0:44:29 > 0:44:34It's a terrible insight and it has a great deal of truth in it.
0:44:37 > 0:44:43In the early 1960s, Francis Bacon was at the height of his powers.
0:44:43 > 0:44:46As a portraitist, he would paint from within his own circle of Soho
0:44:46 > 0:44:49bohemians, gay friends and lovers.
0:44:49 > 0:44:52But he would only work from photographs.
0:44:52 > 0:44:56It allowed him free rein to pull their faces apart.
0:44:56 > 0:45:02If I like them, I don't want to practise the injury that I do
0:45:02 > 0:45:06to them in my work before them.
0:45:06 > 0:45:08If I like them.
0:45:08 > 0:45:12I would rather... I would rather practice the injury in private,
0:45:12 > 0:45:20by which I think I can record the facts of them more clearly.
0:45:20 > 0:45:24There was one model who Francis Bacon painted more obsessively than
0:45:24 > 0:45:28anybody else. And his name was George Dyer.
0:45:28 > 0:45:32He was about 30-something when they met. Bacon was in his 50s.
0:45:32 > 0:45:34They met in a pub like this.
0:45:34 > 0:45:38Just who picked who up, history will never finally tell us,
0:45:38 > 0:45:39but it doesn't matter.
0:45:39 > 0:45:43They fell deeply and pretty much immediately in lust.
0:45:43 > 0:45:47Dyer was quite good looking in a way that we used to call
0:45:47 > 0:45:51the wideboy look. Bit of pompadour going on.
0:45:51 > 0:45:53And Bacon was attracted to him
0:45:53 > 0:45:56because he saw something other than the tough, even though
0:45:56 > 0:46:00Dyer was a small-time crook who'd done a bit of time in prison.
0:46:03 > 0:46:06George was completely spellbound
0:46:06 > 0:46:09and overawed by the very successful Francis Bacon.
0:46:09 > 0:46:12All that money, all this beer money, loads of parties,
0:46:12 > 0:46:14all the posh friends.
0:46:14 > 0:46:18You could sort of feel the spell he was under.
0:46:18 > 0:46:20But they became intimate.
0:46:20 > 0:46:24It's not stupid or sentimental to sort of use that word.
0:46:24 > 0:46:28Bacon only liked to paint people he knew really, really well.
0:46:28 > 0:46:32And he got to know George Dyer very well indeed.
0:46:32 > 0:46:35And great art came out of that.
0:46:38 > 0:46:41But the relationship soon soured.
0:46:41 > 0:46:46Bacon and his circle became tired of George's neediness and drinking.
0:46:46 > 0:46:50The more insecure George became, the more he drank.
0:46:50 > 0:46:56The relationship reached its tragic climax in October 1971,
0:46:56 > 0:47:00when Bacon and Dyer travelled to Paris to attend a full-scale
0:47:00 > 0:47:03retrospective of his work.
0:47:03 > 0:47:07Two days before the opening, Dyer was found dead at their hotel,
0:47:07 > 0:47:11apparently of an overdose of drink and drugs.
0:47:11 > 0:47:16Bacon barely broke his stride. He attended the show as normal.
0:47:16 > 0:47:19He wasn't going to pour out his emotions in public.
0:47:19 > 0:47:21That, he saved for his art.
0:47:21 > 0:47:23Everything escapes you.
0:47:23 > 0:47:25You know that perfectly well.
0:47:25 > 0:47:30You know even if you're in love with somebody, everything escapes you.
0:47:30 > 0:47:32You'd want to be nearer that person.
0:47:32 > 0:47:37How can you cut your flesh open and join it with the other person?
0:47:37 > 0:47:40It's an impossibility to do.
0:47:40 > 0:47:44You may love somebody very much, but how near can you get to them?
0:47:44 > 0:47:48You're still always unfortunately sort of strangers.
0:47:50 > 0:47:54Not long after Dyer had died, he began to think
0:47:54 > 0:47:58and then execute enormous works, which was the way
0:47:58 > 0:48:03he dealt with this immense surge of guilt about the way he behaved
0:48:03 > 0:48:08and also the after-shock, the trauma, really, of what had happened.
0:48:08 > 0:48:13And the results of what are called the Black Triptychs,
0:48:13 > 0:48:16these astonishing sacred pieces,
0:48:16 > 0:48:19these gay altarpieces,
0:48:19 > 0:48:22are really among the most profound things ever painted
0:48:22 > 0:48:24by anyone in this country.
0:48:27 > 0:48:30And we go immediately to the heart of the triptych - in the middle,
0:48:30 > 0:48:34there is the coupling of Francis and George.
0:48:34 > 0:48:40The tangled writhing of bodies, engaged in this dance of death.
0:48:40 > 0:48:43Horizontal out on the floor.
0:48:45 > 0:48:47On one side is George himself
0:48:47 > 0:48:51with the whole of his central part eaten away.
0:48:53 > 0:48:55Bacon has painted him with closed eyes,
0:48:55 > 0:48:58as if his eyes had been closed in death.
0:49:00 > 0:49:03As much in a state of communion with the afterlife,
0:49:03 > 0:49:08not in the process of actually committing suicide.
0:49:10 > 0:49:15And there on that side is Bacon himself.
0:49:18 > 0:49:23He, too, in his underwear, is leaking the life out of himself.
0:49:26 > 0:49:30And this whole thing, like the tradition of triptychs,
0:49:30 > 0:49:32is a great theatre,
0:49:32 > 0:49:37a profound theatre of physical torment.
0:49:37 > 0:49:38And distress.
0:49:40 > 0:49:44And Bacon did it, I think... I hate this word "closure",
0:49:44 > 0:49:46but that's what he was trying to do.
0:49:46 > 0:49:49We're very lucky that he could almost never find it
0:49:49 > 0:49:51because he went on doing these great pieces.
0:50:15 > 0:50:18Bacon's triptych was a lament for his former lover,
0:50:18 > 0:50:22but registering the muscular force of love doesn't always have to be
0:50:22 > 0:50:26a picture of destruction - something that occurred to British artist
0:50:26 > 0:50:30Jenny Saville at a life-changing moment in her own career.
0:50:31 > 0:50:33This time it was birth, not death,
0:50:33 > 0:50:35that was the spur for a love portrait.
0:50:36 > 0:50:40Well, I was pregnant, so I had two babies in a 12-month period.
0:50:40 > 0:50:43- Wow.- And I was painting as usual, you know, painting bodies,
0:50:43 > 0:50:47but the sensation of producing a body inside my body
0:50:47 > 0:50:52and painting flesh was so powerful that the sense of reproduction
0:50:52 > 0:50:55or the, you know... When I was trying to articulate flesh
0:50:55 > 0:50:59on the outside, my body was trying to articulate flesh on the inside.
0:51:02 > 0:51:04I had comments with people saying,
0:51:04 > 0:51:05"Oh, well, your life is different now".
0:51:05 > 0:51:09And that begins to grate because you think, what's happened?
0:51:09 > 0:51:11And a lot of people say women lose their creativity,
0:51:11 > 0:51:14and I felt completely the opposite of that - I felt absolutely on fire.
0:51:18 > 0:51:23So I just thought, I have to address this front-on.
0:51:23 > 0:51:24You know, I actually thought,
0:51:24 > 0:51:26Picasso, Leonardo, Michelangelo,
0:51:26 > 0:51:29none of them had felt this because they didn't have a baby, so I've
0:51:29 > 0:51:31got this insider view. I've just got to go for this, I've got to do
0:51:31 > 0:51:35everything I can to articulate this in the best way I can.
0:51:36 > 0:51:39And I started to feel the same sensation that I felt
0:51:39 > 0:51:41when I was growing flesh, which is key to me.
0:51:44 > 0:51:47When you can match your material qualities with the sensations
0:51:47 > 0:51:51you feel, either by looking or feeling, then you know you've
0:51:51 > 0:51:53got something you can work with.
0:51:54 > 0:51:56Was there anything at all about saying,
0:51:56 > 0:52:00"I want to get this particular moment of robust ferocity"?
0:52:00 > 0:52:03I knew through the whole thing, the whole pregnancy, the birth,
0:52:03 > 0:52:05everything, I thought, this is a moment.
0:52:07 > 0:52:09You know, if you pick up a child that's one year old, it's like an
0:52:09 > 0:52:13octopus, you've got to hold on to them, their legs are heavy
0:52:13 > 0:52:15or they can be completely exhausted or frantic.
0:52:15 > 0:52:18You know, it's quite a shock when you
0:52:18 > 0:52:20have a child scream at full pelt.
0:52:20 > 0:52:22You know, if you had an adult screaming
0:52:22 > 0:52:25like that, you'd have a completely different opinion of that.
0:52:25 > 0:52:26You'd be shocked.
0:52:26 > 0:52:28As a parent, you have to get used to the fact that the
0:52:28 > 0:52:31child is absolutely screaming and what they want is your protection.
0:52:34 > 0:52:37All through my life I've seen things that are
0:52:37 > 0:52:41the touchstone of what it's like to be alive. Those moments
0:52:41 > 0:52:44when you think, "This has got condensed humanity in it,"
0:52:44 > 0:52:48and that's what drives you as a painter if you work like that.
0:52:51 > 0:52:54I mean, it was a survival tool, too, because that's the way that
0:52:54 > 0:52:56I deal with everything, that I deal with whatever is
0:52:56 > 0:52:59happening in my life - making art is a way to survive.
0:53:02 > 0:53:05It's my language, really. Drawing or painting is my language.
0:53:14 > 0:53:19The power of love portraits comes from their yearning to catch
0:53:19 > 0:53:22for ever the most precious moments of our lives
0:53:22 > 0:53:27and the foreknowledge that, in the end, time can't be stopped.
0:53:29 > 0:53:32Though the way it gets expressed changes over the centuries,
0:53:32 > 0:53:34the heart of the story is the same.
0:53:38 > 0:53:42Even the one in my own lifetime, which captured that poignancy
0:53:42 > 0:53:47most intensely, has something of the eternal heartache about it.
0:53:48 > 0:53:52I said at the beginning of the film that all love portraiture is
0:53:52 > 0:53:56essentially a private thing. It's just meant for the delight
0:53:56 > 0:53:59of the parties concerned, the lovers, but it's not the whole truth,
0:53:59 > 0:54:04is it? Inside every passionate relationship, there is something
0:54:04 > 0:54:09which wants to skywrite it, to show it off to absolutely everyone.
0:54:09 > 0:54:14This was the case with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the most famous
0:54:14 > 0:54:18love relationship of the late '60s and '70s.
0:54:18 > 0:54:22But they weren't staging their love as a public event out of any
0:54:22 > 0:54:26sense of vulgar celebrity exhibitionism.
0:54:26 > 0:54:32It was exactly because John knew that the Great British public blamed
0:54:32 > 0:54:38Yoko Ono for breaking up the Beatles and felt so malicious towards
0:54:38 > 0:54:44her that he wanted to say, not just is my love none of your business,
0:54:44 > 0:54:50but, actually, open yourselves up to how sweet and innocent it is.
0:54:50 > 0:54:52Some of the things people have said about you haven't been very
0:54:52 > 0:54:56kind lately, does this get you down?
0:54:56 > 0:54:59Well, it's so much that it got past being depressing
0:54:59 > 0:55:01and it's gone into a joke again.
0:55:01 > 0:55:04It was a bit depressing, the way that they kept picking on Yoko
0:55:04 > 0:55:07and saying that she was ugly and all personal things like that,
0:55:07 > 0:55:10but I know she isn't, so...
0:55:10 > 0:55:11After the break-up of the Beatles,
0:55:11 > 0:55:15John and Yoko finally settled in New York in 1971.
0:55:17 > 0:55:19Their relationship went through a rocky patch,
0:55:19 > 0:55:23but by the end of the decade they were together again.
0:55:23 > 0:55:27Rolling Stone magazine wanted a cover shot, and sent
0:55:27 > 0:55:31photographer Annie Leibovitz to their Manhattan apartment.
0:55:31 > 0:55:34It was the last picture taken of John alive.
0:55:35 > 0:55:36Hours later, he was shot dead.
0:55:37 > 0:55:42I was in America when John was shot and killed, and a month
0:55:42 > 0:55:46later, like everybody else, I bought this copy of the Rolling Stone.
0:55:46 > 0:55:48And look at it, you know, the thing is so battered
0:55:48 > 0:55:51and bruised. It brings back this great
0:55:51 > 0:55:57surge of desolation that we all felt and, it's ridiculous,
0:55:57 > 0:56:00everybody was so proprietary about the Beatles, we just
0:56:00 > 0:56:04felt what you feel when someone very close to you has been taken
0:56:04 > 0:56:09from you - you feel cross with them, you feel angry at being abandoned.
0:56:09 > 0:56:13And I remember when I first saw the photo, I think, part of the
0:56:13 > 0:56:18sense in which it became such an overwhelming vehicle for our sense
0:56:18 > 0:56:24of loss is this astonishing kind of tenderness that hangs over it.
0:56:27 > 0:56:31And what it says to us, of course, is it's not just
0:56:31 > 0:56:33a sort of love of two lovers,
0:56:33 > 0:56:37husband and wife. It's also the love of mother and child.
0:56:42 > 0:56:47John was abandoned by his mother Julia as a child,
0:56:47 > 0:56:51but she was still so important to him.
0:56:51 > 0:56:57He talked about her as his muse, the only other muse apart from Yoko.
0:56:57 > 0:57:01And, of course, I am not doing rubbish psychiatry on you all.
0:57:01 > 0:57:07It wasn't that Yoko Ono was the mother he never had, but, clearly
0:57:07 > 0:57:13the toughest, most laconic, darkest of the Beatles
0:57:13 > 0:57:16was looking for a home.
0:57:20 > 0:57:23He was looking for the peace that love gives...
0:57:25 > 0:57:27..and he found it with her.
0:57:30 > 0:57:33He found it with her. He found the home.
0:57:33 > 0:57:36He found a place to give peace a chance, they had a child.
0:57:38 > 0:57:39That was it.
0:57:39 > 0:57:46So I think, actually, even if what was going to happen to him
0:57:46 > 0:57:49five hours after this picture was taken had never
0:57:49 > 0:57:53happened, it would have been an overwhelming thing to see
0:57:53 > 0:57:58the overwhelming love portrait in my lifetime, as it still feels.
0:57:59 > 0:58:05Because within it is the love of mother and child, of husband
0:58:05 > 0:58:07and wife, of lover and lover.
0:58:08 > 0:58:12This is the portrait of every kind of love.
0:58:14 > 0:58:16MUSIC: Eternity's Sunrise