Escape from reality

Gerhard Richter Portraits
National Portrait Gallery, until 31 May

George Always: Portraits of George Melly by Maggi Hambling
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, until 31 May

Then there’s a series of 12 drawings Hambling made to accompany Melly’s last book Slowing Down (2005), of him in quintessential pursuits: singing, fishing, writing, drinking and reading. About six weeks before he died, Hambling painted her friend on his last visit to her home, holding court in hat and eye patch, like a pirate king. By now he was far advanced in dementia. When she later visited him at home, he was dying of cancer but intent on describing his starring role in a forthcoming film on the life of Christ. This is the last painting of George alive, but already he is in another world, returning perhaps to the great ocean from which we all come, his skull-like head adrift on the turbulent billows of his green caftan.

Gold paint makes its first appearance in this picture and features liberally in the subsequent images: the ghost of George singing or dancing, his belly ballooning and a fish swimming up his tie; one-winged Melly giving a surrealist lecture with a big-breasted Magrittian nude behind him; Good Time George filled with surprising depths of sadness. In these paintings, Hambling has managed to bring together the movement and wild grandeur of her recent sea pictures with her skill in psychological portrayal and her gift for friendship. It’s another breakthrough for her: the style more allusive, the paint continually on the move, the forms vibrating with possibility. George trembles like a dissolving mirage. Vale!