Portrait power

Tate Liverpool is the first venue for a memorial exhibition of the painter Marie-Louise von Motesiczky (born Vienna 1906, died London 1996). Motesiczky was from a wealthy and cultivated Jewish background. She was a friend (from 1920) and pupil of Max Beckmann in Frankfurt (1927–8). She left Austria in 1938, settling in London, where she lived an isolated life. It is not that it was lonely. In fact, she had a very rich existence socially, especially after her move to Hampstead, but German art was little regarded in post-war England. Her training added independent study, in Paris and elsewhere, to a few terms at Frankfurt with her master, Beckmann. He told her she might become greater than Paula Modersohn-Becker but she never established a career. She was just finding the confidence to exhibit when the Nazis marched in, and when she reached London she became submerged in its quite different culture. Later, she had shows of importance — the Beaux Arts Gallery 1960, the Vienna Secession in 1966, and Bremer Kunsthalle 1967. At each appearance she was greeted as a discovery. Reviews of her retrospectives in London (Goethe-Institut 1985), the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge, 1986, and Vienna (Belvedere 1994) also welcomed a major talent, and the moment of revelation is about to recur.

Like Van Gogh, she sold scarcely a single painting in her lifetime. The high survival rate is a tremendous advantage, but proves a mixed blessing in this show. She was a wonderful and complicated person: controlling but inconsistent in suppressing aspects of her work. Alive, she made the selector’s task very difficult, but the freedom now possible allows misrepresentation. An exhibition depends, above all, on the selection. A memorial show should present the artist’s strengths, with works from each category in proportion to the output. Not all artists are prolific, and overall scale is a crucial indication of character.