Tanya Harrod

Why do British galleries shun the humane, generous art of Ruskin Spear?

No one painted people nursing a drink in a back bar more tenderly than this working-class artist

‘Friday Night’, 1958, by Ruskin Spear, one of many proto-pop portraits of Ernest Marsh. Credit: De Beers Art Collection 
issue 22 January 2022

Where do you see paintings by Ruskin Spear (1911–90)? In the salerooms mostly, because his work in public collections is rarely on display. Until the National Portrait Gallery closed for redevelopment it was, however, possible to study Spear’s splendid portrait of ‘Citizen James’ (Sid James) peering from a black and white TV screen, and his oil sketch of Harold Wilson wreathed in pipe smoke, the epitome of political cunning.

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