I've always quite fancied having my portrait painted, though I know it's not a desire I share with too many people.
In fact I once had a blazing row with a friend about it: she couldn't believe that I could be so vain and self-important as to want one. In my defence I hadn't ever considered it in those terms. I still don't. I'm certainly not self-important and if you've ever seen me on the school run you'll known vanity isn't a charge that could be levelled against me.
But I'm not important either, another reason people have their portraits painted. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is such a person and has just had her likeness done by artist Gerard M Burns. It was unveiled this week and shows her leaning against a chintzy chair in Bute House in a hand-on-hip pose which manages to be both coquettish and businesslike. For a moment - but only a moment - I was reminded of Irene Adler in Sherlock, though if memory serves she was rather more scantily clad when she made her grand entrance. In the painting the First Minister makes hers in a red dress designed by Edinburgh designers Totty Rocks.
And there's the thing: if I was to have my portrait painted, what would I wear? Anybody with even a cursory knowledge of art history knows the portrait is traditionally a demonstration of the sitter's power and standing, and that what they wear and how they accessorise it is as important as how their physical likeness is conveyed.
Sometimes it's more important. In Vermeer's Girl With A Pearl Earring, for example, it's the jewellery and the blue silk turban you remember, not the face. It's the same story in Grant Wood's American Gothic, where the over-riding response to the image is: "Suit jacket over dungarees? Really?"
One of my favourite portrait subjects, for his mad clobber anyway, is hell-raising Welsh poet Dylan Thomas who sat a few times for Augustus John. In one painting Thomas wears a lavish blue scarf which clashes wonderfully with his ginger hair. In another, he's painted in a bright yellow tie so extravagantly knotted it's hard to tell if he's wearing it or it's wearing him.
So what would I go for? Something that speaks to the person I am, perhaps - an unfit father of two with a liking for red wine, Tunnock's Caramel Logs and DVD boxsets? Something that offers a glimpse of the person I would like to be, maybe? Or something that reflects the person others see? So that makes it a toss-up between jogging bottoms and a hoodie, a Superman costume with physique to match and, er, jogging bottoms and a hoodie.
Mind you, when Kate Moss sat for a Lucien Freud portrait she wore no clothes at all, so with that in mind I'll leave you with this winning image: a naked me, hanging in a gallery somewhere, a biscuit in one hand, a TV remote in the other and a strategically-placed glass of Merlot to protect my modesty.
On second thoughts, better make that a bottle.
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