Recline and sprawl

Adam Solomons | Issue 1 | Magazine, Politics

From the Archive

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Jacob Rees-Mogg’s languid pose on the Treasury bench launched a thousand memes on social media. Five observers interpret his body language for us.

Philip Mould, art dealer: What’s so interesting about that Rees-Mogg pose is that, unlike 99 percent of the canon of British portraiture, he’s reclining. The political office of the 16th, 17th and first half of the 18th centuries was indistinctive from the aristocratic one. Even Cromwell would stand like a Van Dyck when he was being painted. The idiom of portraying political power was always to make you look like an aristocrat. Then, in the later 18th and 19th centuries, politicians were increasingly portrayed with a new democratic quality: you think of Thomas Lawrence and Millais doing Disraeli and Gladstone – they’re intransigent, statutory. There’s a new sobriet, with darker clothes that make it hard for artists to deal with. Artists then had to emphasise gesture and facial expression in a way that they hadn’t in the ostentatious iconography of yesteryear. And although it breached protocol, if you’re a portrait painter who wants to express the role of Leader of the House, what bette...

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