The British Academy, established by Royal Charter “for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies”, is now in its hundredth year. To mark the centenary a group portrait of the Academy’s living presidents, past, present and future, was commissioned from a young painter called Stuart Pearson Wright. The resulting picture, reproduced here, is on public display throughout the summer at the National Portrait Gallery, having recently been awarded first prize in the annual “BP Portrait Award” (a contest which I helped to judge). Its title is intriguing: Gallus Gallus with Still Life and Presidents.

Six elderly men, five of them in dark suits and one in slacks and a jumper, are gathered solemnly in a small, brightly lit room. The London Eye, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben can be seen through the window behind them. Their dress and demeanour suggest business in the boardroom; but the table around which they sit is laid as if for tea in an old folks’ retirement home, albeit with one significant difference. In the middle of the immaculately ironed white tablecloth, beside the silver sugar bowl, the opened milk bottle and the plate set out with biscuits, the artist has placed a large and very dead chicken. The Gallus Gallus referred to in the title, this would seem to have been introduced as a vanitas motif: a reminder that all flesh is frail. It performs much the same function, therefore, as the anamorphically rendered skull on the floor in Holbein’s famous double portrait, The Ambassadors.

The artist has vivid memories of the moment when the portrait was first shown to those who had sat for it:

“The unveiling was done at the British Academy by the President elect, Lord Runciman, who’s present in the painting in the form of...

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