Iconic photos of Pauline Boty by Michael Ward available to buy at Gazelli Art House

“Untitled (Pauline Boty In Her Studio with ‘July 26’), 1963” by Michael Ward. Vintage photographic print. Ed. 4/25. Courtesy of Elizabeth Seal-Ward for the Michael Ward Archive & Gazelli Art House

In association with the exhibition “Pauline Boty: a portrait” currently showing at Gazelli Art House the gallery has commissioned a series of four C-prints by Michael Ward of Pauline Boty alongside some of her key Pop art paintings in editions of only 25 per image.

Notably, the works shown include Scandal 63 (the only surviving record of her painting based on Lewis Morley’s portrait of Christine Keeler, last seen in the 1960s) and With Love to Jean-Paul Belmondo (an early version of which appeared on the cover of Men Only in 1963 and sold for £1,159,500 at auction in 2022). Pauline Boty was also photographed by, among others, David Bailey, Lewis Morley, Michael Seymour and Roger Mayne and Ward’s images undoubtedly number amongst her best and most well-known portraits

In addition there are a small number of vintage silver gelatin prints by Ward available. Again, of note among these are Boty photographed alongside her lost work July 26, last seen in the 1968 BBC documentary The New Radicals.

“Untitled (‘Men Only’ cover shot), 1963/2023” by Michael Ward. Coloured C-print. Edition of 25. Courtesy of Elizabeth Seal-Ward for the Michael Ward Archive & Gazelli Art House

MICHAEL WARD (B. 1929; UK – D. 2011)
Michael Ward rose to prominence as a photographer for the Evening Standard’s Show Page, capturing the emerging talents of his era, including luminaries such as Maggie Smith, Barbara Windsor, Jill Ireland, Jackie Collins, and Julie Christie.
In the mid-1960s, Ward joined the Sunday Times where, alongside Bryan Wharton, he became one of the newspaper’s standout photographers. Their collaborative efforts extended beyond portraiture, to current events and news, including the Naples earthquake, the 1968 Paris riots, and the 1974 Turkish-Cypriot war.
Ward’s extensive archive has been featured in exhibitions across Britain, with over fifty portraits spanning three decades housed in the National Portrait Gallery [biographical info courtesy of the Gazelli Art House website].

Further information
For further information and high resolution previews of the images please click here: [link]
Clicking on a thumbnail in each case provides detailed specifications, a scrollable preview and an Enquire button to request further information, including price and availability.

All images Copyright The Artist

Installation shot of the four C-prints by Michael Ward on display in the exhibition “Pauline Boty: a portrait”. The prints are displayed in front of a recreation of part of one of the collaged walls created by Boty. Image courtesy of Gazelli Art House

“Pauline Boty: Her Life and Legacy” talk to be held at Iconic Images Chelsea on 7 December

Iconic Images Chelsea have announced the following as the latest in their series of Park Walk Talks: “Artist, feminist, pioneer, provocateur – Pauline Boty was many things in her too-short life. Born into a middle-class Catholic family in 1938, she won a scholarship to the Wimbledon School of Art, attending despite her conservative father’s disapproval. A degree at the Royal College of Art followed, then the post-college years in which Boty became the only established female member of the Pop art movement of the 1960s.

After her untimely death in 1966 at the age of only 28, Boty’s paintings were stored away in a barn on her brother’s farm, and she was largely forgotten for nearly 30 years. In the 1990s her work was rediscovered, provoking new interest in her contribution to Pop art and leading to her inclusion in several group exhibitions as well as a major solo retrospective – in other words, a rewriting of Pop art history.

Join us on Thursday December 7th at the Iconic Images Gallery Chelsea for the latest in our series of Park Walk Talks, where the collector and researcher Christopher Gregory will be exploring Pauline Boty’s brief but fascinating life and legacy. A longtime aficionado of 1960s pop culture, Gregory first encountered Boty’s work in 2011, contributing to her newly published biography and establishing the authorised website paulineboty.org.”

Details
Title: Park Walk Talks: Pauline Boty: Her Life and Legacy
Location: Iconic Images Chelsea, 13A Park Walk, London SW10 0AJ
Date: 7 December 2023
Time: 7:00 pm
Tickets are free and can be booked via eventbrite here [link]

Header image shows Pauline Boty with her great lost work “Scandal ’63” photographed by Michael Ward.

Can you help locate Boty’s great lost work, “Scandal ’63”?

Pauline Boty by Michael Ward, 13 January 1964, on display at the National Portrait Gallery in 2020. © Michael Ward Archives / National Portrait Gallery, London

Friday’s Daily Telegraph included a piece by Jake Kerridge about how writer Tom Glover is asking its readers for their help in tracking down Boty’s great lost work Scandal ’63 which has remained unseen at large since its creation and only survives currently courtesy of photographs taken by Michael Ward. The large painting’s focus is Christine Keeler astride a chair against a vivid red background in a variation of the iconic shot taken by Boty’s friend Lewis Morley. Across the top are four of the male protagonists of the Profumo Affair: Aloysius ‘Lucky’ Gordon, John Profumo, Stephen Ward and Johnny Edgecombe.

As the work was commissioned Glover deems it unlikely to have been burned, thrown away or lost at the time and through the correspondence of gallerist Mateusz Grabowski (who featured Boty in exhibitions in 1963 and again in 1965) has ascertained that the surname of the individual who commissioned the work is Wright, but other than that has reached a dead end with his search.

The work can also be seen here in portraits of Boty by Michael Ward [link] and in an earlier incarnation by Lewis Morley [link]

The Daily Telegraph article is here [paywall] [link]

Should anyone reading this have any further information that they might like to share please contact info@paulineboty.org

Pauline Boty with “Scandal ’63” by Michael Ward on display at the National Portrait Gallery

Pauline Boty by Michael Ward, 13 January 1964, C-type colour print

The portrait of Pauline Boty with her presumed lost work “Scandal ’63” is on display in “The UK 1960–Today” in Room 32 at the National Portrait Gallery.

“The display includes groups of portraits by particular artists, inviting the viewer to consider the range of contrasting approaches. While the challenge of depicting an observed sitter remained, a rich stylistic diversity characterises portraiture in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

From the early 1960s the pace of social, political and artistic change in Britain gathered momentum. Food rationing ended only in 1954 and a growing affluence and a new mood of prosperity gave rise to increasing consumerism. Television, cinema, radio, advertising and magazines fuelled these changes by swiftly communicating the latest developments in fashion, design, music, science and the arts. But the optimism of the early 1960s was, by the end of the decade, replaced by a sense that the dream of progress had somehow slipped away. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s inequality in material wealth increasingly created new hierarchies and social tension.” [from the National Portrait Gallery website]

With thanks to Terence Pepper for the notification. More information on the portraits on display can be found here: [link]