DETAIL : George LAMBERT  Russia 1873 � Australia 1930  'Chesham Street' [Chesney Street; The Doctor; Harley Street] 1910  oil on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased in 1993 DETAIL : George LAMBERT  Russia 1873 � Australia 1930  'The convex mirror' c.1916  oil with pencil on wood panel private collection
George LAMBERT | Self-portrait

 
LAMBERT, George
Russia 1873 – Australia 1930
Australia 1887-1900; England 1900-01; France 1901-02; England 1902-21; Australia from 1921
Self-portrait December 1927
pencil
sheet 38.5 (h) x 28.2 (w) cm
image 27.6 (h) x 13.1 (w) cm
signed and dated 'G.W.Lambert/ Dec.1927' lower centre
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, purchased in 1955
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Lambert made many self-portraits, showing himself in a variety of moods. Here, his lively eyes peer over the top of his spectacles, with smiling mouth and cheeks, seeming to question himself or to make fun of himself. He carefully modelled the head and captured the textures of skin and hair to create a lively and engaging image. He is now aged fifty-four.

In presenting himself looking over his glasses Lambert paid homage to Chardin and his pastel Self-portrait with pince-nez 1771 (Musée du Louvre, Paris), and possibly also to fellow-artist William Orpen’s tribute to Chardin in his Self-portrait with glasses 1907 (Mildura Arts Centre, Victoria).

Lambert often depicted himself with a cigarette or pipe in his mouth, as in this portrait (see cats 29, 84, 89). By selecting the cigarette – or pipe – as one of his chief attributes in so many of his self-portraits he invited the cigarette to become a metaphor. It may be that smoking represented to Lambert an element of freedom or a sense of ease and relaxation. It may be that he saw it as part of his Bohemian or artistic lifestyle. Certainly a number of artists have portrayed themselves, or been depicted, smoking a pipe, such as Otto Dix, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Ernst Kirchner and Claude Monet. It may be that for Lambert, a pipe or cigarette, like his Vandyke beard, was an integral part of his identity. George Pitt-Rivers observed that ‘we feel inclined to call attention to the unlighted pipe tightly held between his lips. I have in my possession several photographs of the artist at work ... in each one his lips are firmly gripping an unlighted cigarette, without which he never seemed able to bring himself to pose’ (Lambert 1924, p.40).

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