The grandson of four Jewish immigrants, Anthony Rudolf is one of the leading British poets, critics and translators of his generation. He was the companion and main male model of the painter Paula Rego from 1996 until her death in 2022. Rego, a Portuguese artist who settled in London in the 1950s, was one of the greatest artists of the last 50 years, best known for her dark, powerful paintings and prints based on fairy tales, folk stories and women’s struggles.
This memoir is a deeply moving account of their life together and the intimate relationship between a famous female artist and her male model. Rego once told The Times, ‘He’s wonderful to draw; he loves it, he understands it, he takes part in it. It’s extraordinary – I can’t explain what it is, it’s very, very personal.’
Born in Lisbon in 1935, Paula grew up in the shadow of Salazar’s dictatorship. She was once asked, “Why do you paint?” She replied, “To give fear a face”. She was later sent to school in England and then studied at the Slade in the early 1950s, where she met her husband Victor Willing.
Paula met Tony Rudolf in 1996. She was 60, he was 54. He became her male model a few months later. He describes her studio: “mannequins, costumes and masks... The studio feels like a grand opera backstage, with pictures as operas and models as singers.”
She worked in the studio five or six days a week. “Paula’s time in the studio is sacrosanct,” Rudolf writes. “While working in the studio, Paula is a control freak and obsessional, and vulnerable when things go wrong.” Rudolf poses “once or twice a week for three or four hours each time...
“Modelling is a strange experience, very intimate, especially if you are the lover of the artist. There are hardly any visitors to the studio. Dealers, potential purchasers and favoured collectors.”
The book is also full of insights into Rego’s art and the life of an artist. Rudolf is fascinating about the tension in her work between “the pictorial requirements” and the “demands of the story”. One of the best parts of the book is about the importance of story for her, how she draws on fairy tales, folklore (rarely Jewish), nursery rhymes and dark books like Jane Eyre (with Rudolf posing as Mr. Rochester), “her private coalition of demons and marvels and desires and pleasures”, and, of course, art history, favourite artists like Velazquez, Picasso and Goya.
“We loved each other throughout,” he writes at the end. “We were happy; that survives the dominion of death.” It is a moving end to a beautiful book about love and art.
Office hours in the studio of Paula Rego by Anthony Rudolf is published by Art Publishing Inc
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