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Borchard acquired 'Myself in a Bad Mood' in 1965. The Prussian blue of the artist’s shirt adds a subtly strident element to the greys, olives and browns. His head and upper torso are commandingly modelled. He looks distinguished with neat moustache and goatee beard. Yet he exudes melancholy, a suppressed anxiety, evoked by the rugged lines etched beneath hang-dog eyes. Hall was often depressed by difficulties earning a living as a painter but found something enthralling about his bohemian poverty. He decided to leave Paris eventually as he did not wish to take money from his parents. Gwen John told him: ‘If people help you they will do so because they like to and you have no obligation to them... Only this, do good work.’ He commented sadly in 1958: ‘Gwen John gave me the right advice thirty years ago.
The 1942 self portrait may indeed be influenced by his work as a stretcher-bearer during the Blitz. As George Melly has written, ‘Then in 1950... He recognised what he must do to express certain ideas which haunted him.’ His later paintings of faceless bathers on beaches shrouded in massive towels, girls suffocatingly ‘wrapped in polythene’, are bizarrely moving.
The Ruth Borchard Collection
Title
Myself in a Bad Mood
Date
1942
Medium
oil on board
Measurements
H 46 x W 35.5 cm
Accession number
PCF47
Acquisition method
acquired by Ruth Borchard as part of the original collection
Work type
Painting
The Ruth Borchard Collection
Piano Nobile, Kings Place, 90 York Way, Greater London N1 9AG England
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