Nick Miller, English, b.1962
Title: Last Sitting: Portrait of Barrie Cooke
Date: 2014
Medium: Oil on linen
Dimensions:
61 x 56 cm
Signed: lower right: NICK MILLER
Credit Line: Purchased, 2015
Object Number: NGI.2015.17
ProvenancePurchased, the Artist, 2015
Exhibition HistoryWinner of the Hennessy Portrait Prize 2014
Label TextThis portrait of artist Barrie Cooke was the winning entry for the inaugural Hennessy Portrait Prize at the National Gallery of Ireland in 2014. It was painted in one sitting in Miller’s studio shortly before Cooke left Co. Sligo due to ill-health. The artist and sitter were friends and neighbours for many years, and both were aware of the significance of the sitting. ‘There was an urgency to the encounter and to the work’, Miller wrote. ‘His spirits lifted for that last day in my Sligo studio and he reflected on the odd lives of painters’.