Anne Mackintosh (Scottish, 1944-2014) Portrait of Lady Thatc...

Hammer

£42,000

Anne Mackintosh (Scottish, 1944-2014)
Portrait of Lady Thatcher, three-quarter length, seated in an armchair
Oil on canvas
1990
Signed and dated 'Mackintosh 90' lower left
With Mall Galleries exhibition label verso 

Anne Mackintosh was asked by Sir Jack Harvie (b. 1936) in 1990 to paint the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher so that the portrait could be presented to her when she visited Scotland.

Baroness Thatcher is seen sat in Downing Street in a bottle green Aquascutum suite from that year, and as the artist recalled, "I knew I would only get two sittings, so I took a video camera and filmed her talking to me, then worked from that at home. Then I took the painting to work on it at the second sitting. She was a perfect subject. She hardly moved. She's got such will power. She looked at the painting at the end and told me she liked it." Later Mackintosh was to receive a letter of thanks from Baroness Thatcher.

Mackintosh also went on to paint dignitaries such as Nelson Mandela and King Hussein of Jordan (four times). Baroness Thatcher was famously photographed posing with the portrait of herself in 1995, in her Chester Square home. 

Exhibited:
Royal Society of Portrait Painters at the Mall Galleries, London, 1990

Provenance:
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, DStJ, PC, FRS, HonFRSC (13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013);
Thence by descent

Dimensions:
(Frame) 55 in. (H) x 43 in. (W) 
(Canvas) 47 in. (H) x 36 in. (W)