David Naseby Les Murray

David Naseby first painted Les Murray, Australia’s greatest living poet, for the 1995 Archibald Prize. Their first encounter was, he admits, somewhat overwhelming because of Murray’s fiercesome intelligence. Last year Murray won the prestigious TS Eliot Prize for Poetry, consolidating his international reputation. Despite this Naseby managed to cut through the ‘awe’ factor this time and found Murray to be ‘a lot more human – in fact, we became quite friendly’.

It was the death of Murray’s father and Naseby’s mother that prompted the artist to approach the poet again. When Murray’s father died a few years ago, he wrote the poem The last hellos, which Naseby read and found extremely moving. Then quite unexpectedly Naseby’s mother died not long after and the poem resonated more deeply. ‘I felt such a connection with the poem. I felt I understood [Murray’s] pain,’ says Naseby.

Although he did not set out to paint the pain directly in the portrait, Naseby wanted it to be an underlying feeling, hence the low key approach and muted colours. ‘Les was wearing a big black shirt but I put other colours into it so that it moved into the background and just formed his body. He was wonderful to paint. In fact, I might even paint him again – though not immediately.’

Born in England in 1937, David Naseby studied at Northampton Art College. Arriving in Australia in 1953, he worked as a rouseabout and studied at the Queensland Art Gallery before moving to Sydney where he worked as an illustrator. In 1992 he began working full time as a painter.