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| Jonathan Richardson Senior Portrait of Jonathan Richardson Junior (the artist's son) 1732 oil on canvas Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
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| Marie Laurencin The Artist's Mother 1906 oil on canvas Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| Gerrit Dou The Artist's Mother ca. 1650 oil on panel York Art Gallery (Yorkshire) |
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| Harold Gilman Grace Canedy (the artist's wife) ca. 1904 oil on canvas Aberdeen Art Gallery (Scotland) |
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| Harold Gilman The Artist's Daughters 1906-1907 oil on canvas York Art Gallery (Yorkshire) |
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| Louise Jopling The Painter's Son ca. 1875 oil on panel Manchester Art Gallery |
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| Augustus John Portrait of Edwin John (the artist's son) ca. 1927 oil on canvas National Museum Cardiff (Wales) |
Dockery and Son
'Dockery was junior to you,
Wasn't he?' said the Dean. 'His son's here now.'
Death-suited, visitant, I nod. 'And do
You keep in touch with –' Or remember how
Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight
We used to stand before that desk, to give
'Our version' of 'these incidents last night'?
I try the door of where I used to live:
Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide.
A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored.
Canal and clouds and colleges subside
Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord,
Anyone up today must have been born
In '43, when I was twenty-one.
If he was younger, did he get this son
At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn
High-collared public-schoolboy, sharing rooms
With Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows
How much ... How little ... Yawning, I suppose
I fell asleep, waking at the fumes
And furnace-glare of Sheffield, where I changed,
And ate an awful pie, and walked along
The platform to its end to see the ranged
Joining and parting lines reflect a strong
Unhindered moon. To have no son, no wife,
No house or land still seemed quite natural.
Only a numbness registered the shock
Of finding out how much had gone of life,
How widely from the others. Dockery, now:
Only nineteen, he must have taken stock
Of what he wanted, and been capable
Of ... No, that's not the difference: rather, how
Convinced he was he should be added to!
Why did he think adding meant increase?
To me it was dilution. Where do these
Innate assumptions come from? Not from what
We think truest, or most want to do:
Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They're more a style
Our lives bring with them: habit for a while,
Suddenly they harden into all we've got
And how we got it; looked back on, they tear
Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying
For Dockery a son, for me nothing,
Nothing with all a son's harsh patronage.
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.
– Philip Larkin (1964)
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| Vanessa Bell Angelica Bell (the artist's daughter) ca. 1930 oil on canvas Charleston House, Lewes, Sussex |
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| Lawrence Alma-Tadema Miss Anna Alma-Tadema (the artist's daughter) 1883 oil on canvas Royal Academy of Arts, London |
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| Henri Fantin-Latour Mademoiselle Marie Fantin-Latour (the artist's sister) 1859 oil on canvas Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (West Midlands) |
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| Alfred Munnings In Cornwall (the artist's wife on horseback) ca. 1911-21 oil on canvas Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (West Midlands) |
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| Wyndham Lewis Froanna, the Artist's Wife 1937 oil on canvas Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow |
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| Glyn Philpot Gabrielle and Rosemary (the artist's nieces) ca. 1927-28 oil on canvas Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| William Logsdail The Artist's Wife ca. 1905 oil on canvas Victoria Art Gallery, Bath |
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| Frederic Leighton Portrait of Mrs Sutherland Orr (the artist's sister) 1889 oil on canvas Victoria Art Gallery, Bath |