The eponymous Christine worked as an au pair for Uglow’s fellow Camberwell student Anthony Eyton and his wife, Mary. Uglow primarily worked from professional models but friends and acquaintances also sat for him. The dynamism in the relationship between artist and sitter in Head of Christine is palpable: a magnetism radiates from Christine, an intensity imbuing the portrait with immense presence. Uglow marries a psychic potency with an assured interplay between surface and texture, form and colour, adopting an increasing confidence in an idiosyncratic palette that moved away from the murkiness associated with the Euston Road School. As opposed to the solidity of his nudes from the mid-1950s, such as Seated Nude, c. 1954, in Head of Christine, Uglow delights in the translucency of flesh, its softness and malleability, the subtlety of tones merging into one another and its differing appearance under changing light. Her skin glows with a luminosity unprecedented in Uglow’s earlier work and likewise intensely deep green shadows play across her jawline and neck. Reality seems to be heightened, to be revealed through paint in a level of detail beyond the capacity of the eye alone. The indent in her cheek where finger meets face becomes a focal point for the portrait: the effect of light on the hollow is captured with exaggerated precision. An artificiality borne of abnormal scrutiny is augmented by the medley of measuring marks in a multitude of bright colours punctuating the portrait. Planes of colour enclose Christine’s head and hand: bands of yellow and grey in the background, the browns of coat and chestnut hair and the splash of the fresco-like blue of her top. Swathes of single tones contrast with the subtle modulation of hues across her flesh. Surface – of her skin, of the canvas – is emphatically asserted. The grain of the canvas, evident throughout the relatively thinly-painted portrait subsumes textural variation of background, coat, hair, and flesh. Depth is still apparent - her head seems to project from the collar of her coat - but the materiality of painting as object holds equal weight. Uglow’s personal artistic vision - his imperative to seek an underlying rationale to the visible world - did not preclude specificity in each model he depicted. Rather, her presence was affirmed, her claim to individuality proclaimed. Pervading all formal concerns in this portrait is the intensity of Christine’s gaze. Her grey-green eyes, a rare instance in Uglow’s oeuvre of completed eyes, fixed in concentration - perhaps on her pose - are compelling. Her gaze does not meet the artist’s but it does match it.