Not particularly given to self-scrutiny in paint, Self-Portrait after Falling on Nose, c. 1964, is one of just four known painted self-portraits Uglow produced, the latest and most complete of the four. The collector Ruth Borchard purchased the self-portrait in 1965 for £21 to enter her esteemed collection of self-portraits by prominent British and Irish artists. A Jewish German émigré and an extraordinary patron of the arts, Borchard lived in Reigate, Surrey, producing numerous children’s books, alongside biographies and an account of her internment on the Isle of Man during World War II. Borchard began assembling her collection in the 1950s, and ultimately concluded her collection at 100 self-portraits with artists such as William Crozier, Francis Newton Souza, Cecil Collins, Keith Vaughan and Roger Hilton represented. Philip Vann has suggested that Uglow may have even painted Self-Portrait after Falling on Nose specifically for Borchard, but no correspondence exists between the two to confirm how the picture entered the collection aside from the note on its price.[i] Uglow presents himself in prosaic, sober fashion, head and shoulders square on to the viewer, dead centre in the small-scale portrait-oriented rectangular board. Uglow’s bluntly severe composition is mirrored by a candid appraisal of his appearance. Austerely monk-like with his bald head, Uglow was renowned for his stocky stature, a champion swimmer in his youth. His eyes stare straight out of the painting but past the viewer, intent and piercing, whilst the red dot on his nose, evidence of the titular fall on his nose, seems a tongue-in-cheek spot of colour. So garishly obvious is its hue and placement, Uglow deliberately fractures any tradition of a painting as illusion. Self-Portrait after Falling on Nose appears to be a night painting – a series of painting Uglow produced in his Turnchapel Mews studio under artificial lighting including Girl with Arms Up (Artificial Light), 1967 – with light falling from above, illuminating Uglow’s expanse of scalp and casting shadows under his eyes and chin. Loose brushwork particularly in the background but even evidenced over his face indicates Uglow painted the self-portrait hastily: many night paintings were executed in sessions of three hours or less in contrast to Uglow’s usual extensive process. The bleached tone of his flesh and the murky brown background equally suggest gas or electric lighting. An unease pervades amidst the artificial atmosphere and the speed of paint application. Evidently, Uglow was uncomfortable with himself as subject, at the mercy of his unrivalled powers of perception, choosing a comparatively brief night painting session to produce this self-portrait and never again repeating the exercise. [i] P. Vann, Face to Face: British Self-Portraits in the Twentieth Century (London, 2004), p. 279.