Saied Dai’s portrait of Carol Black is the most recent painting to be commissioned for Newnham’s series of Principals’ portraits. Carol was the College’s Principal until 2019, formerly a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, and the current Chair of the British Library. Black originally studied History and worked as a schoolteacher, but retrained in Medicine, graduating in the subject at the age of 30. She became an Expert Adviser on Health and Work to the NHS and past-President of the Royal College of Physicians, during which time she was awarded her DBE.
Chosen for his original, meticulous and timeless style, Saied Dai (b.1958), was trained at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design, before studying at the Royal Academy of Arts. He later taught at the RA Schools and at the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture. Dai was elected to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 2004 and won the prestigious Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture and the Society’s Gold Medal in 2006. Notable subjects for Dai’s portraits include Christopher Frayling the former Chair of Arts Council England and Rector of The Royal College of Art, and the popular children’s author Jacqueline Wilson, which was commissioned for The Foundling Museum.
Dai’s portrait of Carol shows her wearing a white silk jacket with a length of blue silk draped over her shoulders. She stands against a background of bamboo and foliage inspired by the design of a folding screen in the atrium of Lloyd Lodge. Dai explained that he and Carol had together chosen clothing ‘that would offer a simplicity of design, a good silhouette and most importantly, a combination that would appear as timeless as possible’.
Dai’s technique, using oil painted on a gessoed panel, employs the same materials as described by the Renaissance artist and author, Cennino Cennini in Il Libro del’ Arte (c. 1400). This choice of technique, in which the paint bonds with the surface to create a unified object, conveys a monumental, icon-like quality to the painting. On display in the College’s newest building, the portrait thus carries a message of modernity linked to tradition.