Lautrec was an enthusiastic frequenter of brothels, as were most of his contemporaries, so nothing unusual there; but he painted the women and occasionally their clients. He seems to have had a faiblesse for redheads. No academic nudes these. Henri was not an attractive man: too much...
The lovely shawl made her appear modern to the public of the time - it is Japanese and ‘Japonisme’ was all the rage - it is curious that the addition of clothing to a nude tends to make the subject more risqué - Wilson Steer never dared to exhibit Seated Nude in a Black Hat (1900) precisely...
What was the attraction in big women for Fellini? It wasn't that he disliked thin ones - far from it! Yet most of his films have room for an over sized Junonic actress: Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita and the unforgettable, matronly tobacconist who overwhelms the young Fellini in Amarcord...
The model for this picture, Gabriella is a cook in a hospital, but she had always desired to do something artistic. When I first saw her I immediately thought of a woman from La Belle Epoque, she looked as if she had stepped out of Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre; in fact with her crow black...
The second of the series after the Corday. I had had in mind the idea of interpreting the Ingres’ Grande Odalisque for some time and I had even done a version with the same set, but the first model was not right. Then in 1989 a girl of just eighteen happened by my gallery in Bologna. She had...
This photo, the first of the series was a response to a competition organised by an arty Café in Bologna. The model Soraya who bore a certain similarity to Marat in the original, was the first in a long line of willing, patient and extraordinary, ordinary women who have modelled for...
Klimt painted two versions of the bloody biblical story of the slaying of Holofernes by the Jewish patriot Judith, the second he painted after his visit to Ravenna where the Byzantine gold mosaics had a profound affect on his technique. In both versions Judith holds the decapitated head...
Dragon was prompted by Pauline's wonderful tattoo of a Japanese dragon. Personally I'm not all that keen on tattooing but in this case I felt I'd met someone who had a work of art on her back. This image was realised shortly after the Japanese earthquake and the nuclear disaster that...
Fuseli, German Romantic 2007 Fuseli: a German romantic, a lover of Shakespeare and the Gothic, friend of Blake, a painter of remarkable sensibility and psychological perception, a forerunner of the Symbolists. Nightmare, of which he did several versions, was something of an obsession. Perhaps he...
The women in my pictures are unpaid amateurs of all ages, types, nationalities and cultures. Many of them have never posed before for anything other than snapshots. What's it like for the photographer and what's it like for them? The photographer's point of view. The Meeting. I am quite brazen...
This picture was just done for fun one summer's evening on the roof of our home in Orvieto. I had met the two friends just that morning. German students from Weimar, they were travelling round Italy on a camping holiday. Lyz and Julie stepped out of their old 90s car and into my...
What is it like to pose for one of the Belle? Here is Katia's humorous story. A young journalist from Australia of Italian origin she posed for Correspondent and also for Klimtomania with fellow Australian, her friend Daniella also of Italian origin. I stand, naked, with a...
Chat with Patrick
