The title of the portrait is: Mr and Mrs Horace Keats in the "Christopher Brennan Cycle". It was painted by Dora Toovey in 1945 in oil on canvas. It measures about 1.5 m tall by 1.2 m wide in its frame. The frame is wide with an antique gold finish, an ornate abstract pattern of leaves or flowers embossed on its surface.
The portrait depicts three figures in a veil of mist. Soft swirling paint strokes surround, and ghostly musical notation drifts across the soprano Janet le Brun Brown, her recently deceased husband, pianist and conductor Horace Keats, and poet, Christopher Brennan, who died over 10 years before the portrait’s creation. The background of the painting is in deep green-browns on the left, blending to misty pinks and browns at the top right. Janet le Brun Brown stands front on, in the left foreground. Her dark hair, parted in the centre, is drawn back behind her neck. She has fair skin and an oval face. Janet has fine curving eyebrows and dark eyes that gaze slightly to her left. She has a long straight nose and a small mouth. Her lips, painted deep red, are closed. She wears a loose, moss-green dress, belted at the waist with a strip of the same fabric. Her sleeves are long, held in place with thumb loops.
Janet raises her left hand lightly to her chest, letting it rest over her heart. A simple band of gold gleams on her ring finger. Her right hand is lowered, holding sheet music.
Horace Keats is half hidden behind Janet, emerging from her left shoulder in the centre of the portrait. His face, painted in profile, is a little lower than hers, at eye level. His eyes and mouth are closed, a faint smile playing over his features.
There is little space between the two faces. However, the light, falling from the top right of the scene, bathes Horace’s hair and skin in ethereal pale silvery golds, contrasting with Janet’s warmer skin tones. Horace’s body is completely obscured by Janet’s. Only his indistinct hands are visible, floating above the keyboard of a piano. The keys are glimpsed through a drift of golden fog upon which float notes and scales of musical composition in deep browns and blacks.
This lower right section of the painting is rendered in rich dark tones, with Horace’s jacket sleeves and the dark wood of the piano blending together. Beneath the musical score, in the lower right corner, the words “Brennan Keats/ I AM SHUT OUT of mine own heart” are written faintly in gold above the artist’s signature and date.
The poet Christopher Brennan is posed close to Horace in the upper right of the composition. He has been painted in warmer tones than the pallid pianist. His face is positioned at the same level as Horace’s, turned towards us, the left side in shadow. Christopher’s dark hair is swept back from his face and his eyes look up, directly out of the painting. The light shines along the bridge of his nose and on his pursed lips. In one corner of his mouth he clenches a black pipe, holding its bowl in his left hand. Its smoke curls up around his head in a silvery halo. Christopher wears a light shirt, dark tie and jacket, also blending with the blacks and browns of the piano. He is hidden below mid torso, behind the instrument and the swirl of music.
Audio description written by Lucinda Shawcross and voiced by Ellie Brotchie
