Dorset artist Michael Taylor painted the ‘Dutch masterpiece’ in 2013 – now it’s the ‘unmissable highlight’ of a new exhibition of Wes Anderson’s archives
Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel is that rare thing, a multi-award-winning film for which the words cult and iconic are utterly applicable – rare, because awards and genuine long-lasting critical status are not common bedfellows.
Famous for its stupendous designs – the hotel itself is like a massive piece of particularly frou-frou Viennoiserie, which declines into grey neglect over time from its 1930s glory days – and for the irresistible performance of Ralph Fiennes at his mischievous, charismatic best as the concierge, M. Gustave, the 2014 film is also remembered for its central “character” – the Renaissance masterpiece “Boy with an Apple”.
And that’s where Dorset comes in.
Boy with an Apple, by the fictional Johannes van Hoytl the Younger, is not of course a Renaissance painting – it is not even a Renaissance pastiche or copy. It is a genuine original masterpiece by a living artist, the distinguished portrait and still life painter Michael Taylor, who lives at Fordington Green in Dorchester.
M. Gustave, who has been left the painting by one of his wealthy, elderly dowager lovers, shows it to his protege Zero and says: ‘This is van Hoytl’s exquisite portrayal of a beautiful boy on the cusp of manhood. Blonde, smooth skin as white as that milk, of impeccable provenance. One of the last in private hands, and unquestionably the best. It’s a masterpiece. The rest of this shit is worthless junk.’
While this quote would be unfair to the other exhibits in the major exhibition of Wes Anderson’s archives at the Design Museum in London’s Holland Park, it is true that Boy with an Apple is described as an ‘unmissable highlight.’ And, as if paying tribute to the significance of the ‘Dutch masterpiece’, the painting is mounted behind bullet-proof glass!
Alongside finished props and sets, the Wes Anderson: The Archives exhibition features work-in-progress material and maquettes, and looks at the variety of traditional and hand-made film-making techniques that the director continues to celebrate through his work.
The museum website describes the landmark exhibition as ‘charting the evolution of Wes Anderson’s films from early experiments in the 1990s to recent productions.’ More than 700 objects illustrate the director’s meticulous craft of film-making, through original storyboards, Polaroids, sketches, paintings, handwritten notebooks, puppets, miniature models and dozens of costumes. Originally scheduled to close in July, the exhibition is so popular that it has been extended to 16th August. Then it will be going on an extensive world tour.*
Out of the blue
When Michael Taylor was commissioned to create the painting, he had never seen a Wes Anderson film, and he doesn’t really know how his work came to the attention of the director – the commission came out of the blue. It is the only painting or prop he has made for any film. He has no idea how Wes Anderson heard of him – he was initially contacted by one of Anderson’s producers, Molly Cooper, who asked if he would be interested in creating some sort of portrait for a film. ‘I was in between paintings at the time,and had never done anything like it before. So I thought why not?’
Anderson rang Michael and talked about the sort of painting he had in mind: ‘a Renaissance-style picture that was funny, but not TOO funny, of a richly costumed boy holding an apple, possibly in a castle with a painting of one on the wall behind him.’ Michael made it clear he was only interested in taking it on if it was a real portrait done from life, and that he had enough time to do it justice: ‘So many films containing paintings are ruined by unconvincing “masterpieces” knocked out at the last moment from a photo.’
The model was 13-year-old dancer Ed Munro, who at the time was in the West End production of Singin’ in the Rain. The sittings took place in the stone hall of a Jacobean building, now a girls school, near Child Okeford, where Michael was living at the time.
The painting, oil on canvas, took four months, working and re-working aspects to the director’s exacting requirements and ideas, although Anderson, who is renowned for his attention to detail and his control over every element of his films, did not actually see it (as a photograph) until Michael had been working on it for three months.
Image courtesy of National Portrait Gallery
The authenticity of the piece extends not only to the beautiful frame, made by Michael’s regular framer, Philip Elletson, using worm-eaten wood with antique hanging fixtures, but to the (unseen) back of the painting, with fake antique Dutch framers labels and rusty tacks (all part of the all-important ‘provenance’ – as regular viewers of BBC2’s Fake or Fortune will know).
When the film came out, the reviews were generally enthusiastic – it won many nominations and five Oscars, and audiences loved it. It is Anderson’s most financially successful film, costing $25 million and taking $173 million worldwide.
With its dramatic Eastern European mountain setting, the increasingly faded grandeur of the hotel and the menacing Fascist/Communist backdrop, The Grand Budapest Hotel could be a metaphor for the challenges we still face and the struggle for survival of independent thought, creativity and culture in a world of monolithic power structures.
As M. Gustave says (and apologies to anyone who objects to his final comment): ‘You see? There are still faint glimmers of civilisation left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that’s what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant – (sighs deeply). Oh, fuck it.’
The Florence connection
Michael Taylor is one of this country’s leading figurative artists, renowned for his beautifully-observed still lifes, and for his fine portraits – he has four in the National Portrait Gallery, including the famous painting of the composer John Tavener. Born in 1952 he grew up in Sussex, and lived for many years in Child Okeford. Largely self-taught in oils, he went to West Sussex College of Art and then to Goldsmiths, where he obtained a BA Hons in Fine Art in 1973.
Faced with the choice of driving a London bus or painting, after a day on the buses he settled on painting, supporting himself with a job at the Cutty Sark riverside pub in Greenwich. After a year, he submitted two paintings to the Royal Academy Summer Show – both were accepted and sold at the private view. He was commissioned to paint a portrait of former Lord Mayor of London Sir Robert Bellinger, and, aged just 21, he gave up the pub job to concentrate on painting.
In 1974 he married Caroline, a calligrapher and heraldic painter, and the couple moved to the more affordable Yorkshire, where they bought a small terraced cottage with no bathroom or hot water, and a toilet ‘over the road and down a bit’! Michael continued to show at the RA, but he also had a connection with a dealer in Florence who took everything he could paint, paying in advance. ‘I remember him giving me a roll of notes and saying “Go away and paint and bring them to me.”’
After a couple of years of Yorkshire cold and fog, Michael and Caroline came to Dorset with their daughter Ellen, initially moving to a basic converted chapel, which they restored and where they had their son Richard.
Michael was painting large figurative paintings which proved difficult to sell and also brought the end of his long and successful arrangement with the Florence gallery. In the 1980s, figurative art was right out of fashion and for 18 months Michael actually gave up painting to look after the children. Caroline had a contract to inscribe and illuminate the Bournemouth Crematorium Books of Remembrance, and her income kept them afloat.
In 1983, his painting Caroline Watching Television won the National Portrait Gallery’s John Player Award, and along with the cash prize he was commissioned to paint a well-known person for the gallery’s permanent collection. He chose the classical guitarist Julian Bream, who lived near Shaftesbury. Other commissions followed.
At that time, the National Portrait Gallery was ‘an oasis in the bleak BritArt scene,’ he says, but figurative art is no longer in the artistic desert. ‘It’s right back and there is a lot of interest in it. It’s the art schools that are out of date. Young people want to learn to paint.’
In 1987, Michael and his family moved to Child Okeford, where they lived for 35 years in a former Georgian beer-house, with an attic studio, large garden and cellars – but just as crumbly as the Yorkshire cottage and the Dorset chapel.
There were many successful exhibitions over the following years, including at the Beaux Arts gallery in Bath. He was commissioned to paint the famous crime writer Baroness PD (Phyllis) James for the National Portrait Gallery, and this painting was loaned by the NPG for a Beaux Arts exhibition, for which the NPG chief curator Robin Gibson wrote the catalogue notes. Other portrait commissions included the jazz saxophonist Andy Sheppard for the Holburne Museum in Bath, and composer Sir John Tavener (now in the NPG), which won the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Changing Faces Prize.
After meeting Jamie Anderson of Waterhouse and Dodd during Dorset Art Weeks, Michael had regular exhibitions in their Cork St gallery and later in Albemarle St over a period of 16 years. Jamie Anderson moved to become a director of The Portland Gallery. Since 2024, Michael has been represented by this gallery in St James, just off Piccadilly, which specialises in modern and contemporary British art.
In recent years, Michael has been concentrating more on still lifes, and continues to paint at his Victorian home in Fordington, where he and Caroline moved in 2017. He has no plans to stop painting.
*Born in Texas in 1969, Wes Anderson is known for the distinctive and often eccentric visual style of his films, which explore themes of grief, loss of innocence and dysfunctional families. His other films include The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr Fox, The French Dispatch, Asteroid City and The Phoenician Scheme.
