The Art Newspaper

A computer portrait by Michael Craig-Martin is the latest addition to the impressive art collection at Chatsworth—the historic stately home of the Dukes of Devonshire. Computer Portrait of Laura Burlington, 2010, will hang among the Gainsboroughs, Reynolds and Sargents that decorate the walls of the four century old house built in the Derbyshire countryside in the late 1680s on the site of the former Tudor mansion of the formidable Bess of Hardwick. “We wanted to have a picture that was more than just a likeness,” said Lady Burlington, the daughter-in-law of Chatsworth’s current owner, Peregrine Cavendish, the 12th Duke of Devonshire, adding: “the more contemporary portraits I looked at the less inspired I felt…very few seemed relevant to the time we live in.” Craig-Martin, a former Goldsmith’s tutor who counts YBA’s such as Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and the late Angus Fairhurst among his pupils, has created a “live” computer portrait based on a black line portrait of the sitter which contains 44 colours that are programmed to fade into each other and change every 15 seconds without repetition. Chatsworth reopened to the public on 12 March after the completion of the second phase of a £14m restoration project.

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