17/06/2026
The Sitting: Double Exposure
What was it actually like sitting for René Bouché?
It’s a question I keep returning to, particularly as I continue cataloguing his portrait sketches. The drawings are so poised, so elegant, so effortless. But what was the man behind them really like?
When Bouché fully embraced portraiture he began reaching out to his vast circle of friends and colleagues, inviting them to sit for him. Thanks to his work for Vogue and a roster of heavyweight advertising clients, he had an enviable contacts book. His sitters came from the worlds of fashion, society and the arts.
Among them were the fashion photographer Norman Parkinson and his model wife, Wenda. Elegant, aristocratic and endlessly photographed, Wenda was one of the defining faces of British fashion. First spotted by Cecil Beaton in 1945, she became a fixture in the pages of Vogue and her husband’s favourite face.
In his 1986 memoire “Lifework”, Parkinson remembered Bouché as “restless, energetic and almost impossible to sit still around”. During their portrait sitting at his Central Park South studio he apparently circled the room “like a caged feline”, growling and moaning as he worked, climbing over furniture with charcoal in hand while Norman and Wenda sat locked together in an embrace.
What makes the description so extraordinary is that the drawings themselves feel utterly controlled — elegant, effortless, perfectly composed. Yet behind them was apparently all this movement and noise.
Parkinson’s drawing, reproduced here, is inscribed:
“For my Parkinsons just for the heck of it.”
The drawings are all elegance and control.
The artist behind them was anything but.
As Parkinson memorably put it:
“Bouché was like a greying curly-headed terrier.”
Text by
© René Bouché Studio Archive
