The Dramatic and the Dreadful

This stunning, dramatic, magnificent portrait, by Ken Currie, hangs in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. It portrays Scotland’s principal forensic anthropologist, Professor Dame Sue Black. It is an enormous canvas, 9 feet by 6 feet, which the artist has entitled “The unknown man”

It captures Professor Black at the very height of her professional life, in surgical scrubs, in theatre, and what a theatre, about to lift the covers on the body of the unknown man and commence her work of identifying the cause of death, was it by natural causes, negligence, foul play or by his own hand.

And the bucket! the red plastic bucket. What on earth is it for? What bits of the unknown man will be cut from his lifeless body and dropped into that horrific bucket?

You catch your breath when you stand before this canvas. You know at once that this is a portrait that will still be admired in a thousand years’ time. She is a role model and the painting captures a professional life that will inspire generations of medical students, anthropologists, and young school girls.

Thus do the Scotts respect their achievers, their role models, the treasures of their professions

Compare and contrast

This portrait, by Jack Hickey, of Ireland’s preeminent forensic pathologist, Professor Marie Cassidy, was commissioned by and hangs in Irelands National Gallery in Dublin. And it is dreadful.

Professor Cassidy is herself an important role model. She is possibly the best-known scientist in the whole of Ireland. Everyone knows her. Everyone has seen her. On their TVs, in her white forensic boiler suit, at the scene of some discovered body, leading the forensic examination of the scene, we all, knowing, that she will take the body to her morgue to open up the cadaver, to determine whether the death was natural or otherwise. She is loved and admired. And this portrait is dreadful.

She has appeared in court, for years, in every single murder case in Ireland. She enjoys an astonishing reputation amongst judges, barristers, prosecutors, and police officers. She has been cross-examined by the best of them. I once cross-examined her myself.

It captures nothing of her professional eminence, nothing. It captures nothing of her lovely warmth and personality. nothing.

What are those bulging zombie-like eyes? It is dreadful.

When I first saw this portrait I thought it was of some random woman, possibly who has just been caught dogging in Phoenix park. It is dreadful.

Thus do the Irish respect their achievers, their role models the treasures of their professions.