Moomin’ fantastic

I was a Peanuts child, am a Peanuts adult.

I loved other things, of course, a lot of them pictorial. Asterix, Tintin, Winnie-the-Pooh. Dr. Seuss, Heath Robinson, Wacky Races.

But Peanuts reigned. Here’s an early one, already capturing the undertow of melancholy, the ability to see the other point of view, that I think spoke so strongly to me.The one thing Schulz doesn’t seem to have done, or at least not very much, was self-portraiture. He was on record as saying that he didn’t like doing them, and you could argue that as his life’s work was one 18,000-comic-strip-long self-portrait, the need for them beyond that was somewhat reduced. Here’s the one I could find.

Now I don’t know much about art (this isn’t false modesty – I really don’t), but am I right to find it striking that he chose, even in a caricature, to present himself with eyes shielded behind his glasses?

Amateur psychology, eh? Tsk. (Also, check out Snoopy’s eyebrows. There’s a dog I would have loved to know.)

All this, though, is mere preamble, a diversion (I will at some stage give fuller rein to my enduring Peanuts obsession). I present Peanuts as a comparison point for my childhood indifference to Moomins.

I can hear hands being thrown up in horror. How could I have got through those turbulent years without Moominmamma at my side?

Well I did, and that’s that. There’s no doubt I was exposed to them at some stage – they just didn’t take. My loss.

Coming to them as an adult presents problems. I read differently now. But I find all the things in there that I would have loved as a child, had I only been more enlightened. Surrealism, humour, a gentle philosophy of kindness and generosity.

I mention all this because, in defiance of a lifetime’s habits, I made it to the Tove Jansson exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery on Friday. I would recommend you go, but it’s sold out and closes for good in about five hours, so…

Without the childhood associations, I found myself able to look at Jansson’s art in a more detached way, and was immediately drawn to her self-portraits, of which there are several.

Here she is, aged 28, cool, confident yet somewhat wary, looking at the world through narrow eyes.

The contrast with that and her final painting, executed when she was 60, is striking. More life, more experience, more honesty.

Artists of all kinds present themselves in their work. It takes a special courage to do it in such a direct way.

British Moomin fans will be familiar with Jansson’s spare, expressive style. But they might not know this, a refreshing view of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party – a resigned Hatter contemplating something or other, dormouse asleep but somehow also plunged into despair, March hare relaxed, looking askance at everything.

There was more, much much more, all beautifully presented and fascinating. You really should have gone.

All this talk of self-portraits, I realise, is merely an excuse to shoehorn some Rembrandt into this post. There are Rembrandts at Dulwich, most famously the ravishing Girl At A Window, but as we’re talking about depictions of personality, here’s his last self-portrait (it has no connection with anything else in this post, but if I can’t throw in a random Rembrandt then I don’t know what). I can’t look at any of this astonishing series of self-examinations without thinking ‘I’d really like to have known you’, and this one says that most strongly of all.

Capturing character, however it is achieved, is one of the goals of any artist. And for all the grandeur of much of the art at Dulwich, I’m always drawn to this chap. It’s not a self-portrait, of course – not unless he was a very good boy. It’s by Pieter Boel, and always makes me want to reach out and scratch that head before throwing him a scrap of chicken or half a roast potato.

He’s not Snoopy, but he’s not bad.

I really don’t know much about art, but I think I do know what I like.

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