When the artist's gaze falls on other artists - Chichester exhibition

But it is very specific portraiture – artists looking at other artists.

Chief curator Melanie Vandenbrouck said: “Both the other two exhibitions were wonderful ways of looking at modern contemporary British artists through a genre and looking at the ways that they embraced genres and made them their own and reinvented them. We were then thinking about portraiture. It's a subject that fascinates people. It is about identity and it is about people and it is about society. People can relate to portraiture in ways that can seem really profound. These are works that can really connect.

“There have obviously been a lot of exhibitions about portraits but I couldn't really think of any about portraits of artists. With a portrait it is very much about the sitter being celebrated and the portrait having markers of wealth or status or particular virtues. It's a very coded type of art. But when you're an artist looking at another artist, you are an image maker looking at another image maker and that changes the relationship. If you are portraying another image maker then their own involvement might be rather greater. It feels like it might be a bit more of a collaboration.

“What is fascinating is to see what one artist might be saying about another. Many of the relationships between artists are very profound. They might have started in art school; they might have moved into love or passion; and some of them might have broken down. Some of the relationships might show a deep understanding or an admiration or even also tinges of rivalry. You can sense when they're working alongside each other that the relationship is perhaps evolving still.”

The point is that there is such a lot going on between the artist and the sitter: “When you see artists portraying members of their own profession, people that they might have some sense of kinship with, then they might also be saying something about themselves. And also a number of artworks are dialogues across time when you might have several artists in the past being celebrated by an artist in the present. What is interesting is who does it pay homage to and what does it mean.”

Melanie added: “Like in any other exhibition, first of all you look at what has been done before and how you are going to say something new about it. In research I could not find an exhibition that had the same angle as we were wanting to explore. Some of the relationships we were looking at were already quite well known and you draw on your own particular knowledge of art history. Some are quite obvious ones to talk about.

“But the whole thing is very much a collaboration with the team here but also speaking to artist estates and also to contemporary artists and finding time to go to other galleries. The conception was about 18 months but really I worked on it for about a year. At first I had more self-portraits but then I thought that that was diluting the argument as a whole. It was fascinating to do.”

Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists runs at Pallant House Gallery until November 2.

The exhibition brings together more than 150 works that explore artistic relationships, identity and mutual influence in modern and contemporary British art. Spanning 125 years, it showcases paintings, prints, drawings, photography, sculpture and installations that capture the distinctive gaze between creative peers. Featuring more than 80 artists including Lucian Freud, Lubaina Himid, David Hockney, Lee Miller, Eric Ravilious, Paula Rego and many more, the exhibition unveils friendships and emulation, as well as homages to earlier artists, through intimate portrayals.