Purchased from Richard Gray Gallery by the National Portrait Gallery in London

Mr Art: David Sylvester by Larry Rivers

This outstanding Pop Art portrait of the influential art critic, David Sylvester, painted in 1962, has recently been acquired from a private collection in the United States with the assistance of the National Art Collections Fund and other benefactors. It is the first portrait by a major American artist of the post-war period to enter the collection.

David Sylvester was one of the finest writers on modern art in the second half of the 20th century and one of the most influential figures in the rise of the international modern and contemporary art exhibition. A prolific writer of some 265 publications (excluding newspaper and magazine articles), he contributed to the establishment of the international reputations of artists including Henry Moore, Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti and went on to support younger generations of artists, most recently Rachel Whiteread and Jenny Saville. As a curator his exhibitions were always definitive and his passionate belief in the crucial importance of "the hang" is recalled with admiration and awe. His ground-breaking exhibitions include major retrospectives of Henry Moore (1951), Giacometti (1965), Magritte (1969) and Late Picasso (1988).

Larry Rivers (b1923) began his career as a jazz saxophonist before taking up painting in 1947 at the suggestion of a friend. His success was such that two years later he was given his first New York show and was subsequently selected to be part of a "New Talent" exhibition. He became one of America's most important and innovative figurative painters, and was one of the first artists to introduce ready-made images from popular culture and mass production as a subject matter in a manner that became known as Pop Art.

Mr Art was painted in London in 1962, as Sylvester's public profile was rising, and the year of Rivers' first exhibition in London. The portrait is representative of an era, and encapsulates much of the dialectic between the figurative and the abstract that was current at the time. It's title, and that of the study I Like David Sylvester, are indicative of both the standing of Sylvester in the international avant-garde community and of the empathy between artist and sitter.

The acquisition has been made possible by an Art Fund grant, and the exceptional generosity of a number of other donors.

David Sylvester was born in London, the son of an antiques dealer, and went to University College School which he left at 16. He enjoyed a brief career as a dealer himself before taking up painting at 17, inspired by a reproduction of Matisse's La Danse. Realising he was not a good painter, Sylvester decided he might be better writing about art. He began writing for Tribune, for George Orwell, who was then Literary Editor. In 1947 he turned down a place at Cambridge and went to Paris, joining the circle of Léger, Brancusi and Sartre and finding work editing and translating. In the 1950s Sylvester returned to London and was at the heart of the Soho arts scene - a close personal friend of Francis Bacon, of whom he was both a fierce champion and critic. Sylvester's intellectual sparring with critic John Berger in the pages of Encounter and New Statesman rivals that of Ruskin and Whistler in the previous century. Coining the phrase "kitchen sink" to describe the depressing realism of Post-War British art, Sylvester became a household name in early cultural broadcasting in the 1960s, making a television series on art for the BBC, alongside curating at least one exhibition a year, and writing books including his monumental catalogue raisonné of Magritte that was to be 25 years in the making. He also accepted various public appointments, including at the Tate and the Arts Council, and was awarded a CBE for his services to art in 1983. His four volumes on Magritte were eventually published in 1992-6 and Sylvester returned to his freelance career, writing for publications including the London Review of Books and the national press. After Francis Bacon's death in 1993, Sylvester curated several exhibitions of his work and, in 2000, published his own study of the artist's work. He died on 21 June 2001.

(This article was reprinted from "What's On," the email newsletter of the National Portrait Gallery.)