The art of espionage 

A new exhibition at Mount Street Galleries gives the public an insight into the shadowy world of MI6.

It must have been one of the hardest briefs for an artist since royal portraitists had to disguise Queen Victoria’s receding chin. But the mission – to shadow MI6 spooks for a year and depict their undercover world on canvas – was one that artist James Hart Dyke could not refuse. Now, after spending a year living among secret agents, he will be displaying his work at Mount Street Galleries.

MI6 decided to mark its centenary in 2009 by opening its doors to an artist for the first time. Retired spy chief Sir John Scarlett, who commissioned the project, said that its goal was to capture “the nature and the spirit of the service and its people, within the parameters of secrecy”.

The paintings go some way towards dispelling the myths that high-octane dramas such as the James Bond films have created about M16. One striking image, which shows a man standing at a window in an empty hotel room, conveys the boredom of waiting for something exciting and exceptional to happen. Some paintings are explicitly espionage situations – from the crisis room at the heart of the Secret Intelligence Service to the besuited man walking a dog in a dimly lit scene – but Hart Dyke has been playful with his brief. Several works hint at the surreal character of the Service: a painting of a doughnut, for instance, symbolises the nickname given to the ring-shaped GCHQ building. Green paint, used in a number of the works, serves as an intriguing reference to the green pen ink used exclusively by the MI6 chief, who is known not as ‘M’ but as ‘C.

The public’s limited knowledge of the intelligence world is reflected in the impressionistic brushstrokes that Hart Dyke uses in his images of clandestine meetings in pubs and parks. As none of the faces can be made out, these paintings capture the spirit of espionage, encouraging the onlooker to imagine what the spies may be discussing.

Hart Dyke, who has accompanied Prince Charles on royal tours and served as a war artist in Iraq and Afghanistan, says that some of the spies were suspicious of him, perhaps because they assumed that he had been sent from head office to check up on them.

The artist, who agreed to undertake the project for no fee, is relieved to be able to reveal the fruits of his secret labour at last. While he has donated some of the paintings to MI6,  others are for sale at his exhibition, whose location, thankfully, is shrouded in rather less mystery.

Mount Street Galleries, 94 Mount Street, Mayfair, London W1K 2S. Until Saturday 26 February 2011. Open every day 10.00am to 5.30pm.