Supermodel Kate Moss added further fuel to speculation about her on-off romance with troubled rocker Pete Doherty when she posed in front of a new official portrait of herself commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery.

Although she arrived at the gallery's Face of Fashion exhibition in central London with her Babyshambles singer Doherty, the couple did not pose together for the cameras.

The exhibition focuses on the portraits of five outstanding fashion photographers from Europe and America: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott, Corinne Day, Steven Klein, Paolo Roversi and Mario Sorrenti.

The exhibition launch coincided with the unveiling of the official portrait of Moss taken by Day, who was one of the first photographers to work with the model.

The supermodel reunited for the picture with the British photographer, whose "heroin chic" images in the Nineties famously helped propel the Croydon model to stardom.

The 33-year-old was immersed in a serious discussion in the nine black-and-white frames, assembled together as one portrait.

Day will not go into detail about the afternoon or reveal what got Moss so animated at the three-hour photo-shoot at the model's north London home two months ago. But some would be forgiven for thinking that in a couple of the snapshots, her subject looks a little worse for wear.

Moss, one of the most photographed women in the world, is wearing no make-up, although her eyelashes were curled for the commission. The model, in an on-off relationship with musician and drug addict Doherty, looks alternatively angry, melancholic and pulls a face in the pictures.