Elaine Marley Bathed in Green Moonlight — Print & Oil Painting

The hair is doing the lighting. It falls in long copper waves from under a green headscarf and every leading edge has been run with bright orange, so the face sits between two vertical bands of almost fluorescent colour while the skin itself stays cool and even. Nothing else on the canvas is allowed that intensity.

Behind her a pale moon hangs at the upper left with its craters lightly indicated, and the rest of the ground is a deep green field flecked with hundreds of small light points, closer to spores than to stars. A warm brown passage at the right edge is the only break in all that green.

The dress is plain and sits low in the frame: a high-collared cream blouse with a ruffled edge and a run of small buttons, an ochre coat over it, one large gold hoop at each ear taking the light from the left. The scarf is knotted behind and pushed forward over the hairline.

The look is the whole point. Chin slightly down, eyes turned to us and level, mouth closed, one brow a fraction higher than the other. It is neither an invitation nor a warning, which is a difficult thing to paint and the reason this portrait holds up. From our Monkey island collection, alongside the same woman with a torch in her hands and the formal portrait of her opposite number.