Guybrush Threepwood and His Monkey Jojo — Print & Oil Painting

A thin gold rule runs round the edge of the panel and a line of gold capitals sits along the top, naming the sitter and his companion. That framing device does real work: it turns a character study into the kind of painted plate you would find at the front of an old adventure novel.

The sitter is three quarters on, shoulders turned, eyes to us. Strawberry blond hair swept back and tied in a short queue, a ginger moustache and a close beard, pale blue eyes, and a faint guarded smile. He wears a white shirt with a wide collar open at the throat, a navy coat, and a tan leather baldric across the chest with a small metal fitting at its centre.

On his shoulder sits a monkey, and it has been given more character than most humans get in a portrait: brown, small, one eye behind a black patch, dressed in a little blue coat, one hand gripping the coat seam for balance. It looks straight out at the viewer, and the expression is not friendly.

The ground is a warm brown studio wall with a soft fall of light from the left, and the paint is smooth and continuous, nearer to nineteenth century portraiture than to anything cartoon. There is no swashbuckling in it at all. It is a picture of a man having his portrait done, with his monkey. Part of our Monkey island collection. The identical sitting appears against jungle instead of a wall in the outdoor version, and the woman who answers him is in the moonlit portrait.