Elvis Presley The King portrait — Print & Oil Painting

The microphone is the best passage in the painting. Chrome, ribbed, a wide flat head on a slim stem, the shape of a mid century stage mike, with a black cable falling from it in a long slack curve down the left of the canvas. It is described more carefully than anything else here, including the face, and the cable gives the composition its one vertical line.

The singer is turned three quarters to the right, mouth open on a held note, brows drawn together. Dark hair is swept up and back with long sideburns; the jacket is pale cream with a wide notched lapel, worn over a black open collared shirt; the right hand grips the mike, the left is clenched at the hip. The styling belongs to the middle of the last century and the painting makes no attempt to update it.

Behind him there is no stage. The ground is black, opened up with sweeps of scarlet and orange that read as flame, smoke or theatre lighting depending on how long you look, with a single warm glow low on the left. It is the most saturated part of the picture, and it exists to push the cream jacket forward.

What the painting is actually recording is effort. The jaw is tight, the neck is corded, the shoulders are hunched into the note. It is a portrait of someone working rather than of someone posing, which is a harder thing to paint and a rarer thing to see in a music portrait.

From our Music & Albums collection. For another figure built around an instrument and a moment of playing, see Ellie Playing Guitar Between Two Worlds.