Triss Merigold Conjures Fire on a Tree Branch — Print & Oil Painting

A long fall of dark green cloth drops from the branch to the bottom edge of the canvas, and it takes up nearly a third of the picture on its own. That vertical, crossed by the pale horizontal of the branch about three fifths of the way down, is the entire structural armature; everything else is hung on it.

She is sitting on the branch with the legs crossed at the ankle and one heel hooked back, which is a genuinely difficult thing to draw convincingly at this angle and has been solved cleanly. The weight is on the near hip, the shoulders are square to the viewer, and the skirt has been allowed to do what heavy cloth does when it goes over an edge.

The wood behind her is painted as pure atmosphere: a cold blue-green blur with no drawing in it whatsoever, dark at the corners, lifting to a paler bloom behind her head. Small points of blue drift through it, moths or fireflies or nothing at all, and they are the only marks in the background with a hard edge.

Given all that cold, the flame is remarkably modest. A single tongue of orange sits above her open left palm, no larger than a thumb, and it lights the underside of her fingers and about two inches of sleeve and then stops. Refusing to let the fire spread across the picture is what keeps it from being a poster.

The costume is elaborate: a green and gold coat with gold feather-shaped plates on the lapels, a green stone at the throat, a fine circlet in the red hair, a white petticoat under the outer skirt, grey-green stockings with a strap above the knee, and gold-heeled ankle boots. The artist has signed the right-hand edge. Part of our The Witcher collection, and the same flame let out at full size in a burning forest is the other end of the same talent.