Triss Merigold Glancing Back in the Shadows — Print & Oil Painting

The first thing that registers is a camera decision rather than a brush decision. The plane of focus is perhaps two centimetres deep and it has been placed on the near eye; the far cheek softens, the knot of hair at the back softens further, and the room behind her is gone entirely into brown murk. It is a portrait lens, wide open, and the painting behaves accordingly.

Inside that narrow plane the detail is relentless. Visible pores across the nose and cheek, fine down catching light along the jaw, single hairs breaking the silhouette at the temple, freckles under both eyes, and the specific warm redness at the inner corner of the eyelid that nobody bothers to paint unless they are working from life.

The pose is the oldest one in portraiture and it still works. She is turned away and looking back over her shoulder, chin dropped toward the collarbone, brows level, mouth closed with the faintest amusement at one corner. You have caught her attention rather than been given it.

The coat is teal-blue, quilted in fine vertical ribs, with a standing collar faced in cream and embroidered along its edge with a running gold ornament, and a row of small gold and garnet studs running down the front. Auburn hair is pinned into a low knot with several strands escaping across the ear and the cheek.

Three colours and nothing else: auburn, teal, cream, on unlit brown. Nothing happens in the picture and nothing needs to. From our The Witcher collection, and the blazing backlit portrait in red and gold is the same face with the volume turned all the way up.