Geralt's Realistic Profile Portrait in Shadow — Print & Oil Painting

Greys are the real subject of this one. Ash at the temples, cool white at the hairline, warm dust-grey through the short beard, blue-grey in the shadow under the jaw: a face this age cannot be painted with one neutral, and the artist has separated out five or six of them and kept every one distinct.

Nothing is happening. The head is turned three-quarters away and lit softly from the front left, the mouth is closed, the shoulders are relaxed, and the background is an undescribed brown wall thrown out of focus. The picture makes no attempt to be an event, which is unusual in a collection full of drawn swords.

The detail is where the value is. Hair drawn back tight from the temples and gathered into a low tail with single strands escaping across the ear; a yellow iris with a vertical slot for a pupil; an old scar crossing the left brow and a shorter one down the cheekbone; the specific slackness of skin over the cheek that no amount of training prevents.

He is dressed for travelling, not for a fight: a dark blue gambeson quilted in a scaled pattern, brown leather straps over the shoulder fastened with round buttons, a plain cord at the throat. Behind the head, an ornate pale crossguard rises with its arms curling outward like a small set of antlers, and it is the only ornamental object in the frame.

It sits in our The Witcher collection. Lambert's portrait in the manner of an old master is the other painting here that puts a mutant into a formal bust and lets the eyes do the rest.