Yennefer Vengerberg Casting Blue Magic in the Dark — Print & Oil Painting

This one is loose in a way none of its neighbours are. The ground behind her is nothing but vertical drags of ochre and olive with a grey arc swung through the top left corner, the edges of the figure sink into it in half a dozen places, and whole passages of the costume amount to three strokes and a highlight. It has the character of a study made fast and then left alone.

The pose is wide and nearly symmetrical. Both arms are out and low, the left forearm raised in a brass-toned bracer, the right ending in a black gauntlet with claws worked into the fingers, and above each hand sits a bloom of blue: a small one on the left, and on the right a large soft mass of it, more vapour than flame, the brightest thing in the canvas.

Blue against ochre is the entire colour argument and it has been kept clean. No third hue is allowed in anywhere. The blacks of the corset and the skirt sit between the two as a neutral, and a grey scarf wound at the throat and thrown back over one shoulder softens the join between them.

The clothing is a working version of the black she is always given: a laced corset with dark feathers set across the shoulders, a studded strap crossing the waist, a knife hilt at the hip, a long skirt cut for movement. Her hair is dragged off to the right by the same wind that is moving the scarf.

What holds the whole thing together is the face, the one carefully finished passage here: pale, angular, brows down, mouth set, looking out past the left edge at whatever she has raised both hands against. The artist has signed the bottom left corner. Part of our The Witcher collection, near Triss Merigold wreathed in swirling flames for another sorceress caught in the middle of the work.