PAINTED PORTRAITS

From the sitting to the canvas.

A photographic sitting at Rory Lewis Studio, followed by an oil portrait painted from the finished photograph. One commission, two works: the photograph and the painting.


The commission

Photography did not replace portrait painting; it changed what a painter had to work from. This commission uses that directly. You sit for a photographic portrait in Los Angeles, London or New York. The chosen image is then given to a portrait painter who works from it in oil, on canvas, over a period of 12-16 weeks.

The sitter is required for a single afternoon. Everything that follows — selection, retouching, painting, delivery — happens without further demand on your diary. For sitters who have neither the time nor the inclination for repeated life sittings, this is the practical route to a painted portrait.


The sitting

The sitting runs two hours in the studio. Lighting is low-key and directional, worked in the Chiaroscuro tradition — a single dominant source, deep shadow, the face carried by modelling rather than by illumination.

Uniform, robes, orders and decorations, or plain dress: the sitting accommodates whatever the portrait requires. Where insignia and medals are worn, they are photographed with the precision the painter will need. Wardrobe guidance is issued in advance.

You leave with a set of finished photographic portraits regardless of the painting. The painted work is drawn from one of them, chosen by you.

The painting

The painter works in oil on [stretched linen], building the portrait over successive sessions. The photograph is the source, not the destination — the painting resolves as a painting, with the surface, edges and colour temperature that only paint gives.

Two approaches are offered:

Faithful. The painting follows the photograph closely in pose, dress and lighting. The result reads as a contemporary portrait in the tradition of the panel and the officers' mess.

Historical. The sitter's likeness is placed within an earlier convention — Napoleonic, Regency, nineteenth-century military — with the dress, palette and ground of the period. These are made in the knowledge that portraiture has always been a form of argument about status, and are approached with that in mind rather than as costume.

Scale and finish

Portraits are painted at [16 × 20], [24 × 30] and [30 × 40] inches. Head-and-shoulders and half-length compositions are available at each size.

Works are delivered stretched and varnished. Framing in a traditional gilt or dark hardwood moulding is offered as an option and quoted separately.

Sitters

Painted portraits made through this commission include senior members of the Royal Family, general and flag officers of the British and Italian armed forces, and actors of the stage and screen.