Portrait of Mrs. Penfield Stewart, in a Vermeer interior.
Reference
Vermeer, Woman with a Pearl Necklace, c. 1664, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.
After I finished
A Portrait of David Warrilow in a Vermeer Interior a collector from Rockford Illinois visited my studio and commissioned a portrait of his wife, Susan, Mrs. Penfield Stewart. I went to Rockford to have Susan photographed. There I met a young photographer, Andy French, who was to take photographs of Susan under my direction. Again, light from the left. Susan is seated wearing a beige silk blouse that draped nicely. Andy French took many photos while Susan held a book and gestured as she conversed.
This time I had a composition in mind since Penfield Stewart wanted the portrait of Susan to be something like the David Warrilow painting.
If likeness appears from the very beginning of a sketch there is a probability that it will remain and get better as the painting continues. If for some reason the likeness is not clear at the beginning it can be difficult for it to happen later as the painting process goes on.
With Susan I had no trouble with likeness, the photographs were clear, there were 20 to choose from. Some were better than others for my purpose and I began a drawing, using three different photographs and worked on making Susan look more like Susan than she did. This could be done by hair arrangement, making hair look a slight bit uncombed, making the mouth bigger in length than is expected and large eyes with forced highlights.
Next, Vermeer. I didn't look through a collection of Vermeer paintings. I let everything go for a few weeks with drawings of Susan hanging on the wall of my studio.
If I work every day everything works. On getting up one morning the Vermeer painting
Woman Trying on Pearls (Berlin) came to my mind. This painting is again lighted from the left showing a yellow curtain pulled away from the window therefore hanging against the far wall. This is at the far left of the Vermeer painting. The wall of the window comes forward towards the viewer and high on the wall is a mirror hanging with a thick black frame. It's a mirror because of the tiny highlight-reflection painted on it: the plot of the Susan Stewart painting.
Susan is behind the table, similar to the David Warrilow portrait. These portraits are each from different Vermeer paintings, therefore are different from one another but like Vermeer, there are similar repeats.
The Susan Stewart portrait has been made slim: the chair at the lower right of the composition had to move in toward the table. Because Vermeer's Young Lady has been removed and because Susan is seated in the empty chair behind the table, some of the empty space had to be filled or taken away. That is why the chair was moved toward the table. (
Unpublished notebook entry, 1981)
