Oil on canvas, 93 × 60 cm (plus 6” gilded RP frame by Frinton Frames)
£22,000

Executed in Rublev, Michael Harding, and Williamsburg oils, this work employs a traditional painter’s medium composed of Venetian glass and litharge — materials used not as surface treatments but as integral vehicles for luminosity and depth. The technique follows the discipline of Renaissance practice, where the medium itself governs the flow of light through colour.

The painting depicts a woman pausing before a bank of roses, her face inclined toward a bloom as if to confirm its fragrance. The gesture is sensory yet reflective. The surrounding foliage forms a shallow, rhythmic plane, enclosing her within the compositional order of the garden. Tonal gradations of gold, rose, and green create an atmosphere that is both cultivated and timeless.

This is a study of attention rather than reverie. The act of inhaling the rose becomes a metaphor for seeing — a slow, contemplative apprehension of beauty. The parallel curves of petals and fabric, stem and figure, bind the natural and human forms into a single harmonic system.

The garden setting recalls the Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist traditions, in which the cultivated enclosure represents purity, transience, and devotion. Its emotional cadence finds an echo in Tennyson’s Maud:

“There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear.”

As in those lines, tenderness and introspection coexist here. The painting’s strength lies in its balance of material precision and emotional restraint — a harmony between the craft of the hand and the quiet intelligence of perception.

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