In the vein of my recent art historical references in the Portrait With a Hat class, I had my model Story pose as Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring” and blue turban for the October 24th session. The painting resides in the Mauritshuis Museum in the Netherlands; it is quite well known, having inspired a novel, a film starring Colin Firth and Scarlet Johannson and a play. I love it when such a fuss is made over a painting. So when Story told me she had a suitable pearl earring and some scarves that would stand in for a turban, I was all for setting up this famous portrait.

Portrait With a Hat is a class in portraiture with featured head-wear and some costume that I teach at the Newport Art Museum. It is a three hour session, and I only run the pose for one session. There are no encores- you either have got it down by the end of the evening or you haven’t.

This does make the work a sketch by nature. One can’t pretend to do what Vermeer did in under three hours; he employed undertones with vibrant over-glazes and many speculate that his work was done entirely with camera obscura. I did enjoy this session enough to want to set up something like it for a more extended painting. And putting a turban on a model was my idea behind this class in the first place.

Here then is my sketch in oil.

"Story after Vermeer", oil on board, 46x36 cm, 2011.

Below is a photograph of the pose. I do not usually like to use photographs as aids in painting, but I have included it in this post for reference and because I thought you might be curious.

Story after Vermeer