17 September | Georgie

Visited the National Portrait Gallery today. All over the Tube stations, I have seen ads for an exhibit on the Portrait Award, a portrait competition in which the first prize is £25,000 (almost $50,000) and often takes unknown artists into the limelight. On the ads for the exhibit is a portrait of a young woman that has been haunting me, and I wanted to go see the original.

The museums are all free in London—well, most of them. It’s strange not to have to wait in line. Some of the more special exhibits cost £5 or so, but the Portrait Award exhibit was free. There were 56 portraits on display. Here is the painting that won, called Changeling 2:

At first glance, I would not have chosen this one as the winner. It seemed a bit ordinary to me. But when I looked closer, details began to stand out that made the piece more interesting: she is just beginning to transition from being a child, and she is aware of this. Something about her mouth suggests a newly-acquired seriousness. Her cheeks are still round, but she will soon grow out of this too. She is at that point where it is possible to see (or imagine) what she will look like at twenty-five. I ended up liking it, and enjoying that I had to work to like it.

But this was not the portrait from the ads in the Tube; I had not seen it on a first scan around the crowded gallery. But someone stepped aside and I saw it from across the room.

I was surprised to see how small it was: only about the size of a sheet of paper. The portrait is entitled Georgie. She looks like a ghost and is breathtakingly beautiful—wispy blond hair, long thin neck, expressionless. Yet it is clear in her eyes that her mind is on something else. The color palate is muted and gray but feels very clean and sharp—details stand out seemingly in spite of themselves. Strong light illuminates her upturned nose, alabaster complexion, blond eyelashes. The white v of her shirt heightens her paleness and feels timeless: she could be royalty from thousands of years ago, or she could be a girl I saw at a farmers’ market.

I am a complete amateur when it comes to understanding art. But there have been times when I have been stirred by something, an emotion or a moment, that the artist is able to both capture and convey in a way that feels simply perfect to me. This portrait made me want to not stop looking.