J K Rowling by Stuart Pearson Wright. National Portrait Gallery, London.
Her words are read across the world and her characters have been absorbed into the popular global psyche; now JK Rowling herself has been immortalised in oils at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG).
The author of the Harry Potter series of novels sat for artist Stuart Pearson Wright who shows her sitting at a table with a notepad and a plate of boiled eggs.
Wright was commissioned by the NPG trustees as part of the BP Portrait Award programme – he won the competition in 2001 – and his work went on show on the ground floor at the gallery on September 7 2005.
"This is a captivating portrait with more than a touch of magic," said NPG Director Sandy Nairne. "JK Rowling is delightfully portrayed by Stuart Pearson Wright with delicacy and charm"
The artist began the portrait in 2004, making a number of visits to the writer’s Scottish home. He observed and made sketches of her, sometimes while at work, taking photographs for reference. "It felt like being a kind of director bringing together a set design, actors and props and then lighting the whole thing," he explained.
Six Presidents of the British Academy by Stuart Pearson Wright - winner of 2001 BP Portrait Award. © Stuart Pearson Wright.
Rowling is shown seated at a small table in a room empty apart from an aloe vera plant, light switch and radiator. The image is in three dimensions and has a compressed and distorted quality almost suggestive of the parallel world of the Harry Potter stories.
But as well as her literary creation, Wright alludes to Rowling’s life; three eggs on the plate in front of her represent her children, while the café style table she sits at is reminiscent of the setting where she wrote her first novel.
Stuart Pearson Wright is a London-based painter who studied at the Slade School of Art and came to critical attention as a sometimes irreverent figurative painter. He followed up winning the BP Travel Award in 1998 with the BP Portrait Award in 2001 and among his more recent works is a portrait of Prince Philip for the Royal Society of Arts.
JK Rowling needs little introduction. Her first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was published in 1997. It was the first of a planned series of seven – one for each year the young wizard would spend at the magical institution, Hogwarts.
So far the books have been translated into 62 languages, selling over a quarter of a billion copies, and several have been made into films. The sixth and penultimate instalment, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was published in July 2005.
