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Lot Essay
American painter Elizabeth Peyton is known for her intense, jewel-like portraits that have distinguished her as a leader in the field of contemporary figurative painting. Steely-eyed and handsome, Jonathan Horowitz, Peyton's neighbour and fellow artist, fixes us with a gaze that is difficult to ignore. With delicate, swift brushstrokes, Peyton has followed the strong angles of Horowitz's face to create a portrait that is ravishing in both execution and emotion. Closely cropped like a photographic snapshot, Peyton draws attention to her sitter's deep set eyes and masculine jaw, while creating a tension between the modesty of scale and the sentiment of the subject matter. Her sensual palette and use of stark, flat space creates a fleeting vulnerability that intrigues and seduces. Peyton's other portrait of Horowitz, Democrats Are More Beautiful (after Jonathan Horowitz), was chosen as the cover image for the publication which accompanied her touring exhibition Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton in 2008. Bearing testament to their friendship and sympathetic intellectual beliefs, the two artists collaborated for Secret Life, an exhibition exploring plants and their relationship with human psychology at Sadie Coles HQ, London, in the summer of 2012.
Although she often draws from her social circle for her work, Peyton's work is not simply a study in the psychology of an individual. She has chosen them as her subjects also for their unique physical attributes. With the fine, dark features of a society gentleman one might find in an Ingres portrait, Jonathan (Jonathan Horowitz) epitomises how Peyton's work is rooted in Romanticism and yet exudes an undeniable, nonchalant air of cool. It has often been remarked that although Peyton has chosen the historical genre of portraiture and traditional methods of oil on board, her work has a remarkable ability to capture the contemporary spirit, celebrating youth, style, sexuality and friendship. When asked whether she chooses people just because they look good, Peyton replied 'It's complicated. I think they look good because they do something that's really great. Who they are informs how they look. It burns through'. (E. Peyton, quoted in M. Higgs (ed.), Elizabeth Peyton, New York 2005, p. 253).
Although she often draws from her social circle for her work, Peyton's work is not simply a study in the psychology of an individual. She has chosen them as her subjects also for their unique physical attributes. With the fine, dark features of a society gentleman one might find in an Ingres portrait, Jonathan (Jonathan Horowitz) epitomises how Peyton's work is rooted in Romanticism and yet exudes an undeniable, nonchalant air of cool. It has often been remarked that although Peyton has chosen the historical genre of portraiture and traditional methods of oil on board, her work has a remarkable ability to capture the contemporary spirit, celebrating youth, style, sexuality and friendship. When asked whether she chooses people just because they look good, Peyton replied 'It's complicated. I think they look good because they do something that's really great. Who they are informs how they look. It burns through'. (E. Peyton, quoted in M. Higgs (ed.), Elizabeth Peyton, New York 2005, p. 253).