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Lot Essay
A woman sits in a chair, hands clasped, her face at once weary and content. A man places his hand on the backrest of her chair and tilts his head towards her, although his eyes seem to be gazing at something in the middle distance, unknown to us. After Party (2021), by the young British painter Sahara Longe, depicts an ostensibly straightforward scene. Its subject matter places it in a long lineage of seated portraiture that stretches back to the High Renaissance, while its brilliant palette evokes the great expressionists Edvard Munch and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Yet Longe destabilises the conventions of the formal portrait. Drawing on her own Sierra Leonean heritage, she often centres Black figures, historically marginalised and excluded from Western art. She has even painted cover versions of works by Peter Paul Rubens, restaging the scenes with Black protagonists.
Longe is a rising star in London’s art firmament. In 2021, After Party was prominently exhibited at the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair. The next year saw a triumphant booth at Frieze and an exhibition at Timothy Taylor Gallery. Yet Longe’s calling as a practising artist was not inevitable. Before becoming a painter, she studied History of Art at the University of Bristol. Unsatisfied, she left the course and began life-drawing classes. One day she overheard a stranger mention the Charles H. Cecil Studios, a classical painting atelier in Florence. Longe applied and was accepted. She spent four years in the art-filled Italian city drawing and painting from life. Longe’s paintings bear the mark of this exacting training. Her fidelity to historical precedents is also demonstrated by her preferred support: After Party is painted on jute, a coarse fibre favoured by Paul Gauguin.
Longe’s lucid, unostentatious style, however, is entirely her own. Her paintings abound with mystery. In After Party, the presence of the half-concealed male figure with his enigmatic gaze adds a sense of extemporaneity. Are we seeing the hosts of a party in its aftermath, survivors of revelry? Or are these guests who have slunk home for the evening? The scene’s ambiguity is counterpoised by Longe’s graceful, feathery brushstrokes and the gleaming vibrancy of her colours. Here too, Longe subverts expectations. The radiance of the sitter’s scarlet dress is magnified rather than muted by the red hues around her. Longe achieves her wondrous colours through collecting, processing and deploying rare pigments, including Chinese vermillion and white lead. Following in the footsteps of seventeenth-century masters such as Anthony van Dyck, she mixes these with oil, tree sap and turpentine. ‘This gives a certain gloss and thickness to the paint,’ Longe explains, ‘and when you mix it, it naturally becomes so soft and easy to rub down. It also just creates a shine that makes the painting come alive’ (S. Longe, quoted in S. Gómez-Upegui, ‘The Artsy Vanguard 2022: Sahara Longe’, Artsy, 15 November 2022). After Party is at once a beguiling portrait and a virtuoso exploration of colour and form.
Longe is a rising star in London’s art firmament. In 2021, After Party was prominently exhibited at the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair. The next year saw a triumphant booth at Frieze and an exhibition at Timothy Taylor Gallery. Yet Longe’s calling as a practising artist was not inevitable. Before becoming a painter, she studied History of Art at the University of Bristol. Unsatisfied, she left the course and began life-drawing classes. One day she overheard a stranger mention the Charles H. Cecil Studios, a classical painting atelier in Florence. Longe applied and was accepted. She spent four years in the art-filled Italian city drawing and painting from life. Longe’s paintings bear the mark of this exacting training. Her fidelity to historical precedents is also demonstrated by her preferred support: After Party is painted on jute, a coarse fibre favoured by Paul Gauguin.
Longe’s lucid, unostentatious style, however, is entirely her own. Her paintings abound with mystery. In After Party, the presence of the half-concealed male figure with his enigmatic gaze adds a sense of extemporaneity. Are we seeing the hosts of a party in its aftermath, survivors of revelry? Or are these guests who have slunk home for the evening? The scene’s ambiguity is counterpoised by Longe’s graceful, feathery brushstrokes and the gleaming vibrancy of her colours. Here too, Longe subverts expectations. The radiance of the sitter’s scarlet dress is magnified rather than muted by the red hues around her. Longe achieves her wondrous colours through collecting, processing and deploying rare pigments, including Chinese vermillion and white lead. Following in the footsteps of seventeenth-century masters such as Anthony van Dyck, she mixes these with oil, tree sap and turpentine. ‘This gives a certain gloss and thickness to the paint,’ Longe explains, ‘and when you mix it, it naturally becomes so soft and easy to rub down. It also just creates a shine that makes the painting come alive’ (S. Longe, quoted in S. Gómez-Upegui, ‘The Artsy Vanguard 2022: Sahara Longe’, Artsy, 15 November 2022). After Party is at once a beguiling portrait and a virtuoso exploration of colour and form.