R. H. Quaytman on the Mysterious ‘Portrait L’

When I first set my eyes on Portrait L (c.98–117 CE), I felt an immediate connection. The figure’s face is so vivid, so full of life, it’s almost like she’s blinking at you. Encaustic painting, I discovered, originated in Greece before travelling to Rome and then Egypt. We only know of the tradition through Roman-Egyptian funerary panels from two millennia ago – colloquially known as ‘Fayum mummy portraits’ – yet she looks straight at you across the centuries, as though about to speak. I love the history around these ancient paintings. Apparently, the palette was restricted to only four colours: lead white, earth red, yellow ochre and lamp or bone black. I think I might try that.

These encaustic portraits reverberate because of their startling realness. I always say they’re almost too human, as if they’re about to answer you back. I’ve painted with encaustic before; it’s beautiful but difficult. The wax has to be kept warm or it hardens instantly, so you end up working in these short, quick brushstrokes. But whoever made Portrait L mastered it differently. It’s unusually painterly: thin layers, delicate shadows, almost no impasto. You can see how the wax was thinned and brushed in, especially on the cheeks and those astonishing eyes. It’s both intimate and anonymous, reminding me of portraits by Hans Holbein the Younger or Jean Clouet – the kind of realism that has a serious, unflinching nature.

I’ve been thinking about portraiture a lot recently – particularly with my new series of paintings of Queen Elizabeth I, which I’ll be showing at this year’s fair. Elizabeth controlled her likeness so fiercely, approving only official images and burning the rest, and yet we still don’t really know what she looked like. In Portrait L, we’re given the opposite: a single image of a woman, seemingly real and present, but whose life and identity are entirely lost.

There is no harder thing to paint well than the human face – probably because we know instinctually if it’s true to life. One of the incredible things Portrait L shows is that realism in portraiture only became possible with the revolutionary introduction of painted shadows. I recall reading that Elizabeth I preferred few shadows in the portraits she commissioned, as if to deny the unsettling depth that they bring – like a strange mirror reflecting something profound between the subject and the viewer.

For me, painting has always been about that paradox: how an image can survive its maker and its subject, carrying a presence that feels alive even when everyone involved is long gone. That’s what this portrait does. It collapses time. It’s uncanny and moving. And, honestly, it makes me want to continue painting portraits.

As told to Terence Trouillot

Portrait L is presented by ArtAncient at Frieze Masters 2025 (Stand E1)

R. H. Quaytman is presented in Studio by Miguel Abreu Gallery at Frieze Masters 2025 (Stand E8)

This article first appeared in Frieze Masters magazine 2025 under the title ‘R. H. Quaytman on Portrait L’.

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^{Main image: Portrait L (detail), c.98–117 CE. Encaustic on panel, 38 × 23 cm. Courtesy: ArtAncient Ltd., London}