ivory enamel on lime · oil on tin · upstairs landing
circular, the size of a dinner plate, enamelled in ivory over lime wood with a black inner reveal. the kind of frame that takes the eye in circles before it lets the eye in. it has held the same child's portrait for over a century; the child is long since not a child, and is, in any case, no longer alive.
painted in oil on tin by a travelling portraitist who came through in the spring of 1908 and worked from breakfast to lunch in the front parlour. the painter left a small smudge on the iris of the left eye that the family considered a flaw and then, over years, considered an asset. the painting is signed on the back of the tin in pencil: h. veller, also the painter of the seascape.
it hangs at the top of the stairs. you meet it at eye height as you come up. several visitors have remarked that the child watches them until the half-landing turn.
field-note a round frame asks to be looked at frontally. it does not like to be passed.
fr · oval fr · silver child a small seascape a self-portrait