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his exquisitely sensitive portrait was selected out of a host of others for the cover illustration of a volume entitled A Collection of Portraits, published in 2006 by Portrait Brokers of America. It well deserves the honor, for it represents contemporary portraiture at its best.

Above all, one must commend the extraordinary deftness and lightness of touch with which the painting is executed. Every brushstroke has been applied with a gossamer delicacy. The young subject’s head and shoulders catches the light falling from our left; the rest is suffused with a deliciously mellow reflected light. The master touch of the painting is the point at which the direct and reflected lights meet down the center of the face—this difficult and challenging passage could not be done with more unerring authority.

But the magic of the painting lies beyond the suaveness of its execution. There is a haunting tenderness in the mood expressed by the beautiful young lady’s gesture and captured so surely by a sensitive artist. The viewer is moved to speak in a whisper to not break the tender moment captured here forever. J.H.S.