Executed in 2019, Untitled (after Joseph Wright) is a superb example of Ewa Juszkiewicz’s painterly practice. Investigating the role of the female sitter in contemporary portraiture, the composition of the present work references eighteenth century English landscape, particularly Joseph Wright of Derby and his celebrated work Portrait of Dorothy Beridge, currently held in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. In 2022, Juszkiewicz’s work was exhibited at Gagosian in London (Haunted Realism, June – August, 2022), the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (Des corps, des écritures, April – August, 2022), and the ICA Miami (Fire Figure Fantasy: Selections from the ICA Miami’s Collection, May – October, 2022). One of the most exciting young artists working today, Juszkiewicz’s painterly practice challenges conventional standards of beauty and interrogates art historical canons of picturing women.

Set against a muted background, Untitled (after Joseph Wright) depicts a woman wearing a vibrant red dress with a blue silk sash. The subject stands poised, her hand resting casually on a piece of fabric over the chair set in front of her. From the angle of her shoulders, her pose suggests that she is looking out to the viewer, yet in Juszkiewicz’s re-imagining of the composition, her face has been obscured by white silk which is loosely wrapped her head, leaving only a plumage of hair to emerge from the top. Juszkiewicz’s nuanced depiction of luscious drapes of fabric is reminiscent of Old Masters, yet her uncanny concealment of the sitter’s face immediately subverts such art historical reference. Juszkiewicz’s adaptation, interrogation, and ultimate subversion of traditional modes of portraiture reject the notion of the female sitter as a passive subject of the male gaze. In concealing the visages of her figures, Juszkiewicz not only magnifies the female sitter’s lack of agency throughout the art historical canon, but furthermore, she denies the contemporary viewer access to their identity, leaving them with questions unanswered. Infused with compositional devices descendant from Surrealists such as Magritte and Dalí, Juszkiewicz’s canvases recontextualise the genre of portraiture within a twenty-first century context.