OFEY [Pseudonym of Richard Feynman]

THE EARLIEST FULLY EXECUTED PORTRAIT BY CELEBRATED PHYSICIST RICHARD FEYNMAN TO COME TO MARKET

Executed a mere five years after he took a serious interest in painting and drawing, the present work exhibits both the passion and seriousness Richard Feynman had for his art. The subject - an unknown sitter - is as straightforward as she is mysterious: a beautiful young woman bathed in golden light as she gazes beyond the viewer, her mouth slightly open and on the brink of speech.

With its tonal warmth and depth of color, the current portrait illustrates Feynman's appreciation of female beauty - portraits and nudes were constant, favorite subjects of the physicist-cum-artist - and the tenderness of the brushstrokes, from the playful shapes printed on her blouse to the lightened strands of hair framing her face, leads one to believe that this was a woman who Feynman admired and studied intently. A product of his time and perhaps in spite of his genius, Feynman held his regard for the opposite sex in a delicate, if not complicated and predictable, balance. Beyond the dancers at Gianonni's and the topless or nude mystery models who sometimes appeared as part of his oeuvre, the current work shows Feynman at his most classic, and perhaps most romantic, as a painter.

The ever-curious Feynman was always expounding on the intersectionality between art and science - a topic he famously discussed with his teacher and friend, Jirayr Zorthian - and in his essay titled "But Is It Art?" included in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" Feynman later admitted:

"I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world. It’s difficult to describe because it’s an emotion. It’s analogous to the feeling one has in religion that has to do with a god that controls everything in the universe: there’s a generality aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so different and behave so differently are all run ‘behind the scenes’ by the same organization, the same physical laws."

("Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!")

The precision, enthusiasm, and love of reason which Feynman applied to quantum physics and mechanics throughout his celebrated scientific career is evident in the development of his artistic talents, a testament to the harmony he found between science and nature, color and light, and most importantly perhaps, people and their understanding of the world around them.

Artwork by Feynman is extremely rare on the market.

LITERATURE:

Illustrated in: The Art of Richard P. Feynman, 1995, Color Plate 5 (page 163).