First Encounter: Tai-Shan Schierenberg on Portrait of a Young Woman | Tate

Portrait painter, Tai-Shan Schierenberg describes the first time he saw Meredith Frampton’s painting, Portrait of a Young Woman and how the piece has impacted his own work. Meredith Frampton painted Margaret Austin-Jones in a tall vertical format. This echoes the full-length portraits of women painted in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, the precision with which Frampton paints, combined with the work’s feeling of extreme stillness, gives this work an uncanny, modern tone. Frampton said that he made this painting ‘to celebrate an assembly of objects... beautiful in their own right’. He noted that, as Austin-Jones was very musical, the cello was an ‘appropriate symbol’. Frampton also designed the white vase on the table. Subscribe for weekly films: