Amy Winehouse portrait to go on sale at art fair
The painting was completed following a chance meeting with the Back To Black singer in a Camden pub in 2009.
A portrait of Amy Winehouse painted after a chance meeting in a pub is to go on sale for £24,000.
Dan Llywelyn Hall completed his image of the singer in 2012 – a year before he became the 133rd artist to formally paint the Queen.
His one-off piece, entitled Amy’s Glance, was painted after he met the Rehab singer in Camden pub The Hawley Arms in late 2009.
The Cardiff-born artist said he approached Winehouse and asked to paint her portrait, to which she replied: “As long as you get the hair right”.
Mr Llywelyn Hall began painting Amy’s Glance shortly after their meeting, completing it following the singer’s death from alcohol poisoning in July 2011.
It will go on display at the London Art Fair, which opens on Tuesday, along with portraits of David Bowie and Michael Jackson.
“She was slightly alarmed by my directness and as her entourage swooped in, she gave a very straight answer: ‘As long as you get the hair right’ with a wide smile.
“I quickly attempted to make arrangements and she said she was off on a trip and we could sit for an hour on return in exchange for a drawing.”
Mr Llywelyn Hall had gone to the pub in Camden hoping to encounter the singer after listening to her albums “over and over”.
“I’ve had some strange premonitions about my sitters and she was one of them; even though it wasn’t strictly from a sitting, I got a sense of her through that chance pub encounter.
“I thought I’d paint the last Tommy [Harry Patch] and I did, thought I’d paint the Queen after seeing Lucian’s [Freud] portrait and I did. She was truly magnetic.”
The oil on canvas, measuring 70x38cm, is on sale for £24,000 – with 10% donated to The Amy Winehouse Foundation.
“Looking at this portrait often arrests time for me and takes me back to those soulful eyes that were charged with life-force and vulnerability,” Mr Llywelyn Hall added.
