Painting the Grand Budapest: An Interview with Emma Wesley
Emma Wesley is an award-winning portrait painter who lives and works in London. Self-taught as an artist, she studied English Literature at Cambridge and Painting Conservation at the Courtauld Institute of Art before beginning a career as a portrait painter in 2003. She undertakes commissions ranging from small head studies to large group portraits, but particularly likes painting people in their workplaces, surrounded by the tools of their trade, or by objects which symbolise the work they do. Emma has exhibited widely throughout her career, and works in many private and public collections, including The National Portrait Gallery, The Royal Society, The Inner Temple, The MCC, The Royal Welch Fusiliers, All Souls College, Oxford, Christ's College, Girton College and Jesus College, Cambridge, The University of East Anglia and Rugby School. Emma was elected a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 2007, and has twice been awarded the De Laszlo Silver Medal for Portraiture by the Society.
LAYERED BUTTER: An interesting tidbit I found out about your work is that you went into art conservation. What made you go in that direction?
EMMA WESLEY: Well, when I left school, I always knew I wanted to paint, but I couldn't really find any art schools that would just let me paint in my old-fashioned way. At that time, everything seemed to be pushing you towards video installations and other things, which were fine, but not what I wanted to do. I did a degree in English literature, which was amazing. It was just three years of reading books, you know, so well, what better during that time? I just carried on painting portraits of all my friends, family, and anyone who would sit for me. But by the end of that course, I really knew that I wanted to do something with painting, something practical, rather than just writing. Although it seemed quite unrealistic, just to take a leap into the unknown and become a painter, I thought I'd study picture restoration, and as it turned out, that was a very good basis for being a painter because you learn about all the materials and techniques of the old masters. It's a different kind of art history, because previously, the only art history I'd read was a sort of the history of ideas. Whereas studying picture restoration, you learn the history of materials and techniques and the things that artists are dealing with on a day-to-day basis. For example, we know we learned that the reason the Impressionists were some of the first painters to paint outside was because, of course, they was some of the first painters who had paint in tubes and could carry with them, whereas previously, you had to mix your paint up in the studio.
That… That actually makes a lot of sense. I feel so stupid for not knowing “Oh, yeah, they had to invent tubes so that they can go outside to paint.”
Exactly! But beforehand, you just think, “Gosh, of course artists would have wanted to go outside and paint.” and they did. They did watercolors and sketches and things, but to do full on oil painting outside and the way the Impressionists did was not really possible beforehand. All the books I'd read before, it was all about this artist was influenced by this idea, this philosophy, whatever. But as an artist, you realize you're spending all day in the studio, and sometimes the quality of brushes, the quality of paints you can get, is going to have just as big an influence on you as what's going on in politics, or what the latest philosophy is.
So then what draws you towards painting in a portraiture style?
I’ve always been interested in really interesting people. And as you'll see with my website, I really like painting people doing their jobs, surrounded by the tools of their trade, or surrounded by things they collect. I'm interested in the way people present themselves and when people are the most themselves. And if people have a job, which is a kind of a vocation, I think that's when they do really come into their own. I mean, some artists get models into the studio and paint them in the artists environment. I like going out and painting people in their own environment. I'm interested in the clothes they wear, the things they collect, the things they own, going into someone's workshop, whether it's a surgeon in his operating theatre or a violin maker in his workshop, or just someone in the house with a collection of China and pictures and stuff.
For me, I was really drawn by two of them. One of them was the violin maker, and the other was your Study in Herringbone and Dogtooth.
The subject in Herringbone happens to be my friend Greg, and you can spot him anytime from a distance because he's always wearing a hat. One day he turned up wearing this coat and this scarf, and I was like, “Oh my god, you’re like an Op art picture, a Bridget Riley. This is doing crazy things to my eyes, so I really have to paint you like this.” The drawing and the subsequent painting were a kind of a challenge to me. I’m quite an old-fashioned figurative painter, so I did feel like Bridget Riley painting him, dealing with all that pattern.
I know we touched on it previously, but what really draws you to the subjects that you paint?
With my friend Greg in the Houndstooth and Herringbone, I just saw him and thought “Yes, you're such an amazing composition.” He is a very interesting character. He's a great raconteur, an antique dealer. It's just shapes, patterns, personality. Sometimes it's the shape of someone's nose, the bagginess of their eyes, all those things.
You enjoy painting in this old-fashioned way. Now for you being self taught, what kind of influences do you try to draw upon when composing your work? Which artists do you take inspiration from?
Well, I mean, a huge range really. I suppose my first influences, and my enduring influences, remain some of the early Flemish painters like Van Eyck. I don’t think it gets much better than Van Eyck or Holbein, people like that. It's actually no surprise that when I was growing up, my parents had a poster of Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Marriage at home, so I would just spend a lot of time staring at that as a child, and it somehow got in my head. In fact, there are a couple of references to Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece in my cover for The Grand Budapest Hotel - namely the towel which echoes one of the still life elements of the altarpiece, and the red dressing gown which is inspired by the red robe the donor wears. Like the altarpiece, too, a relatively drab exterior opens to reveal a far more sumptuous interior. There are a lot of modern British painters, people like Stanley Spencer, that I like too, and as I get older, my range of influences sort of broadens. I'm currently doing a portrait at the moment of my husband sitting on the sofa based on a Jean-Etienne Liotard Woman in Turkish Dress, Seated on a Sofa. So sometimes a particular portrait will bring up a particular reference, but the ones I always come back to are the old Flemish and Dutch artists.
In-progress sketches of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Courtesy of Emma Wesley
How did this project working on the Criterion Collection cover of The Grand Budapest Hotel come about? How did you first meet Wes?
It came entirely out of the blue, which was wonderful. I got an email from John Peet, who works at Criterion, and works with Wes, saying that Wes saw some of my paintings in the National Portrait Gallery in the BP Portrait Award, and if I’d be interested in doing this project. I thought “Wow, Wes knows who I am? Yes, of course, I'd love to do this.” It was a dream project for me.
I find it very interesting, because I know for a lot of the Criterion covers his brother, Eric Chase Anderson…
Yes! His brother did most of them. I don't know what happened with this one. There are some other ones like Fantastic Mr. Fox…
That and Moonrise Kingdom are the ones that I remember not done by Eric. But what I really do find fascinating with your take on the cover is between the outer slip and the inner slip, where you perfectly encapsulate both time periods. In collaborating with Wes, what art direction did he give you? What was that collaboration process like?
It was all done via email. Wes suggested the idea to me that he wanted to set it in the bath house, and it was very much his idea that there would be two covers. The outer slip would be the bathhouse that is in its rundown stage, when the old Zero Moustafa is telling the story to the writer, played by Jude Law, and the inside would show the bathhouse in its 1930s heyday in all its glory. The idea was that then that we'd have M. Gustav sitting in the bath. I think the first email said something like in the old bathhouse above the figures in the bath, I had to imagine a Wiener Werkstätte style mural, or some piece of tile work depicting some of the characters and events from the film. The Grand Budapest Hotel is quite influenced by writings of Stefan Zweig, I think what Wes liked about it was the narrative framework, the way the story is told. I think this is why he wanted to focus on the bathhouse scene, because this is the scene in which the story comes out. The idea of having the mural was almost as if this is Zero’s story made manifest on the wall above. That was quite fun. I had to sort of go away and research the Wiener Werkstätte and immerse myself in the work of artists, like Koloman Moser, which for me was a great joy. It's very exciting. I like doing a bit of pastiche work. On one hand, I was watching the film over and over again, and taking stills shots and deciding which characters would look good and where, then on the other hand, I was going through the history of Viennese art and looking also looking at pictures of bath houses and churches in Vienna.
In-progress sketch of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Courtesy of Emma Wesley
Were there any interesting historical references or fun easter eggs that you discovered in your research when you were commissioned for this?
The way the collaboration worked was that from this email, I was given this strange brief; in some ways it was quite structured and in other ways it was quite loose. So, I was sort of told what to do, and of course Wes likes to be in charge of things like color schemes, and everything as you can see. He's a film director and he's got his own vision. But in another way, I had some freedom to devise the mural myself. I'd send photographs of my work in progress to John Peet, and then he'd send and show them to Wes, where it would then all get relayed back to me. Sometimes I'd get just a “Yes, great!” and sometimes I'd get some quite specific feedback about things like “This needs to move by a couple of millimeters and his hair lines not quite right,” or “Can we change the shape of his nose?” Then halfway through the whole process, I realized that John Peet, who I was emailing, has a little cameo role in The Grand Budapest Hotel. He's in the scene where they’re reading Madame D’s will, when the old man says “Where’s Céline?” and someone else says, “She's dead. We’re reading her will” He's the guy who says that. It's only because I was watching the film over and over again and stopping it at various points. I said, “Well, gosh, that's him. That’s the man I’m emailing.” I think I got to know the film quite well, and I have to say, it's a joy to rewatch over and over again.
I didn't realize that the collaboration was really over email because I was thinking what kind of similarities you and Wes share that you were drawn to each other, because you touched on how he very much liked your portraiture work, and that's why he reached out to you. Do you think it had to do something in terms of his idiosyncrasies or his aesthetic style?
Well, I've always been very drawn to his style, and I think the two paintings of mine that he mentioned he'd seen, one that’s called Nick in Tartan Trousers, who I think actually looks a bit like a character from a Wes Anderson movie, a little moustache, unusual clothing, and the other one was a portrait called The Neuroscientists and there’s a couple with a big phrenological head and lots of objects in the background. I think maybe there's a certain precision to both of us. I think we both like detail, vintage things. It's quite hard to put a name to the aesthetic, but I think it was obviously something that clicked.
For me it’s this vintage nostalgia vs. contemporary aesthetically pleasing… je ne sais quoi.
Everyone knows when they see it. It’s like that Instagram account Accidentally Wes Anderson.
In-progress sketch of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Courtesy of Emma Wesley
I really find it fascinating how Wes’ style has taken on a life of its own outside of his films. The symmetry that you display in both murals perfectly encapsulates his aesthetic within the package design. Obviously, Wes was very happy with your design work. Do you ever plan to work for him again, or did you just see it as just a commission?
Well, a lot of my friends have asked me “How did you get this commission? This is amazing. This is the kind of work we'd kill for.” And I said, “Well, I didn't apply for it, it just entirely came out of the blue” And hopefully it was very happy collaboration. I mean, it certainly was from my point of view, I loved doing it. If the call comes again, I’d be very happy to get involved. Otherwise, just back to portraits for me. [laughs]
Do you have certain directors or favourite films that you that you would love to apply your style again in this packaging medium?
I love an old film noir. I'd say one of my favorite films is Pepe Le Moko with Jean Gabin, I think it’s absolutely brilliant, or The Seventh Seal. There are certainly a lot of actors who’d be very interesting to paint. I feel quite privileged that I got to paint so many great people on the cover of [The Grand Budapest Hotel]. Someone like Jeff Goldblum, he'd be amazing to do a portrait of, or Adrien Brody. I mean, what a wonderful profile, to have been able to paint him in real life rather than just from the film would have been such a treat, but I did tell some of my friends “I'm sorry, I've got to go now I'm painting Jude Law in the bath.”
Click here to purchase prints of Emma’s The Grand Budapest Hotel cover design
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