Rayan — a British Shorthair cat portrait in the Spanish court manner · Commission No. 0004

Rayan is a British Shorthair, and No. 0004 is where this stopped being a thing the house did for itself. Cali, Sensei and Aya all live with the person who makes these. Rayan does not. He is the first sitter who arrived as a photograph from somebody else, with somebody else's expectations attached, and the first portrait that had to be right for a person who had not watched it being made.

He is also the first cat in the ledger, which changed more than it sounds like it should have.

The archetype, and the two that lost

A British Shorthair presents the same problem as a French Bulldog and a harder version of it: the face is flat, round and almost entirely without the planes a portrait normally uses to build a head. Most schools handle that by lighting it from the side and hoping, which produces a cat that looks slightly deflated.

The cardinal was tried first — red, severe, a great deal of fabric. The fabric won. Put enough scarlet around a round grey face and the face becomes the least interesting thing in its own portrait.

The doge was the opposite failure. Restrained to the point of empty; a lot of dignified nothing with a cat somewhere in it.

The Spanish court manner won because it is the only one of the three that treats flatness as an advantage rather than a problem to be lit around. That school builds its heads out of edges — the hard line of a collar, a black ground meeting a pale face with no transition asked for — and a British Shorthair is a creature made almost entirely of edges. The Grandee is not a costume put on this cat. It is the one frame in which he stops being a difficult subject.

The specification

Commission

No. 0004

Sitter

Rayan, British Shorthair

Archetype

The Grandee, in the Spanish court manner

Edition

The Study, 30 × 40 cm

Medium

Giclée on 400gsm museum canvas, stretched by hand

Finished in

Britain

Studies kept

The Cardinal · The Doge

The close

He was approved before anything was printed, like every entry in this ledger, and he carries No. 0004 on his certificate. The first three numbers were the house proving the idea to itself. This is the one where somebody else agreed.