A Twig and Bough in Black

A Twig and Bough in Black is a reimagining of A Lady and Gentlemen in Black by Rembrandt, one of the thirteen stolen masterpieces featured in Netflix’s latest docuseries, "This Is A Robbery,” the story of the world’s greatest art heist.

For my piece, I decided to play to my strengths and use one of my favorite surreal styles which is headless portraits. I love to replace people’s heads with elements such as clouds, birds, smoke, or trees. Since the focal point of Rembrandt’s painting is that the lady and gentlemen were wearing black, I started looking for stock images of people wearing black. It took me around three days to find the perfect image to go with my vision for this project. I knew I wanted to remove the figures heads in Photoshop, but I couldn’t decide on whether I wanted to replace their heads with a tree or a cloud. I then decided to try something a bit different and to not only use a tree as the head, but to also incorporate a cloud in the center of it to symbolize a brain.

While I was watching the docuseries, they mentioned that in Rembrandt’s original painting, there was a child painted between both the lady and gentlemen. Unfortunately, the child had passed away and Rembrandt painted over the child because he couldn’t bear the pain. After I learned such important information, I decided to find a unique way to somehow honor the child. I ended up taking a tree branch and placing it in the sand between both figures and added a heart shaped cloud to it. This little tree is to honor Rembrandt’s loss of his child. So I give you, A Twig and Bough in Black!

Bidding ends 4/19 at 11:59 pm EST. The artist will receive 100% of all auction proceeds.