A Most Unusual Portrait: The Sarcophagus by Frank B. Holmes

Final version of The Sarcophagus; 38 x 56 inches, oil on linen.

Plenty of people conceive an exceptional idea. Fewer have the skill to pull it off. I place painter Frank Holmes in the latter category. Earlier this fall I shared how we re-connected, he having been one of my art instructors at Ohio University when I was a young art student in the early 70's. Today I wished to share one of his more recent paintings. Though officially untitled, I have here called it The Sarcophagus. I asked Frank to share some of the backstory on this unusual project.

The painting in progress.

"The person who commissioned the painting has been a friend and patron of mine for over 35 years and has bought several of my paintings," Frank Holmes stated. "He is a knowledgeable amateur Egyptologist as well as an art lover. He was fascinated that I once had drastically changed a finished painting (that I had exhibited and that had been published) by painting a new image over a major part of it."

How did the painting come about?

"He and I had often discussed the idea of my doing a painting of an Egyptian sarcophagus for him. Doing such a painting had been on my mind for a long time anyway. This, plus his aforementioned fascination, is what led to the idea of encasing a portrait of him within a highly decorated sarcophagus."

His portrait, and body wrapped Egyptian-style, was painted on the canvas first and the sarcophagus painted over it. "He sat for me, but I also made a photo," Frank explained.

The strip of hieroglyphs that runs down the sarcophagus's center lists his name and profession, his wife's name, and his children's names.

"I used photos of a sarcophagus in the Brooklyn Museum as reference. The rug it lies on and the room it's in are fiction."

This painting was "in the works" for about four years. 

Holmes also worked on other paintings during that time.

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If you've not yet seen Frank Holmes' Big Date, it's a large painting that is still available for purchase. Visit this September blog post. The artist continues to paint, and welcomes the opportunity to work on new assignment.

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"Art is much less important than life, 

but what a poor life without it." 

--Robert Motherwell