Mathew Lynn Jeanne Ryckmans

This portrait was the winner of the People’s Choice award for 1997 and runner-up for the Archibald Prize.

Mathew Lynn painted Jeanne Ryckmans because he was attracted to her face: ‘it is the enigmatic qualities that attract you as an artist,’ he remarks.

Ryckmans has been painted in a pose that references her parentage – her father, a well-known sinologist, is Belgian and her mother is Chinese. Ryckmans is a writer, producer and presenter. Lynn has not known her for long, however he recognised ‘a rather captivating, reserved quality in her, and it is a combination of these things that I wanted to capture’.

For this painting, Lynn took his inspiration from the portraiture of the later Chinese dynasties, Ming and Qing. Lynn says, ‘What I have to say about Jeanne’s personality can be found stylistically in this Eastern painting, with its use of empty space juxtaposed with areas of highly concentrated activity’.

The use of black in Lynn’s portrait is symbolic of three things. Firstly, in keeping with her understated nature, Ryckmans usually wears black. Secondly, the blackness evokes the emptiness in the Chinese paintings that influence Lynn’s work. And thirdly this darkness suggests those unfathomable things in other people, ‘the sense that there is so much about a person that will never be known’.

Mathew Lynn teaches art at the Sydney Grammar School. His works are mainly figurative paintings. He has been hung in the Archibald Prize once before, in 1989, with a portrait of Alberta Viegas.