Study of George

Robert Remsen Vickrey is one of a small group of artists, including Andrew Wyeth, George Tooker, and Paul Cadmus, who embraced and mastered the difficult Renaissance technique of egg yolk tempera painting. Working in this realistic mode and somewhat inspired by Surrealism, these artists have sometimes been called "Magic Realists." Vickrey is best known for his meticulously crafted paintings of single figures imbued with a potent psychological content that suggest a mysterious narrative.

Despite the hyper-realism with which Vickrey works, his subjects are almost always fictional. The artist has eschewed any notion that his images tell a story or that he intends for his subjects to appear sad and brooding, "People are always asking me if there is a story behind my paintings and there almost never is. Once in a great while, I might see something that gives me an idea like some of my movies. . . . The people quite often look sad and brooding, but I don't mean them to be brooding over any particular event in their lives." Shown in front of one of the artist's commonplace cracked concrete walls, "Study of George" is the quintessential single-figure subject for Vickrey.