- Libris Literatuur Prijs 2005 · Winner
The Portrait
Specht en zoon
Willem Jan Otten (born 1951)
Translated by David Colmer
English editions
In EnglishThe Portrait
Scribe · Australia · 2014 · Paperback · 192 pages
The Portrait
Scribe · Australia · 2009 · Paperback · 183 pages
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Felix Vincent, a portraitist whose likenesses are much in demand, believes in painting only what he can see. Then the industrialist Valéry Specht asks him for a picture of his son, and the boy, it emerges, has died; the portrait is meant to restore him. Needing money, Vincent goes against his own rules and agrees. He takes out a big canvas once reserved for a Pietà and starts on Singer, the adopted son. That canvas is the narrator: propped in a chilly glass studio at a villa in the Gooi, it registers every sound, sight and touch.
AI-generated summary
About the book
- Form
- Novel
- Length
- 142 pages in the original
- Set in
- Netherlands
- First published
- 2004 by Van Oorschot
- Author's age
- 53 when first published
- ISBN
9789028209992 (original)
9781921372469 (Scribe, Australia)
9781922247537 (Scribe, Australia)
- More
- Wikidata