James Calloway · No. 166

Cigarette at Midnight

Cigarette at Midnight distils the solitary, smouldering glamour at the heart of Vettriano's world. A woman in a satin evening gown stands alone at a tall window of a dim hotel room, a cigarette held loosely in her fingers, the lights of the city glittering far below. James Calloway works the noir vocabulary with confidence: the single source of warm lamplight, the deep shadow, the glossy realism, the unmistakable sense that we have walked in on the middle of a story. There is longing in the pose, and a hard-won independence; the woman is beautiful, composed and entirely alone, lost in some private reckoning. Calloway renders satin, skin and smoke with cinematic precision, the whole scene tuned to the key of late-night melancholy and restrained desire. Nothing is explained — the lover who has just left or is yet to come, the city that waits below — and that withholding is exactly the source of the spell. Sultry, atmospheric and quietly heartbreaking, it is a portrait of glamour in its loneliest hour. It is the kind of image that makes the viewer invent a whole life around it.

An original oil painting on canvas by James Calloway, painted to order — never a reproduction. Narrative romantic realism — elegant figures, windswept shores and dim interiors in a cinematic, noir-tinged mood, in the storytelling spirit of Vettriano.

Artist

James Calloway

Medium

Oil on canvas

Finish

Unframed, ready to hang or frame

Made

To order, by hand