Despite beginning his career at the height of Abstract Expressionism in 1950s New York, Alex Katz (b.1927) rejected the prevailing style of his peers, pursuing instead a form of representational painting that took inspiration from cinema, commercial advertising, dance, nature and, most prominently, his close circle of friends and family. He is best known for large-scale portraits characterised by an economy of line and form, flat planes of heightened colour and dramatic cropping, the bold simplicity of which draws from Henri Matisse and Ancient Egyptian portrait busts. Phyllis, an intimate pencil-drawn study for a woodcut print, depicts a stylish woman smoking a cigarette and is a rare example of Katz portraying a subject looking away from the viewer. Reflecting the artist’s interest in fashion, and recalling his group scenes of the 1960s that capture figures from New York’s art and party crowd, it arrests a fleeting moment in time.