The New Murrey and Blue blog

I first came upon this morphed picture of Richard way back in May 2013, or perhaps a few months earlier, and having recently seen it again, I decided to post about where I found it. While searching for as many likenesses of Richard as I could, the morph suddenly popped up on screen. It was astonishingly lifelike, and totally different from the National Portrait Gallery portrait. And yet the same, if you know what I mean. The NPG portrait had become flesh and blood.

My find was at http://www.tigerlight430.co.uk/, a site belonging to Paul Ferguson. I was eager to use the picture, but my enquiry received no reply. As it was published publicly and I couldn’t see any mention of copyright, I went ahead and used it. Eventually I twiddled it so that Richard was looking at the viewer and smiled just a little. Not everyone will like it, of course.

Since then I have learned that someone else had the same idea as Paul. Olivia Nagioff at the Society published a morph in August 2013, and compiled a brief video to show how she did it. (see http://www.richardiii.net/8_9_gallery.php and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr3j5mZT9wk.) The sequence is almost eerily alive. And yet reassuring. Only Richard’s enemies would find him dark or frightening! To everyone else he was and is someone we can only admire.

Anyway, the pictures above are: The NPG portrait, the reconstruction as shown on Channel Four, then Paul’s morph. The final one, looking at you and smiling, is my twiddle.