Tarzan - Double Jeopardy by Ken Kelly - Incredible

Tarzan Oil painting - Double Jeopardy by Ken Kelly

An Awesome Fantasy painting by Ken Kelly. Just look at the background - the eerie darkness, the incredible trees with detailed moss, the ferocious lions, the gigantic white ape! - And of course, the beautiful woman!

Tarzan and Jane encounter a NO Win scenario

I had this commissioned in the spring of 2000 and it took over half a year to complete. Why? I had owned nine of the twelve Kelly REH calender paintings (including the two best Conan's). Plus I had owned at least a dozen more Kelly paintings, so I knew his style extremely well. What I wanted was Kelly's VERY BEST work he had ever done or would ever do. The "Definitive Kelly" so to speak. I had two possibilities in my mind, Conan and Tarzan. I chose Tarzan because Kelly rarely did him and I wanted to see how he would render him. We worked on the concepts for more than a month, with Jane being modeled by my ex-wife.

We talked about detail beyond the eye catching center and I wanted great detail in the outer regions of the painting, something NEVER done by book cover artists. Secondly, I wanted the colors to be achieved using the labor intensive OLD Masters style, where the colors are built layer by layer as opposed to simply mixing the color on the first try. This is very difficult to do but 16th century painters were taught this as the ONLY way to achieve a color properly. So like a "souped up engine" hidden under the hood of a beautiful car, this painting is extremely unique and a one of a kind project. In my opinion, when you can see the canvas fibers below the color of a painting, it is a failure. That is illustration and NOT painting. And oils are a VERY difficult and time consuming process for the artist, as each layer must dry prior to application of the next layer.

Another request that I had was that it be a Huge painting, graphically stunning. And again, no cutting corners with the art in the outer regions. My hopes were that this would be his Very Best and I believe that he definitely achieved this - It is an awesome painting in every sense of the word. Nothing he has ever done reaches the level of this magnificent painting simply because of the time invested. He charged me a whopping twenty five thousand for this project as he put tremendous time, labor, and ingenuity into it. But this is exactly what I wanted. He finished in January 2001 and so he dated it 2001. I have a few prelim sketches that go with this piece. Ken calls this piece "Melee"

The Huge grayish white ape was to be the focal point of this painting. Ken has a way of making gorillas look extremely menacing and so I wanted the ultimate nightmare coming at Tarzan. Giant, at about ten feet tall, literally ripping trees out by the roots to get at Tarzan. His eyes glow in the fury of red and his anger is astonishing. Ken captured this even better than I had hoped.

My pictures are scans of a pro photograph that Ken had done for me because I could not take proper pictures without glare. Consequently, you cannot see the detail of this ape, the tonal qualities of the fur, nor on any of the characters for that matter. Also, the Apes eyes are more reddish in person.

Note: At the request of several interested parties, I have added more scans of the painting. Tried to angle the shots to avoid glare but they are low resolution and look very grainy. But you can at least see better.

I also added a sketch drawing of our original concept Ken did. From here it changed radically :)

It is rendered in oils on board and is Easily the Very Best painting he has ever done in his career.

The condition in Near Mint. A HUGE 52 inches x 40 inches framed in beautiful black and gold. 

***This Is NOT a reproduction but is an original oil painting***

** Free shipping anywhere in the USA Priority Crate insured - Probably UPS due to huge size

*Outside the USA, I will split the shipping with you.