Diamonds and gemstones come from nature and are then fashioned by human hands. It is this melding between nature and man that yields what society col- lectively agrees on as some of our most valuable objects.
cess, wealth and luxury. The artist approaches the subject matter as portraiture for modern-day relics or artifacts that serve to extend the object’s legacy, while also reflecting the cultural anthropology of our time. In honor of de Boulle’s 35th anniversary, we asked Crabtree to create a painting inspired by our de Boul- le hallmark: our favorite color, yellow, and, of course, our love of diamonds. To be more precise, it is the de Boulle Diamond: an 18.13-carat, GIA-graded natural fancy yellow radiant-cut diamond. The result: a one- of-a-kind painting, 36 inches tall, created in oil on panel. It appears on the cover of our 2018 magazine. Using handmade oil paints, Crabtree creates por- traits of real gems, magnified to more than 1,000 times their actual size. Each layer is comprised of several thin layers of color, and each painting takes three to six months to complete. Crabtree creates
commissioned portraits for clients worldwide who share a mutual appreciation for beautiful gems. Her most well-known commissions include the 14.93-car- at Pink Promise diamond and Chopard’s 342-carat Queen of Kalahari diamond. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the San Francisco Art In- stitute, and studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Crabtree painted her first diamond — at five feet tall — in 2012 for an art exhibition about material- ism and luxury. Inspired by the abstract patterns, she began collecting images of diamonds and speaking with gem cutters. Without any prior knowledge of gemology, Crabtree fell in love with their symmetri- cal patterns and began painting every shape, one by one.
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