The story behind The Grand Budapest Hotel’s ‘Boy… | Little White Lies

The sto­ry behind The Grand Budapest Hotel’s Boy with Apple’ painting

22 Feb 2021

Words by Adam Woodward

Portrait of a woman in a red dress, seated before an old-fashioned phonograph, with a man in the foreground.
Portrait of a woman in a red dress, seated before an old-fashioned phonograph, with a man in the foreground.
Artist Michael Tay­lor reveals how he cre­at­ed the price­less” art­work at the cen­tre of Wes Anderson’s film.

In Wes Anderson’s 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ralph Fiennes’ debonair, dowa­ger-both­er­ing concierge, M Gus­tave, becomes embroiled in a bit­ter fam­i­ly feud after he inher­its a sup­pos­ed­ly price­less work of art. You may have pre­sumed that the paint­ing in ques­tion, Boy with Apple’, was a gen­uine rel­ic from the Renais­sance era; a less­er-known por­trait by one of the Dutch Mas­ters, per­haps. In fact, it was com­mis­sioned espe­cial­ly for the film, with Ander­son cre­at­ing a back­sto­ry plau­si­ble enough to fool many viewers.

This month The Grand Budapest Hotel is being released in the UK as part of the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, and to mark the occa­sion we reached out to British artist Michael Tay­lor to find out more about the mak­ing of this icon­ic movie prop, which the art crit­ic Jonathan Jones has described as: The kind of paint­ing you can expect to see in Vienna’s Kun­sthis­torisches Muse­um, the Szép­művészeti Múzeum in Budapest or the pic­ture gallery of Prague Castle.”

Below, Tay­lor pro­vides a detailed first-hand account of how Boy with Apple’ came into being, along with a selec­tion of behind-the-scenes images and a rare, nev­er-before-seen draw­ing believed to be the only authen­tic study for the paint­ing still in existence.

I was approached ini­tial­ly by one of the film’s pro­duc­ers, and short­ly after Wes called me up. He gave me an out­line of the plot and a rough idea of what he was look­ing for. I was then sent the script with my name water­marked all through it, along with a con­tract to sign. Quite why he set­tled on me I can’t say, but any­way, I got the gig.

The brief was quite vague: some­thing a bit Renais­sance, maybe with a cas­tle, and a lit­tle bit of paper… we must have the lit­tle bit of paper.’ Oh, and it had to be fun­ny. Not very fun­ny, just a bit fun­ny’. As it pro­gressed the cas­tle went in, then got paint­ed out, the wall was changed around a bit, a cur­tain rail arrived and came out again, but the hands always remained the same. There was ini­tial­ly a rather nice pewter plate with a bird skull, but that end­ed up on the paint­ing equiv­a­lent of the cut­ting room floor too.

Gloomy manor house with tall chimneys and dormers, viewed from gravel path with person walking away in foreground.

To paint Boy with Apple’, I com­man­deered the won­der­ful Jacobean Han­ford House, a girl’s board­ing school near my home in Dorset while the girls were away for the sum­mer hol­i­days. A young dancer from Lon­don, Ed Munro, was engaged to sit, and after a rum­mage in the film studio’s dress­ing-up box a cos­tume was set­tled on. This evolved some­what over time, with the red vel­vet sleeves bor­rowed from a dif­fer­ent out­fit in the end. Ed would stay with us dur­ing sit­tings, and I built a lit­tle set for him in one cor­ner of the Har­ry Pot­ter-like din­ing hall, which lent the project a nice Renais­sance baro­nial ambience.

Wes emailed me an assort­ment of ref­er­ence pic­tures: 16th cen­tu­ry man­ner­ist por­traits by Bronzi­no, some Ger­man North­ern Renais­sance works, pho­tos of cas­tles, cakes, post­cards of hotels and so forth. It was all very eclec­tic. I had always been fas­ci­nat­ed by the hand in that por­trait of Gabrielle d’Estrées in the Lou­vre, so for my part I knew right from the start that I want­ed the hands hold­ing the apple as they are.

In the 16th and 17th cen­turies it was a ges­ture quite often used in paint­ings, and although it prob­a­bly didn’t look fun­ny to peo­ple then, I think it does to us now. It gives the boy a faint­ly ridicu­lous pom­pos­i­ty. The splen­did­ly named Johannes Van Hoytl sug­gest­ed to me North­ern rather than Ital­ian Renais­sance, so I took it away from Bronzi­no and more towards Hol­bein or Cranach. It was point­ed out to me lat­er that there is in fact a draw­ing by Dur­er using just just such a hand gesture.

Black and white image of an artist painting a portrait of a seated young woman, with a young boy sitting nearby watching.

The paint­ing took about three months to com­plete, on and off. I had nev­er attempt­ed any­thing like it before, or been involved with films in any way, so I had to learn on the job; much to Wes’ under­stand­able anx­i­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly as film­ing approached and there was no paint­ing. When I final­ly let him see it there were sev­er­al aspects that had rather drift­ed away from the script which he want­ed altered. Although not my usu­al prac­tice to change paint­ings to order, I had to con­cede that this was after all his inven­tion and his film, so ask­ing for some more time I was able to make the changes he asked for.

The drift­ing off began short­ly after I got the script when we had some peo­ple com­ing to stay. I’d hid­den the script some­where for safe­ty, but unknown to me my wife then hid it some­where else, so when I need­ed to refer to it lat­er I couldn’t find it. I didn’t dare con­fess to the stu­dio that I’d lost it, nor was I keen to men­tion it to my wife, so I just kind of drift­ed on, busk­ing it and hop­ing I could remem­ber what I was sup­posed to do! I think it worked out okay in the end though.

A black and white sketch of a young woman's face, with focused eyes and a thoughtful expression.
Portrait of a boy holding a green apple, seated in a chair wearing a red velvet coat and lace collar, surrounded by a red curtain and ornate frame.

The first time I saw the com­plet­ed film, I thought it was absolute­ly tremen­dous. Fun­ny, rather dark in places, went like a train from start to fin­ish. And of course it looked won­der­ful. I felt very for­tu­nate to have played a small part of its cre­ation. In the film the paint­ing is described as price­less’, although as far as I am aware, it was nev­er actu­al­ly val­ued. I sus­pect it would be more than I got paid for it! Anoth­er MacGuf­fin, the Mal­tese Fal­con stat­uette, recent­ly sold for over two mil­lion dol­lars, so who knows?

Where the paint­ing is now, I couldn’t say. When it was fin­ished, I sent it off to Wes in a nice padded case to pro­tect it from the rough and tum­ble of life on set, and haven’t seen it since, apart from in the film. [N.B. We checked with Wes and he told us, I have the pic­ture and always will.’] I like the way that after you let them go, paint­ings have a life of their own out in the world, but I’ve nev­er had one turn into a movie star before.”

The Grand Budapest Hotel is now avail­able on Blu-ray cour­tesy of the Cri­te­ri­on Collection.

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