Home from the hill: a new portrait of Jonathan Conville

Posted by Ed Douglas on 18/07/2014

When Jonathan Conville’s remains were discovered below the Matterhorn last summer, 34 years after he fell to his death, his family were finally able to lay him to rest. The experience also prompted an extraordinary new portrait from artist Luis Morris.

Gerold Biner, the well-known helicopter pilot with Air Zermatt, has keen eyes. When he spotted some pieces of brightly coloured climbing gear on the glacier below him while flying alongside the Matterhorn’s north face, he knew it was almost certainly the remains of a climber. He alerted the police, who recovered the items and took them to the pathologist’s laboratory in Sion.

Inside the clothing were some bones and a nametag: Conville. The pathologist, Bettina Schrag, put the name into her search engine and came up with the website for the Jonathan Conville Memorial Trust. As soon as Jonathan’s sister Melissa saw an email from a Swiss path lab, she knew her brother had been found. Melissa and Jonathan’s other sister Katrina Taee flew to Switzerland to give DNA samples.

Although they had lived with the loss of their brother for most of their adult lives, the discovery of his remains was a greater shock than expected. ‘I felt almost angry,’ Katrina said. ‘The discovery reawakened the grief and emotions. It was raw, even brutal. People were saying how wonderful but it wasn’t at first.’

Since then, the two sisters have cremated the remains and arranged to have Jonathan’s ashes interred in the churchyard at Zermatt. The process ultimately has been helpful, Katrina says. ‘As you get older and family becomes more important I feel his loss more. It would have been great to have a big brother. It’s been difficult finding him. We will always grieve, but it does feel like an ending.’

Melissa Conville felt it was important to her to mark the discovery of her brother’s remains in some way. Watching the Sky Arts programme Portrait Artist of the Year, she saw the work of finalist Luis Morris, who uses oils and a palette knife to build up blocks of colours into a coherent portrait. The effect is bright and slightly abstract.

Melissa loved it and wondered how much he would charge to do a painting of her brother from one of her favourite photographs of him. In her mind was Jonathan’s bright red and blue clothing, which would suit Luis’ style. Not only did Luis agree to the commission, he offered to donate his fee to the JCMT. ‘It was extraordinarily generous of him,’ she says.

The finished work has delighted Melissa and her family. ‘We love the colours, they have this fresh lightness, which is true to the photo Luis used for the portrait taken by his climbing partner Frans Heusdens the morning they set off for the Matterhorn. Jonathan was an informal guy, and the slightly abstract way Luis paints suits his character.’

The portrait, she says, has a sense of expectation about it, that feeling of departure that alpinists will recognise. ‘It’s an incredible likeness given the portrait is in profile. He even got Jonathan’s broken nose. It’s especially poignant to me because the rope and ice axe in the portrait were recovered.’

Jonathan’s broken ice axe now forms part of the frame of his portrait.