‘An Oriental calligrapher” is how Christian Lacroix describes the artist David Downton, invoking the hummingbird hover and dart of the brush in his hand. Downton is our dauphin of fashion portraiture, heir to both René Bouché and Gruau—and today in a class by himself. His haiku of line and color, informed by art history (strokes of Pablo Picasso, Egon Schiele, Franz Kline) yet free of ego, play hide-and-seek with moments in time. “I like the images to float on the surface of the paper,” he has said, “as though they had just ‘happened.’ ” Most of these moments are spent with women. Beautiful women. Apparitions in kinetic transit.

“I began my professional life as a jobbing, everyday, take-anything-I-could-get illustrator,” Downton recalls. “And through that it became clear what my strengths were. Out of nowhere I was sent to Paris to cover the collections, and out of that I became focused on fashion, and from fashion on to a kind of fashion portraiture.” Downton often has merely an hour or two’s sketching with his subject, a short time in which to perceive—to receive—the face in front of him. Back in his studio, the conjuring begins, the heavy lifting that goes into the lightest touch. With the publication of David Downton: Portraits of the World’s Most Stylish Women, these floating moments are gathered in one place.

The captions, too, are by Downton, an added delight. His gift for the swift and surprising detail is reminiscent of another great British portraitist and connoisseur of style, Cecil Beaton. When asked what his work has taught him about beauty, Downton replies, “Blank beauty isn’t beauty after a while. The turn of the wheel in the gene pool is the opening play, but for any one of these women you have to add in intelligence, humor, dedication, and work. It’s what you do with beauty that’s the interesting thing.”