Commissioning a Portrait in Washington
Hazel Morgan provides a bespoke portrait painting service to clients throughout Washington. An award-winning artist with over four decades of professional experience, Hazel creates hand-painted oil portraits of exceptional quality for individuals, families, corporations, and institutions across the state.
From the boardroom to the family home, Hazel’s portraits have graced the walls of distinguished collectors, university halls, and corporate headquarters throughout Washington. Each commission begins with a personal consultation and results in a work of enduring artistic merit.
Portrait Artist Washington Area
As your trusted Portrait Artist Washington, Hazel Morgan serves portrait clients in Washington and the surrounding communities. Portraits are shipped directly to your door with professional packaging and full insurance coverage.
Portrait Services in Washington Communities
How to Commission a Portrait from Washington
Commissioning a portrait from Hazel Morgan is a collaborative and enjoyable experience, regardless of where you are located in Washington. The process has been refined over hundreds of commissions to ensure a seamless experience for every client.
Step 1: Initial Consultation
The process begins with a complimentary consultation - by telephone, video call, or email - during which Hazel discusses your vision for the portrait. This covers the subject, preferred composition, size, background, clothing, and any particular details you would like to include. There is no obligation at this stage.
Step 2: Photographs & References
For clients in Washington, Hazel can work from professional photographs, high-quality personal photographs, or a combination of multiple reference images. She provides clear guidance on the types of photographs that produce the best results. Where feasible, live sittings can also be arranged.
Step 3: The Painting Process
Once the composition is agreed, Hazel begins painting. The process typically takes between six and twelve weeks depending on the complexity of the piece. Clients receive progress photographs at key stages so you can see the portrait taking shape and provide feedback before completion.
Step 4: Delivery & Framing
Completed portraits are professionally packaged for shipping. Shipping and framing costs are provided once the painting is complete. Hazel can also recommend master framers who specialise in fine art framing to complement your finished portrait. Clients in Washington typically receive their portrait within one to two weeks of completion.
Why Clients in Washington Choose Hazel Morgan
Hazel Morgan brings a rare combination of artistic excellence, professional reliability, and personal warmth to every commission. Here is what sets her apart:
Over 40 years of professional experience - Hazel has been painting portraits professionally since the early 1980s, amassing a body of work that spans hundreds of commissions for private, corporate, and institutional clients worldwide.
Award-winning recognition - Her work has been exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, and other prestigious venues. She is a member of several leading art societies.
A personal, one-to-one service - Unlike studio operations, every portrait is painted entirely by Hazel herself. You deal directly with the artist from first consultation through to delivery, ensuring your vision is faithfully realised.
International shipping expertise - Hazel regularly ships completed portraits to clients across the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and beyond. Every painting is professionally packaged to arrive in perfect condition.
Complete satisfaction guaranteed - Hazel works closely with each client throughout the painting process. Progress images are shared at every stage, and adjustments are made until you are completely happy with the finished portrait.
Frequently Asked Questions - Portrait Commissions in Washington
Hazel provides personalized quotations after an initial telephone consultation, during which she discusses your specific requirements. The consultation is complimentary and entirely without obligation. Please get in touch to arrange a convenient time to talk.
Not at all. The majority of Hazel’s commissions are painted from photographs, which makes the process convenient for clients in Washington and beyond. Hazel provides guidance on the best types of photographs to supply. Live sittings can be arranged where practical.
Most portraits are completed within six to twelve weeks from the start of painting, depending on the complexity of the commission. Hazel provides a realistic timeline during the initial consultation. Rush commissions can sometimes be accommodated for special occasions.
Hazel has extensive experience working with a range of photographic references, including older or lower-resolution images. She can often combine multiple photographs to create a single cohesive portrait. During the consultation, she will advise on whether your available photographs are suitable.
Completed portraits are professionally packaged using custom-built crating and shipped via insured courier directly to your address in Washington. Shipping and framing are quoted separately after the portrait is completed.
Client satisfaction is paramount. Hazel shares progress photographs at key stages throughout the painting process so you can provide feedback and request adjustments. This collaborative approach means that by the time the portrait is complete, it faithfully reflects your vision.
Why Hazel Loves Washington
Washington, D.C. holds a very special place in Hazel's heart as a source of profound artistic inspiration. What captivates Hazel about the nation's capital is the extraordinary weight of human story that permeates every corner of the city - the kind of layered, meaningful narrative that she strives to capture in every portrait she creates. Hazel is deeply drawn to the cultural richness surrounding the Smithsonian Institution, whose constellation of world-class museums along the National Mall represents one of the greatest concentrations of art and history anywhere on earth. From the National Portrait Gallery - a place philosophically close to Hazel's own work - to the Freer Gallery of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington's arts infrastructure speaks to a community that genuinely values the power of the human image preserved through time. That reverence for portraiture as a form of lasting legacy is precisely what drives Hazel's passion for serving clients here.
The neighborhoods and landmarks of Washington deepen Hazel's admiration even further. She is drawn to the quiet grandeur of Georgetown, with its Federal-era architecture lining the C&O Canal towpath, and to the vibrant energy of the U Street Corridor, a neighborhood steeped in African American cultural history and home to legendary venues like the Howard Theatre. Hazel also admires the community spirit that surrounds beloved events like the annual Cherry Blossom Festival along the Tidal Basin - a tradition that speaks to Washington's capacity for collective beauty and civic pride. The Eastern Market on Capitol Hill, a community anchor since 1873, reflects the same appreciation for craftsmanship, authenticity, and human connection that Hazel pours into every brushstroke of her oil portraits.
For Hazel, what makes Washington clients so meaningful to work with is their understanding that history matters and that individuals deserve to be remembered with dignity and artistry. A city shaped by leaders, thinkers, diplomats, and everyday families who have built something extraordinary together is a city that understands portraiture at its core. Hazel is honored to create bespoke oil portraits that carry the same sense of lasting significance that Washington itself embodies so powerfully.
Ready to Commission Your Portrait?
Begin with a complimentary, no-obligation consultation. Hazel would love to discuss your portrait ideas and provide a personalized quotation for clients in Washington.
Request a Free ConsultationWashington Counties Hazel Paints Portraits In
Adams, Asotin, Benton, Chelan, Clallam, Clark, Columbia, Cowlitz, Douglas, Ferry, Franklin, Garfield, Grant, Grays Harbor, Island, Jefferson, King, Kitsap, Kittitas, Klickitat, Lewis, Lincoln, Mason, Okanogan, Pacific, Pend Oreille, Pierce, San Juan, Skagit, Skamania, Snohomish, Spokane, Stevens, Thurston, Wahkiakum, Walla Walla, Whatcom, Whitman and Yakima.
Towns in Washington State Where Hazel’s Portrait Clients Live
Seattle, Capitol Hill, Queen Anne, Madison Park, Madrona, Laurelhurst, Magnolia, Broadmoor, Windermere, Mount Baker, Ballard, Bellevue, Medina, Clyde Hill, Hunts Point, Yarrow Point, Mercer Island, Kirkland, Redmond, Sammamish, Issaquah, Woodinville, Bainbridge Island, Vashon Island, Gig Harbor, Tacoma, North Tacoma, Proctor, Olympia, Edmonds, Mukilteo, Everett, Snohomish, La Conner, Anacortes, Friday Harbor, Orcas Island, Lopez Island, Bellingham, Chuckanut, Port Townsend, Sequim, Port Angeles, Leavenworth, Chelan, Wenatchee, Yakima, Walla Walla, Richland, Spokane, South Hill and Liberty Lake.
The Northwest School, the Frye and Portraiture in Washington
Washington produced a school of painting that nobody expected from a corner of the country most Americans had never visited, and it did so because of the weather. The Northwest School painters worked in a silver, diffused light that has no equivalent in the East or the Southwest, and they built a way of painting out of it.
The land is Coast Salish, Makah, Quinault, Yakama, Spokane and Colville homeland. The carving traditions of the coastal peoples - house posts, masks, bentwood boxes, canoes - represent one of the great sculptural achievements of the Americas, and they are not historical: Northwest Coast carving is a living practice with named contemporary masters. Fur traders came in the 1790s, settlers to Puget Sound from the 1850s, and statehood in 1889.
The Klondike gold rush of 1897 made Seattle. It was the outfitting port for the Yukon, and the merchants who sold shovels did better than most of the men who bought them. Timber, salmon, shipping and later Boeing did the rest.
The Frye Art Museum is the best surprise in the city. Charles and Emma Frye, meatpackers, collected nineteenth-century German and American representational painting - figures, portraits, animals - and left it to Seattle on the condition that admission be free forever. It has been, since 1952. For anyone interested in what a well-made figure painting looks like, it is the most useful room in the state.
The Seattle Art Museum began with Richard Fuller, a geologist who gave both his collection and the money for the 1933 art deco building in Volunteer Park - now the Asian Art Museum - and then served as unpaid director for forty years. SAM’s Native and Australian holdings are exceptional, and the Olympic Sculpture Park turned an oil transfer site on the waterfront into nine acres of open ground.
The Northwest School came out of the 1930s and 1940s: Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan and Guy Anderson, working in Seattle and the Skagit Valley, drawing on Asian calligraphy and Zen as much as on European modernism. Life magazine put them on the map in 1953 as the Mystic Painters of the Northwest. Tobey’s white writing influenced painters well beyond America.
Glass is the state’s other contribution. Dale Chihuly, born in Tacoma in 1941, founded the Pilchuck Glass School north of Seattle in 1971, and Pilchuck turned the Puget Sound region into the centre of studio glass worldwide. The Museum of Glass in Tacoma and the Chihuly Bridge of Glass are the public face of it, and there are now several hundred working glass artists in the region.
Money in Washington is younger than almost anywhere else in the country. Boeing, then Microsoft from 1975, then Amazon, Starbucks, Costco, Nordstrom and Nintendo of America. The families commissioning portraits here are often first or second generation in their wealth, and their houses tend to be modern, glazed and full of that grey northern light.
The commissioning geography follows the water. Seattle’s Broadmoor, Windermere, Madison Park, Laurelhurst and Queen Anne. The Eastside - Medina, Clyde Hill, Hunts Point, Yarrow Point, Mercer Island, Sammamish. The islands: Bainbridge, Vashon, and the San Juans at Friday Harbor, Orcas and Lopez. Gig Harbor and North Tacoma. Bellingham and Chuckanut Drive. Port Townsend, whose Victorian seaport was preserved by the accident of the railway never arriving. And across the mountains at Leavenworth, Chelan, Walla Walla and Spokane’s South Hill.
Institutional portraiture is well established: the University of Washington, Washington State, Gonzaga, Whitman College at Walla Walla, Seattle University, the University of Puget Sound, Fred Hutchinson and the Seattle medical centres, the state capitol at Olympia - one of the last true masonry domes built in America - the federal courts and the older Seattle firms.
The Washington commission has a particular technical character. Interiors here are often glass on two or three sides, the daylight is cool and even, and the surrounding landscape is dark green and grey. A portrait for such a room wants a considered palette, and it is worth thinking about before the first sitting rather than after.