Canadian artist Anna Weyant has created one of two covers for American Vogue‘s December edition, capturing the actor and model Kaia Gerber, in an edition guest-edited by Marc Jacobs. The second cover was shot by American photographer Steven Meisel.

Weyant is known for her brand of mildly menacing images of girlhood and the close-quarters depictions of the intimate daily lives of women, which are so on-the-money that young female audiences often feel a pang of the uncanny when viewing them. Weyant’s style is directly inspired by Dutch Old Masters, and her mastery of sfumato (fine shading that produces soft, imperceptible transitions between colors and tones) gives her figures an unmistakable delicacy, as if they were made of porcelain.

The commission to paint the Vogue cover came directly from Jacobs, who is the first U.S. guest editor for the magazine. The fashion designer told Vogue that he loved “the idea of Kaia seen by Anna—I wanted a young woman looking at a young woman.” He added: “I love Anna’s women.”

On the cover, Gerber wears an off-shoulder pale blue floral dress from Jacob’s Fall 2024 runway. She looks wistfully out from a stone windowsill, surrounded by a number similarly muted roses. “I wanted her to look calm and wise and knowing,” the artist told Vogue. A similar window set-up is used in Weyant’s Girl in the Window (2024), where the figure’s head is cut off from view by a descended blind. Weyant photographed Gerber in a small cubicle in the Vogue offices, with the artist saying that the model was “almost like butter in front of the camera.”

Anna Weyant, American Vogue December Cover 2024 (2024). Image courtesy of Vogue.

Weyant’s knack for fragility is paired intriguingly with a sexual undertone often present in the artist’s work. She works on multiple paintings at a time in her small dining room studio in New York, with each taking at least a month to complete. While working on the portrait of Gerber, Weyant was simultaneously working on the paintings to be included in an upcoming solo show in London, with both projects coincidentally sharing a deadline.

Weyant has been represented by Gagosian since 2022, becoming the mega-gallery’s youngest represented artist aged just 26 when signed. She and Gagosian’s founder Larry Gagosian had an almost three-year romantic relationship, which shocked the art world with their 50-year age gap. The couple broke up earlier this year. “We’re very close. She’s a great girl. I love her as a human being,” Gagosian told Vogue in November. Weyant’s show “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolves” is currently on view at Gagosian’s London gallery.

Anna Weyant, Girl in Window (2024). © Anna Weyant. Photo: Maris Hutchinson.

The artist graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2017, having been inspired to pursue an art career after receiving praise at the art classes of a summer camp in France in the 9th grade. Her consequent work as a studio assistant for the artist Cynthia Talmadge led to her introduction to Eleanor Rines, the owner of 56 Henry, who would give Weyant her first solo show in 2019.

Weyant’s successes have come quickly—in the five years since her debut New York solo show at 56 Henry, she has had three international solo shows with Gagosian. Her market recovered after a brief hit after leaving Blum and Poe gallery in 2021, thanks to her first solo show with Gagosian in November 2022 at its Madison Avenue gallery. She hit her auction record when Falling Woman (2020) sold at Sotheby’s New York for $1.6 million in 2022.

Anna Weyant, Encore (2024). Image courtesy of Gagosian.

Gerber, the daughter of model Cindy Crawford and businessman Rande Gerber, sprung to fame when she appeared next to her mother on the covers of Vogue Paris, Vogue Netherands, and Vogue India in 2016. She made her big-screen debut that same year and has since had stand-out roles in Emma Seligman’s Bottoms (2023) and Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night (2024).

“It was really tough to get her likeness!” Weyant said of the finished work. “It’s not usually something I have to even consider when painting a figure. But it was a welcome challenge.”