Cecil Collins
‘Studies of Seated Women’ 1958
Gouache and ink on paper
Signed and dated lower right
37cm X 54.8cm, 14.75in X 21.5in
Provenance Bryce McKenzie-Smith. Acquired from the artist.
£3000
Exhibited – ‘Cecil Collins: A Retrospective Exhibition, paintings, drawings and tapestries 1928-1959’. Whitechapel Art Gallery 1959.
In the catalogue of ‘The Great Happiness’ which was an exhibition of the work of Collins by the Monnow Valley Arts Centre, the drawing was described thus:
This drawings was chosen by Collins for inclusion in the Whitechapel retrospective in 1959. It heralds a new way of drawing and is close to the “matrical” way of drawing that Collins developed at this time. In this technique, Collins loads brushes with paint, one in each hand, and with his eyes closed attacks the paper with pigment in a series of gestures, perhaps in an effort to push the extremes of spontaneity to a creative limit. These are then worked into images usually female.
Bryce McKenzie-Smith who acquired the drawing from Collins has described his response to it in an article on this website. Specifically he says:
A 1958 watercolour study , for instance, meaningless for a time until the meaning suddenly came to me, (or I had grown into the meaning), it has become an even more fruitful experience, a picture which fascinates me in the word’s sense of irresistible enchantment. Three women are seated side by side, though clearly not together, representing as they do, different aspects of consciousness. The figure on the right is an old woman composed of a mass of apparently chaotic black lines and splashes of paint, some form of original energy before it was worked on and given clearer definition. In the centre is a young woman with no facial features, a contemplative figure of the utmost serenity, one of those beings of Collins’ almost overwhelming in their gentleness. Finally, looking towards us from a doorway on the left, is a woman akin to the angel of , an hieratic figure in which we see a fusion of the energy and poise of the other two women, a woman, the light in whose eyes flashes out towards us with tremendous, irresistible power.
