A.J. Portrait of a Woman in a Patterned Gown

An original 1941 oil painting – A.J., Portrait of a Woman in a Patterned Gown.

A fabulous Post-impressionist portrait of a woman, dated 1941.

The highly patterned fabric and fragmented brushwork to the clothing create a consciously decorative effect, heightened by the singular palette of terracotta pinks, teal blue-greens and brown-black that unites the face, clothing and backdrop.

The anonymous female sitter is apparently married—her ring finger adorned—and she holds beads and has an open book, conventional symbols of learning and piety, and yet here they are more distinctly modern: the coloured beads are fashionable, and her book hints at a greater intellectual independence of women in the 1940s. Unusually perhaps for a wartime portrait, painted in 1941, the vision is soft and poised, but perhaps a melancholy lies behind her wistful gaze.

The portrait evokes the Slade School portraits of the likes of Augustus John and Ambrose McEvoy, as well as the loose technique and Post-impressionist colouring of Camden Town Group artist Walter Sickert, and the decorative feel of Bloomsbury Group work. The painting is monogrammed AJ or JA, and is housed in a beautiful and substantial carved wood frame, which further elevates the decorative quality of the work.