Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Miscellaneous frontmatter
- Frontispiece
- Introduction
- CRITICISM
- CREATIVE WRITING
- CRITICAL MISCELLANY
- Poise
- Poise by J. D. Fergusson: A Rediscovered Portrait of Katherine Mansfield?
- Patriarchal Pink: Gender Signification in Katherine Mansfield's ‘The Little Governess’
- Apples and Pears: Symbolism and Influence in Daphne du Maurier's ‘The Apple Tree’ and Katherine Mansfield's ‘Bliss’
- REVIEW ESSAY
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
- Join the Katherine Mansfield Society
Poise
from CRITICAL MISCELLANY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Miscellaneous frontmatter
- Frontispiece
- Introduction
- CRITICISM
- CREATIVE WRITING
- CRITICAL MISCELLANY
- Poise
- Poise by J. D. Fergusson: A Rediscovered Portrait of Katherine Mansfield?
- Patriarchal Pink: Gender Signification in Katherine Mansfield's ‘The Little Governess’
- Apples and Pears: Symbolism and Influence in Daphne du Maurier's ‘The Apple Tree’ and Katherine Mansfield's ‘Bliss’
- REVIEW ESSAY
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
- Join the Katherine Mansfield Society
Summary
On 12 May 2015, The Telegraph carried the following piece, written by Colin Gleadell, asserting that ‘the sitter in J D Fergusson's Poise is revealed’:
A portrait of a beautiful young woman by the Scottish colourist J D Fergusson that was discovered in an attic in France last year is now thought to depict the celebrated author, Katherine Mansfield. Dr Gerri Kimber, senior lecturer in English at the University of Northampton and chair of the International Katherine Mansfield Society, says she is almost certain it is a missing portrait of Mansfield. She sent me a photograph of the author, who knew the artist well, with the same bob hairstyle, jacket lapels and doll like facial expression as in the painting, entitled Poise.
A ‘missing’ portrait implies that Fergusson was known to have painted a portrait of Mansfield. This was an intriguing prospect which had first been indicated to Gerri and me by Rachel Boyd Hall, the enterprising researcher at the Richard Green Gallery in New Bond Street where the painting was exhibited, though she only suggested that the picture might depict Mansfield, not that there was known to have been a portrait of Mansfield by Fergusson. I have looked through all the sketchbooks belonging to Fergusson that are now in the Fergusson Archive in Perth and have never found what might be a line drawing of Mansfield, so I was keen to see the painting.
It was certainly not a disappointment. Its powerful presence dominated the room of the gallery in which it was hanging. Rachel had kindly sent me an image of the painting by email but nothing could have prepared me for its vitality, the intensity of the sitter's gaze (doll-like?), the dense vibrancy of the colour, and the rhythm created between the strong triangular shapes and the curving dish, fruit and leaves. The sitter leans over the back of a sofa towards intimacy with the viewer. But is this vigorous blue-eyed woman Mansfield? Both Ida Baker and Anne Estelle Rice refer to Mansfield's eyes: Baker writes that ‘Katherine looked at me steadily with calm, deeply dark eyes’ and Rice, in her famous portrait of Mansfield, depicts them as dark brown. Mansfield herself lists them as brown in her passport.
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- Information
- Katherine Mansfield and Psychology , pp. 151 - 156Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2016