Artwork Title: Portrait of a Lady in Black

Portrait of a Lady in Black, 1921

Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell

The sitter in this painting is Bertha Hamilton Don-Wauchope, an Edinburgh model who posed regularly for Cadell from about 1911-26. The distinctive mauve-colored walls indicate that the portrait was painted in the artist's studio in Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, where the artist lived from 1920. After World War I, Cadell abandoned his feathery impressionistic manner for this style, using bold colors and scarcely-visible brushstrokes. Cadell often included the names of colors in the titles of his paintings. This practice had been made popular by Whistler and became fashionable during the Edwardian period. The framing of the composition brings us up close but there is no sense of intimacy here and the lady in her striking black dress and overpowering hat looks past us, her expression suggesting at best a form of polite ennui. The cool color scheme of lilac, black and... [https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/429/portrait-lady-black?artists%5B14940%5D=14940&search_set_offset=3]
Uploaded on May 1, 2017 by Suzan Hamer

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