NZ & International Fine Art Wednesday, 14 February 2024 - 6:00 PM start
Douglas MacDiarmid (1922-2020) - Rosario
Lot Details
Douglas MacDiarmid (1922-2020) Rosario oil on board signed (lower right) 30 x 23.5cm in original hand painted frame PROVENANCE Fleischl Collection NOTES Supplied by Anna Cahill, Director, MacDiarmid Arts Trust Finally revealed in all her dramatic glory, a striking portrait of a dancer Douglas encountered on his first visit to Spain during Easter, March 1948. He was 25 at the time. Rosario is familiar to Douglas’ followers from a black and white photograph in the 2002 art history monograph MacDiarmid, by Dr Nelly Finet. Dr Finet discussed this portrait (Fig 17) with a companion study of a Spanish man with noble angular face… “At every stage of his roaming existence he painted companions and friends, as much taken by what a head reveals as by the effort to sound all that remains hidden. “During his first spell in Paris, 1947-49, he visited Spain shortly after frontiers re-opened after the civil war and the period of isolation that followed, Spain was celebrating Holy Week with the fervour and violence of her realism. An ideal time to be there. “Paintings from Castille and Andalusia included a couple of portraits of the sombre, haunted, Spanish cast of features which fascinated the painter. …In both portraits head and shoulders fill the picture, Rosario seen against a hill of the Alhambra [Palace] at Granada. ...MacDiarmid’s love of the world of [one of the most admired 15th century Italian early Renaissance painters] Piero della Francesca…may have influenced these evocations of a strong, wild Spain (if less the glory of rich landowners). He is concerned with people in and of their territory, profoundly anchored in the land’s life. Their traits are powerfully marked…the perfect oval [jaw] of the dancer; their wilful mouths and ardent eyes are of the same race. These portraits do not, as earlier, aim at a vision of intimacy. Beyond the individuality stated, it is the vigour, the driving will of a people attached to a country that these Spanish portraits reveal.”
