Irish Girl

Artist Victor Pasmore (Chelsham, Surrey, England, 1908 - 1998)

Datec. 1940

Mediumoil on canvas

ClassificationsPaintings And Drawings

DimensionsOverall: Height: 61.4 cm, Width: 51 cm
Frame: Height: 86.1 cm, Width: 75.8 cm

AcquisitionPurchased in 1942 with income from the Macdonald Bequest.

LocationView by Appointment - Aberdeen Treasure Hub

Object numberABDAG002409

Keywords

Female

About MeVictor Pasmore was a pioneer in the development of abstract art in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s.

In the 1930s Pasmore co-founded the Euston Road School, an institution committed to the naturalistic depiction of real life, aiming to make art socially relevant.

During the 1940s Pasmore studied Post-Impressionists like Paul Cézanne and Georges Seurat. When 'Irish Girl' was painted in 1940, the war had brought down a curtain between British painters and their continental counterparts. As Pasmore expressed it, this isolation meant that "one is thrown directly to nature, a good thing if you can rise to her".

It is one of the occupational hazards of being married to a figurative painter, that a wife may be required to switch her role to that of model with little warning. Wendy Pasmore, herself a painter, sat generously to Victor during the early 1940's. In 'Irish Girl' Pasmore has combined an intimate portrait of his wife with a sensitive exploration of the light as it falls on her torso, creating delicate transitions between the areas of rosy naked flesh and the covered areas lightly veiled by the white muslin of her open blouse.