Rapallo, Italy

Details

Margaret Mellis (1914-2009)
Rapallo, Italy
signed with initials 'M.M.' (lower right), signed again, inscribed and dated 'Margaret Melllis Rapallo July 1938' (on the stretcher), stamped with the studio stamp (on a label attached to the strectcher)
oil on canvas
22 x 30 in. (56 x 76.2 cm.)
Painted in 1938, on the artist's honeymoon.

Provenance

Purchased directly from the artist by the present owner.

Special Notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Brought to you by

Philip Harley

pharley@christies.com +44 207 389 2687

Lot Essay

This painting is a splendid example of Mellis’ first figurative period and is one of at least two paintings she made in the Italian Riviera resort of Rapallo, where she and Adrian Stokes spent a fortnight on honeymoon in the summer of 1938. The other painting is Palms and Olives, Rapallo, and both were painted from the window of their hotel, looking down towards the sea. There is a deliciously feathery lightness of touch to the paint-handling in these pictures, also an apparent informality and spontaneity, but beneath this dazzling surface is a sure sense of pictorial construction already learnt at Edinburgh College of Art and reinforced by her studies at the Euston Road School. However relaxed the application, the picture maintains its formal balance and continues to delight.

A.L.

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