Mantilla 1941

NORMAN LINDSAY (1879-1969)

Mantilla 1941

oil on canvas on board
49.5 x 40.5 cm
signed lower right: NORMAN LINDSAY

Provenance:
Private collection
Private collection, Sydney

Reference:
Lindsay, N., Paintings in Oil: Norman Lindsay, The Shepherd Press, Sydney, 1945 (illus.)
Bloomfield, L., Norman Lindsay: Oil Painting 1889-1969, Odana Editions, Bungendore, 2006, pp.156-157 (illus.)

Estimate: $90000 - 120000

Result Hammer: $85,000

Norman Lindsay’s complete devotion to ‘the feminine image’ was the key to unlocking his creative potential.1 The artist’s exuberant visual explorations of the playful, erotic, sinister and sometimes comedic side of human affairs were conducted via his ongoing engagement with the female nude. This has become the definitive characteristic present across Lindsay’s prolific oeuvre, which encompasses drawings, watercolours, etchings, and oil paintings. 

For Lindsay, the challenge of painting from life and capturing the form of his sitter in a limited time frame was mentally and physically strenuous – a task to which he applied ‘years of severe study from the model.’2 It was in the spirit of this study that Lindsay executed the current work based on his favourite model, Rita Lee. Lee sat for Lindsay on numerous occasions in the late 1930s and early 1940s in both his Sydney studio and his Springfield property in the Blue Mountains. Reportedly the daughter of a Spanish mother and Chinese father, Rita’s exotic beauty captivated the artist and he produced a number of paintings of her as the sole focus of the composition, such as the present work.

Lindsay’s appreciation for Rita as a profound source of inspiration is best expressed in his own words. Rita, he writes, was; ‘a quiet, reticent girl who seldom spoke, but who secreted within her all those emotional intensities from which any variation on the feminine image may be extracted. She had the loveliest breasts I have ever painted from, and they drove me to despair.’3 

While the choice of his model’s attire is suitably feminine and luxurious with its dark sparkle and lace, Rita’s Spanish heritage is also perhaps responsible for the presence of the mantilla in the current work. In Spain the mantilla is traditionally associated with modesty and also religious piety, yet here in characteristic fashion Lindsay has transformed the garment into one of erotic revelation, through which the artist expresses his aforementioned appreciation of Rita’s physicality. As she reveals her left shoulder and breast which is barely obscured by the gauzy black fabric, Lindsay illuminates this part of her body with the warmth of sunlight. Her face remains in shade and the rest of her torso is covered to heighten the sense of a stolen glimpse, or forbidden view.

A lover of classicism and pagan gods, it is fitting that Lindsay’s creative engagement with Rita (along with his other favourite models) perpetuates the concept of the divine female Muse, an idea that has its roots in Greek mythology. In ancient Greece the nine goddess Muses embodied the arts and were conceived of as external forces that could somehow bring about artistic invention in humankind – thus explaining the mysterious and inexplicable aspects of creative process. In both myth and in art history these artistic spirits have always taken female form. In Mantilla, Lindsay places Rita in the role of his Muse, drawing from her particular alchemy of emotional intensity and physical beauty to conjure this seductive vision of feminine splendor. 

Footnotes

1. Hope, A.D. Siren and Satyr: The Personal Philosophy of Norman Lindsay, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1976, p.6

2. Lindsay, N., My Mask – An Autobiography, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1970, p.241 

3. Ibid., p.241 

Marguerite Brown MA (Art Cur)