A LA CLAIRE FONTAINE, 1974
Enamel on board. 16½ x 13¼in. (42 x 34cm.)
Signed lower left with the monogram and dated ’74. Inscribed on the reverse.
Provenance
Sotheby’s studio sale, London, 24th April 1985, lot 553.
Sotheby’s, Conduit Street, 16th January 1986, lot 10.
Bonham’s, London, 16th September 2003 (as 1973 and as oil on board), lot 139.
With Red Raven Arts, London.
Exhibited
Penzance, Newlyn Art Gallery, autumn 1974, no. 89,
Literature
Ratcliffe (2007) illus. col, pl 10 (image rotated anticlockwise).
In the early 1970s Colquhoun began to find pictorial inspiration in music and began to explore what she termed its ‘Psycho-morphological implications'.
The title is the name of a traditional French folksong. The folksong, about the merits of the fountain with its clear water, brings to mind the Ode by Horace O fons Bandusiæ from which Colquhoun obtained her magical motto.
Reference
Ratcliffe, E. Ithell Colquhoun. Mandrake, Oxford. 2007.