SARDINE AND EGGS, c.1941
Watercolour. 8¾ x 6¾in. (22.3 x 17.3cm.)
Inscribed on the reverse of the frame with the artist’s name, the title and the Fairfax Road address.
Provenance
National Trust bequest.
Exhibited
London, the Leicester Galleries, 1941, No. 33, as Sardine and Egg.
Literature
Ratcliffe (2007) illus. col. pl. 62.
The male genitalia as still life.
This painting, about the eternal mystery of gender differences, is one of Colquhoun’s most effective double images, all the more so for being so understated and, apparently, naturalistic. It is a male equivalent of Tree Anatomy (1942). It is more than just a visual pun: it fuses the male and the female in a most effective way. The title is misleadingly accurate. It describes precisely its surface appearance but makes no reference to what it really is. If painted by Magritte, he might have titled it This is not a Penis.
Here, the penis is depicted as a small fish, trussed up in a string bag that also serves as scrotum, containing the two eggs/testicles. The objects hang, like sporting trophies. What a wonderful heraldic devise they would make! This painting is one of Colquhoun’s most effective double images. Most significantly of all, however, is that it is more than just a visual pun: alchemically, it fuses the male with the female. Testicles are uniquely male and eggs are uniquely female. Colquhoun has fused them in a single androgynous form. Part metaphor, part double-image, part sadistic revenge on the male surrealists’ enthusiasm for dismembering the female body, is there anything less potent than a dead sardine?
One wonders whether there is an autobiographical element here. Colquhoun is known to have had a sexual relationship with a Corsican fisherman in the 1930s. A fish in a net, doubling as male genitalia may owe its origins to this episode in the artist’s life.
Reference
Ratcliffe, E. Ithell Colquhoun. Mandrake, Oxford. 2007.