THE HEART OF CORN, c.1941
Watercolour. 9¾ x 6¾in. (25 x 17.5cm.) (ss)
Inscribed on the reverse of the frame with the artist’s name, the date, c. 1941, and the Fairfax Road address.
Provenance
National Trust bequest.
Exhibited
London, the Leicester Galleries, 1941, No 29 (1st ed. of catalogue).
Harrogate, Harrogate Art Gallery, 1941, No 18.
Colquhoun may have been familiar with the Mayan female fetish objects known as the Heart of Corn, but she was certainly familiar, through Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, with the corn goddess a symbol of sacrifice and regeneration. Fraser describes some Mesoamerican rituals associated with the Spirit of the Corn, but does not use the actual phrase ‘Heart of Corn’. He also describes rituals involving Osiris in his aspect as corn god and his sister/wife Isis, the corn goddess, who was sometimes described as the ‘mother or the ears of corn and who gave birth to the fruits of the earth’.
The image itself conjoins body organs with facial features.
See Heart of Corn (1940) for another work with the same name.
Reference
Frazer, Sir J.G. The Golden Bough. Macmillan and Co. London. Abridged edition 1922.