ADAM AND EVE, c.1930
Oil on canvas. 30 x 20in. (76.2 x 50.8cm.)
Signed ‘COLQUHOUN’ lower left.
Provenance
Consigned by the artist: Sotheby’s, London, 5 March 1980, lot 113
(illus. b/w.).
In 1979 Colquhoun began to send small consignments of paintings to Sotheby’s, London. Her work appeared fairly regularly in their sales thereafter, culminating in the studio sale of 1986.
This is a rather coarsely modelled student work that remained in the artist’s possession, probably un-exhibited, until she sent it to Sotheby’s.
Adam and Eve are portrayed in their Paradisial garden habitat, a place of unbridled fecundity where fish teem in the river, birds fly above, a waterfall tumbles down a rocky mountain and a sinuous serpent raises his head. It is difficult to say what moment in the Biblical story Colquhoun has depicted: it appears to be neither the moment of temptation nor the moment of expulsion.
The postures of Adam and Eve exactly mirror each other. They stand facing one another, left arm aloft, framing a star between their outstretched hands. They might almost be giving it a high five.