AUTUMNAL EQUINOX, 1949
Oil on canvas. 80 x 32in. (205.0 x 82.0cm.)
Signed, titled and dated on the reverse.
Provenance
Sotheby’s studio sale, 24th April 1985, lot 540.
With Peter Nahum at the Leicester Galleries.
Exhibited
Bradford City Art Gallery, 1953.
Newlyn, Newlyn Art Gallery, 1961, No. 3.
Exeter, City of Exeter Art Gallery, 1972, No. 12.
Penzance, Newlyn Orion Gallery, 1976, No. 18.
Literature
Ratcliffe (2007) illus. col. pl. 80.
The technique is frottage. According to the artist (Colquhoun, 1952), the work was inspired by the artificial wood graining of a painted door.
The Surrealist group in London was riven by factions and dissentions. Colquhoun was on the periphery of surrealist group activities, thanks to her refusal to cease her occult activities. Seeking to heal the rifts, Colquhoun offered Autumnal Equinox to Roland Penrose for an exhibition entitled 40,000 Years of Modern Art. The offer was refused. The exhibition was held in 1949.
The spring and autumn equinoxes occur when the equator is in the direct path of the sun, so that day and night are of equal length. A large number of feasts and festivals occur around the autumn equinox, a time for harvest and preparation for winter. They include Mabon, the Festival of Dionysus, Michaelmas, Cornucopia, the Feast of Avalon and Yom Kippur.
From an occult perspective, equinoxes represents a balancing of the opposites of day and night. Golden Dawn magicians held important ceremonies at the time of the equinoxes. They were intended to make a magical link between the Sun, or solar force as the light of nature, and the Order. It represented the attraction and sealing of a force in nature.
In 1980 Colquhoun offered to sell La Cathedrale Engloutie (1952; Autumnal Equinox (c.1949) and Crucifixion (c.1953) for £3000, £2500 and £2000 respectively to the Arts Council. However, the Council changed its purchasing policy and the discussions ended.
References
Colquhoun, I. Children of the Mantic Stain. Athene, May 1952, pp 29-34.
Ratcliffe, E. Ithell Colquhoun. Mandrake, Oxford. 2007.