DANCE OF THE NINE MAIDENS, 1940
Seven drawings of nude dancing figures.
Each drawing is watercolour and pencil and signed and dated Colquhoun /40.
The dimensions are:
1. 17½ x 11¼in. (45 x 29cm.)
2. 11¼ x 17½in. (29 x 45cm.)
3. 17½ x 11¼in. (45 x 29cm.)
4. 17½ x 11¼in. (45 x 29cm.)
5. 17½ x 11¼in. (45 x 29cm.)
6. 17½ x 11¼in. (45 x 29cm.)
7. 17½ x 11¼in. (45 x 29cm.)
Provenance
National Trust Bequest.
The works are unframed and have probably never been exhibited.
In each of these watercolours, Colquhoun has drawn the figure of a dancing maiden and then drawn the outline of the stone such that the figure is contained within. These works are the first in which Colquhoun dealt with a Cornish theme. The notion of transformation would have appealed to her surrealist and alchemical sensibilities. Each phallic menhir contains within its form a female figure: two genders in one; the hermaphtodite whole.
In what must surely be a folk memory of the fertility rites once performed at stone circles, many of them are associated with myths of dancing girls turned to stone as punishment for dancing on the Sabbath. The references to petrifaction as a punishment are believed to be early Christian propaganda.
If Colquhoun was thinking of a specific stone circle, there are three within the Lands End peninsular which have attracted the name Nine Maidens: those at Boscawen-un; Tregeseal and Boskednan, none of which actually have nine stones. There is also a stone row near Bodmin called the Nine Maidens which does have nine stones. The number nine may be a distant memory of a ritual that featured repetition rather than a literal counting of the number of stones in the monument.
See the notes to Dance of the Nine Opals (1942).