DEATH OF A VAMPIRE IN A MAGIC MIRROR, c.1945
Ink and gouache. 14½ x 10in. (37.5 x 26cm.)
Inscribed on the reverse of the frame with the artist’s name, the title, c.1960 and with the Paul label.
Provenance
National Trust bequest.
Now on loan to the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro.
Exhibited
Derby, Derby Art Gallery, 1945. no.74.
Penzance, Newlyn Gallery, 1976, no. 31.
Literature
Ratcliffe (2007) illus. b/w, pl. 43.
The columnar, deeply grooved forms, like a crevassed glacier that is about to calve, rise above a still fjord. A large bird with wings outspread lies atop the largest of the columns. This is a picture within a picture. It is seen through a membrane that has been pierced and peeled back to reveal that which lies beyond.
It is a cliché to write of holding a mirror up to reality. Colquhoun uses mirrors to comment upon the nature of reality. The reference to a magic mirror in the title of this work is a comment upon the elusiveness and paradoxical nature of reality. As a reflective surface, mirrors are commonly used by magicians for scrying as an alternative to a crystal ball. By tradition, vampires do not have reflections, and only a truly magical mirror could return a reflection of a creature that does not possess one. She may also have been thinking of the fabled mirror manufactured by Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century. This mirror was so powerful that it reputedly enabled the viewer to see what was happening at that moment anywhere in the world. It was – of course - destroyed by the authorities.
The use of a mirror in scrying, as an alternative to a crystal ball is technically known as catoptromancy.
Reference
Ratcliffe, E. Ithell Colquhoun. Mandrake, Oxford. 2007.