MAUSOLEUM, c.1944
Watercolour and ink. 11¾ x 8½in. (30.1 x 21.7cm.)
Titled on the reverse.
Provenance
National Trust bequest.
British Museum, Accession No: 1990-11-9-146
Literature
Ratcliffe (2007) illus. b/w, pl. 51.
Colquhoun here presents a ceremonial structure, seemingly from a different world. Firmly planted in the ground, the slender form rises like a metallic skeleton, encased within an encircling egg-shaped force field of red and blue channels which emerge from similarly coloured feathery forms. A cloud of droplets forms at the apex of the encircling channels and coalesces over the figure.
The skeletal structure links the underworld, the domain of the dead, with the earth’s surface, the domain of the living, and reaches into the sky, the domain of the spirits. It forms a vertical connection between the elements of a tiered cosmos. It is infused with the male and female principles.
Reference
Ratcliffe, E. Ithell Colquhoun. Mandrake, Oxford. 2007.