SEA MOTHER, C.1950
Ink. Dimensions unknown.
Inscribed on the reverse of the frame with the artist’s name, the title, c.1950. With the Paul label.
Provenance
National Trust bequest.
Exhibited
London, Gallery I, 1957, No. 12.
Penzance, Newlyn Orion Gallery, 1976, No. 38.
In Goose of Hermogenes Colquhoun associated powerful female qualities with the sea. A passage describes descendants of Hesper [Hesperus; the Evening Star; Venus] with the archetypal hero-woman “both mother and warrior, debased long since as Britannia, but stemming from the ancient line of foundered Atlantis.” She goes on to describe her sisters: “all have a family resemblance, all reflect our sea-mother’s noble features.” P.73.
It is appropriate that Colquhoun has used the automatic process, parsemage, which involves floating pigment on water, to produce this image: a maritime reworking of the earth mother.