THE SUNSET BIRTH, c.1942
Oil on canvas. 15½ x 28in. (39.3 x 71.2cm.)
Signed and inscribed on the frame Ithell Colquhoun/The Sunset Birth. Signed again on the stretcher Ithell Colquhoun
Provenance
Christies, South Kensington, 3rd June 1999, lot 213. Illustrated in colour in the catalogue.
Exhibited
London, Leicester Galleries, 1942, No. 32.
London, International Art Centre, 1942, no. 5.
A depiction of the Men an Tol, a unique megalithic monument situated in West Penwith, Cornwall. An upright, circular granite slab, just over one metre high, has a circular hole 46cm in diameter. It is flanked by an upright stone at the North East and another at the South West. The modern appearance may, or may not, reflect the original prehistoric configuration. The overall NW/SW axis lies in the direction of the midsummer sunrise and the midwinter sunset.
The holed stone is believed to be an eroded-through solution basin from a local tor stack. Set upright in an inversion of its natural horizontal state, ‘a form that once held water has now become dry, transformed into a material metaphor for the rising and setting of the sun at important times of the year.’ (Tilley and Bennett, 2001).
The glowing stones are shown joined by curving lines of force. According to Cornish folklore, babies could be cured of ailments by being passed through the central holed stone of the monument ‘against the sun’ (i.e. from West to East) in what is a symbolic act of rebirth. Colquhoun mentions the folktale in The Living Stones. The monument could also be used for divination.
References
Colquhoun, I. The Living Stones: Cornwall. Peter Owen, London, 1957.
Tilley, C. and Bennett, W. An Archaeology of Supernatural Places: the Case of West Penwith. J. Roy. Anthropological Institute (NS) 2001, 7, 335-362.