All texts copyright Richard Shillitoe
sardine and eggs
c. 1941
Watercolour.
8¾ x 6¾in. (22.3 x 17.3cm.) (ss)
Provenance
NT.
Exhibited
London, The Leicester Galleries, 1941, no. 33.
This painting, portraying the male genitalia as still life, is a male equivalent of Tree Anatomy (1942). The
effect, however, is very different.
Here, the penis is depicted as a small fish, trussed up in a net-like string bag that also serves as scrotum,
containing the two eggs/testicles. The objects hang, like sporting trophies. What a wonderful heraldic
device they would make!
However, it is more than just a visual pun: alchemically, it fuses the male with the female. Testicles are
uniquely male and eggs are uniquely female. Colquhoun has united the genders in a single form. Part
metaphor, part double-image, part sadistic revenge on the male surrealists’ enthusiasm for dismembering
the female body, is there anything less potent than a dead sardine?
