Description
Signed, signed and inscribed on stretcher verso, oil on canvas
Dimensions
47.5cm x 39.5cm (18.75in x 15.5in)
Footnote
Note: This striking portrait of Nan Ivory features the soft, feathery brushstrokes of F.C.B. Cadell's pre-war technique, before he moved into a more design-focused, Deco-influenced approach. It has an Edwardian flair, with flashes of Whistler and Singer Sargent, and the close-crop perspective and soft technique add a personal, intimate feeling, compounding the fact that this is a portrait of a known sitter, rather than the use of a model for dramatic effect. Whereas after the war, Cadell began to focus on design in both his compositional decisions and painting, getting sparser in his brushstroke, and utilising women as glamorous props to offset the grandeur of the rooms he is depicting, rather than as engaging subjects in themselves. As a an earlier work, Portrait Study of Nan Ivory retains an intimacy and personality, yet the elegance we so strongly associate with Cadell is fully evident, in the sitter's distant gaze, sweeping hat, fashionable jewellery and the artist's confident handling of the paint.
It was originally thought that Cadell painted this elegant portrait of Nan Ivory as a wedding gift for the sitter's new husband, the artist's close friend and long-standing patron, Ted Stewart. However, since the appearance of that suggestion in the most recent issue of our magazine International View, new information has come to light. It has been revealed that before she married Ted Stewart in February 1916, Nan had been briefly engaged to another close friend of Cadell's, James Hamilton-Henderson in 1914. The family of Ted and Nan were unaware of the portrait and feel it unlikely that such a striking portrait of their grandmother would have voluntarily have left the family. Knowing that she was engaged previously, and particularly to a friend of Cadell's, it seems now that the portrait may in fact have been a gift for her previous intended. It would also explain why it had left the original family; the moving on of a reminder of a union that was not to be.