The Two Sisters

Details

Robert Colquhoun (1914-1962)
The Two Sisters
signed 'Colquhoun' (upper left), signed again and inscribed 'Robert Colquhoun/Grieving Women' (on a label attached to the frame)
oil on canvas
28 x 24 in. (71 x 61 cm.)
Painted in 1942.

Provenance

with Lefevre, London, where purchased by Sir Colin Anderson, 1944.

Literature

Exhibition catalogue, Quelques Contemporains Anglais, Exposition de Peinture et de sculpture, Paris, 28 Avenue des Champs Elysée, 1945, illustrated.
Britain Today, No. 114, October 1945.
Exhibition catalogue, Exhibition of the works of British Contemporary Painters, Buffalo, Albright Art Gallery, 1946, illustrated p. 48.
Exhibition catalogue, Robert Colquhoun, London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1958, pl. 3.

Exhibited

Paris, British Council, 28 Avenue des Champs Elysée, Quelques Contemporains Anglais, Exposition de Peinture et de sculpture, 1945, no. 6.
Buffalo, British Council, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Exhibition of the works of British Contemporary Painters, 1946, no. 12: this exhibition toured to Worcester, Cleveland, Toronto, St Louis and San Francisco.
London, Tate Gallery, The private collector: An exhibition of pictures and sculpture belonging to members of the Contemporary Art Society, March - April 1950, no. 26.
Wakefield, Art Gallery, Personal Choice Paintings from nine private collections, March - April 1953, no. 12.
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Robert Colquhoun, March - May 1958, no. 28.
Bristol, City Art Gallery, Contemporary Paintings, 1960.
Glasgow, McLelland Galleries, Centenary Exhibition 1861-1961, October - December 1961, no. 142.
Establishment Gallery, Robert Colquhoun Memorial Exhibition, 1962. Edinburgh, Douglas and Foulis Gallery, Robert Colquhoun Memorial Exhibition, March - April 1963, no. 5.
Glasgow, Glasgow Painters, 1968.
Edinburgh, Scottish Arts Council, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, New Painting in Glasgow 1940-46, July - August 1968, no. 20: this exhibition travelled to Glasgow, Scottish Arts Council Gallery, September 1968; and Aberdeen, Art Gallery and Regional Museum Schoolhill, October 1968.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

In the only interview that Colquhoun gave, he commented, 'Each painting is a kind of discovery, a discovery of new forms, colour relation, or balance in composition. With every painting completed, the artist may change his viewpoint to suit the discoveries made, making his vision many-sided. Figures and objects in modern paintings may appear distorted. There will be those who seek a factual resemblance or a mirror-like reflection. The special forms, evolved from the relation of colour masses, line and composition, to express the painter's reaction to objects, will be the reason for a painting's existence' (Picture Post, 42, no. 11, March 1949).

The present work which is close in composition to Colquhoun's 1946 painting, also owned by Sir Colin Anderson, The Fortune Teller (now in the collection of Tate Gallery), shows two women seated at a table and demonstrates Colquhoun's interest in depicting the human form. Bryan Robertson comments on this aspect of Colquhoun's work, 'even in his earliest works there was a tendency to see human figures, in mute alignment, as performers, acting out a ritual drama, rather than human beings living a life of their own. This gives so much of his work, even at its best and most genuinely tragic in stature, a curious sensation of the stylised naturalism of poetic dramas by Synge or O'Casey' (Exhibition catalogue, Robert Colquhoun Memorial Exhibition, Edinburgh, Douglas and Foulis Gallery, 1963, p. 16).

A photocopy of the original receipt from the Lefevre Gallery is sold with this lot.

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