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Lot Essay
In 1948 Colquhoun and MacBryde were approached by Leonide Massine with a view to design the costumes and décor for a Scottish ballet and the following year they travelled to Italy to see the puppet plays at Modena and the Palio at Siena. The Scottish ballet which Colquhoun and MacBryde worked on, Donald of the Burthens, was produced in 1951 at Covent Garden. They also designed for a production of King Lear, which was shown in Stratford two years later. This stage subject matter fed directly into Colquhoun's painting and prints, but, as the present work demonstrates, theatrical subject matter was already a source that Colquhoun had been drawing on earlier in his career.
Painted in 1945, Actors on a Stage, depicts two figures embracing with a cat lying, stretched out, on part of the stage set behind them. Some critical writing has interpreted Colquhoun's depictions of pairs of women as references to his life-long relationship with MacBryde and in the present work, with its portrayal of two central figures embracing, the reference is more straightforward.
John Griffiths comments, 'the best of his [Colquhoun's] works are set on a stage in the small, close theatre of impulse, which is almost bare of scenery, between the acts. They are often, in a complex way, concerned with the modalities of his emotional and sexual involvement with Robert MacBryde' (see The Burlington Magazine, CXXIII, July 1981, p. 443).
Colquhoun sometimes included depictions of animals in his paintings, goats, pigs and, as in the present work, a cat. Although the farmyard animals would probably have derived from Colquhoun's upbringing in Ayrshire, the inclusion of cats in his painting was also influenced through his friendship with Jankel Adler (see note to lot 220).
To coincide with the major exhibition of Colquhoun's work at the City of Edinburgh Museums and Art Galleries in 1981, John Griffiths wrote, 'Robert Colquhoun's animals provide extraordinary tension. They recall the Book of Kells. These creatures are the elemental forces lost to or quiescent in their human partners. In The Whistle Seller [1946] the cat, vibrant and youthful, savagely masked, its eyes green glowing, is contrasted with the street vendor. In Woman with Leaping Cat [1945, Tate Britain], the many-coloured cat forces itself free of the grasp of its life-weary owner. In order to catch the ball she is poised to throw, its frenzied diagonal movement disturbs the solemn vertical structure. In the best of these works the figures - like the painter - are tragic in that they are looking for an aim they cannot discover' (The Burlington Magazine, CXXIII, July 1981, p. 443).
Painted in 1945, Actors on a Stage, depicts two figures embracing with a cat lying, stretched out, on part of the stage set behind them. Some critical writing has interpreted Colquhoun's depictions of pairs of women as references to his life-long relationship with MacBryde and in the present work, with its portrayal of two central figures embracing, the reference is more straightforward.
John Griffiths comments, 'the best of his [Colquhoun's] works are set on a stage in the small, close theatre of impulse, which is almost bare of scenery, between the acts. They are often, in a complex way, concerned with the modalities of his emotional and sexual involvement with Robert MacBryde' (see The Burlington Magazine, CXXIII, July 1981, p. 443).
Colquhoun sometimes included depictions of animals in his paintings, goats, pigs and, as in the present work, a cat. Although the farmyard animals would probably have derived from Colquhoun's upbringing in Ayrshire, the inclusion of cats in his painting was also influenced through his friendship with Jankel Adler (see note to lot 220).
To coincide with the major exhibition of Colquhoun's work at the City of Edinburgh Museums and Art Galleries in 1981, John Griffiths wrote, 'Robert Colquhoun's animals provide extraordinary tension. They recall the Book of Kells. These creatures are the elemental forces lost to or quiescent in their human partners. In The Whistle Seller [1946] the cat, vibrant and youthful, savagely masked, its eyes green glowing, is contrasted with the street vendor. In Woman with Leaping Cat [1945, Tate Britain], the many-coloured cat forces itself free of the grasp of its life-weary owner. In order to catch the ball she is poised to throw, its frenzied diagonal movement disturbs the solemn vertical structure. In the best of these works the figures - like the painter - are tragic in that they are looking for an aim they cannot discover' (The Burlington Magazine, CXXIII, July 1981, p. 443).