The Yellow Gown

This is a conventional full-length portrait of a woman, elegantly dressed in a lace shawl and long orange dress, perhaps dating to Swanzy's early career in Dublin, when, after her return from Paris, she was trying to establish herself as a portraitist. The picture was executed at her studio in 18 Nassau Street, presumably in Dublin (rather than in the street of that name in London). The portrait is unusual in Swanzy's oeuvre in that she uses pastel rather than oil or crayon. The young woman has a pretty oval face, fine eyebrows and eyes, and pink lips. She wears white flowers in her hair, and holds a pink flower to her hands. Her pose, the shape of her face, the way that her eyes look to one side, and her red rosebud lips, are not unlike those in Swanzy's early oil, Portrait of Young Girl with Hat, 1906, (Pyms Gallery, London, 1986) and it is conceivable that the pastel shows the same model at an older age.
J.C.