Italian girl

Catherine Lampert wrote of the current painting: 'The large size relaxed pose and known attachment of the artist to the model, Gloria Ceccone, contribute to what many Uglow's friends described as one of his grandest and most sensual nudes. Both pose and light-filled setting recall paintings of the legend of Danaë, who was showered with gold by Zeus and bore his child, as sumptuously imagined by Titian, Rembrandt and many others. It resembles also a charcoal drawing of a reclining nude by Matisse (Uglow kept a photograph of this in the studio). Ceccone remember that Uglow was dismayed when her skin went dark after a few weeks on the Italian coast and on her return to London insisted on waiting for the tan to fade before continuing work. This 'crisis' was repeated many times as other models took summer breaks. Uglow also made two portraits of Ceccone (Gloria of 1958 and Gloria Wearling a Necklace of 1959-60).

Behind the figure, the wall is rendered in thin loosely brushed paint, leaving the canvas visible in places. The pyramid formed by her bent legs became twenty years later a more deliberate shape in The Quarry, Pignano.

Professor S.E. Dicker, this work's first owner, was a biochemist teaching at University College London who was introduced to Uglow's work by Ian Tregarthen Jenkin. After visiting the 1974 Whitechapel exhibition three times, Dicker wrote to Uglow asking whether he could come to the studio with the intention of buying a work. Uglow kept a copy of a scholarly article Dicker had written' (C. Lampert, Euan Uglow The Complete Paintings, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 43, no. 111, illustrated).