Two Dog Roses

Details

Margaret Mellis (1914-2009)
Two Dog Roses
signed with initials 'MM' (lower right), signed again, inscribed, and dated 'Margaret Mellis. Two Dog Roses c. 1952.' (on the stretcher), stamped with the studio stamp (on a label attached to the stretcher)
oil on canvas
13 ¼ x 16 ¼ in. (33.6 x 41.5 cm.)
Painted circa 1952.

Provenance

Purchased directly from the artist by the present owner.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Brought to you by

Philip Harley

pharley@christies.com +44 207 389 2687

Lot Essay

The career of Margaret Mellis was a chequered one, with the personal events of her life and situation playing a crucial role in her artistic development. She had approached abstraction through her contact with Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, brought about by her marriage to Adrian Stokes; equally, when he left her for her younger sister Ann in 1946, she abandoned the intellectual rigours of abstraction and returned to an École de Paris-inflected realism, taking refuge in the colour and appearance of the real world. Two Dog Roses is a fine example of this second figurative period, much reliant upon formal pattern and accentuated colour for its potent effects, before she once more began to venture into abstraction around 1953. Flowers were always a favourite motif for Mellis and here they are the central component in a surprisingly joyous composition — perhaps indicative of her new-found happiness with her second husband, the collagist Francis Davison.

A.L.

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