The Blue Gown

This is a portrait of the artist’s wife, Gertrude, dressing by the window of their bedroom at Maen Cottage, Newlyn. It is a reprise of a similar subject of the previous year, although different in colour, entitled Reflections. This is now in the Cyfarthfa Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Merthyr Tydfil. Since 1915, painting along the coast had been forbidden owing to measures taken to defend against invasion at the height of the Great War. Artists such as Harvey turned their attention to subjects indoors, painting the daily lives of `people of no consequence’, in the words of one reviewer. Nevertheless, the quiet, Vermeer-like calm that pervades the picture, the response to Cornish light, and the artist’s keen sense of colour all won Harvey many admirers. His pictures found a ready market when exhibited in London.