Fabric Mixed Media

Dinka with a Bongo by Orovida Pissarro (1893-1968) Egg tempera on linen, laid on board 85 x 62.3 cm (33 ½ x 24 ½ inches) Signed and dated lower right Orovida 1937 Provenance Redfern Gallery, London, August 1937 Collection of Mrs Tongo, from whence to: Sotheby's, London,15th December 1965 Royal Academy, London 11th May 1966, no. 728 Reverend Canon Ernest A Bawtree, Cambridgeshire, England Gillian Jason Gallery, London, acquired from the above, 8th November 1984 Christie's, London, 7th June 1985 Literature K L Erickson, Orovida Pissarro: Painter and Print-Maker with A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, (doctoral thesis), Oxford, 1992, Appendices, no. 69, p. 73-74 (illustrated) Exhibition London, Redfern Gallery, Summer Salon, 5th August - 25th September 1937, no. 12 London, Royal Academy, 1966, no. 728 Detailed Description Orovida’s first series of imaginative works, executed in the 1920s and 30s, reflect her interest in non-Western art. This was largely fuelled by the fashion for Orientalism in fin-de-siècle France, but also by the works of Paul Gauguin and those of her uncle Georges Manzana Pissarro, particularly his solo show at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1914. Orovida was struck by her uncle’s Orientalist and Decorative portraits and his use of gold and silver. The flattening of the picture plane and the increasingly stylised treatment of her subjects would also have been influenced by exhibitions which she frequented in London, including a presentation on Persian art at Burlington house in 1930-31 as well as her numerous trips to the British Museum. To Orovida, non-Western art offered greater creative freedom, as she later wrote: ‘Western art has led straight to the photo and eastern art is still free.’ As a result, her early works often show subjects such as Mongolian horse...

Sz: 18"H x 26"W