books0977:For there was never yet Fair Woman but she made Mouths in a Glass (exh.1903). Isobel Lilia
books0977:For there was never yet Fair Woman but she made Mouths in a Glass (exh.1903). Isobel Lilian Gloag (English, 1865-1917). Watercolour.This work illustrates a line from Shakespeare’s King Lear (Act 3 Scene 2) spoken by The Fool. It is an extemporization on the theme of vanity, whereby playwright and artist remind us that female beauty is almost inevitably the product of considerable artifice and rehearsal. Gloag uses the lines to conjure up a medieval setting typical of an artist of her age, but her particular gift is to handle her main protagonists in the picture with deft draughtsmanship and a stunningly rich colour scheme. With her broad strokes of watercolour she juxtaposes remarkably strong colours in the foreground creating an almost abstract sense of sumptuous patterning, highly suited to her subject matter. -- source link