Lot 58: Bessie MacNicol , 1869-1904 vanity oil on canvas

signed and dated l.l.: B. MacNicol 1902 oil on canvas

measurements note 114 by 128 cm.; 45 by 50½ in.

Glasgow, Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow Girls, 24 Aug - 21 Oct 1990

Jude Burkhauser, Glasgow Girls: Women in Art and Design 1880-1920, 1990, pp.195-6, 232, 233, illus. pl.309;
D. MacMillan, Scottish Art in the 20th Century, 1994, p.26, illus. pl.12

Sir Thomas Dunlop, Bt.;
Craibe Angus & Son, Glasgow;
Sale: Christie's, Scotland, 27 April, 1989, Lot 632;
Fine Art Society, London;
Sale: Sotheby's Gleneagles, 20 August 1996, Lot 1175;
Private Collection

Bessie MacNicol was born in Glasgow and studied at the Glasgow school of Art and later in Paris at the Academie Colarossi. On her return to Glasgow she established herself painting portraits and maternal subjects. In 1899 she married and moved to a larger studio in Hillhead, formally occupied by Sir David Young Cameron. It was there that she began to work on larger canvases and it was in this studio that she painted Vanity. In 1902 she was one of the principle exhibitors at the first show of the Glasgow Society of Artists. As she was approaching major recognition she died tragically young during childbirth.

Vanity is painted in the tradition of European nudes established by Titian and Tintoretto who painted the recumbent female placed in conjunction with a figure, window or mirror. It can most notably be compared with Velasquez's Rokeby Venus painted in 1650 (National Gallery London).