Lot 328: MARGARET MELLIS (1914-2009) - Rapallo, Italy

MARGARET MELLIS (1914-2009)
Rapallo, Italy
signed with initials 'M.M.' (lower right), signed again, inscribed and dated
'Margaret Melllis Rapallo July 1938' (on the stretcher), stamped with the studio
stamp (on a label attached to the strectcher)
oil on canvas
22 x 30 in. (56 x 76.2 cm.)
Painted in 1938, on the artist's honeymoon.


PROVENANCE:
Purchased directly from the artist by the present owner.
This painting is a splendid example of Mellis’ frst fgurative period and
is one of at least two paintings she made in the Italian Riviera resort of
Rapallo, where she and Adrian Stokes spent a fortnight on honeymoon in
the summer of 1938. The other painting is Palms and Olives, Rapallo, and
both were painted from the window of their hotel, looking down towards the
sea. There is a deliciously feathery lightness of touch to the paint-handling
in these pictures, also an apparent informality and spontaneity, but beneath
this dazzling surface is a sure sense of pictorial construction already learnt
at Edinburgh College of Art and reinforced by her studies at the Euston Road
School. However relaxed the application, the picture maintains its formal
balance and continues to delight.