Lot 324: MARGARET MELLIS (1914-2009) - Two Dog Roses

MARGARET MELLIS (1914-2009)
Two Dog Roses
signed with initials 'MM' (lower right), signed again, inscribed, and dated
'Margaret Mellis. Two Dog Roses c. 1952.' (on the stretcher), stamped with the
studio stamp (on a label attached to the stretcher)
oil on canvas
13 1/4 x 16 1/4 in. (33.6 x 41.5 cm.)
Painted circa 1952.


PROVENANCE:
Purchased directly from the artist by the present owner.
The career of Margaret Mellis was a chequered one, with the personal events
of her life and situation playing a crucial role in her artistic development.
She had approached abstraction through her contact with Ben Nicholson
and Naum Gabo, brought about by her marriage to Adrian Stokes; equally,
when he left her for her younger sister Ann in 1946, she abandoned the
intellectual rigours of abstraction and returned to an École de Paris-infected
realism, taking refuge in the colour and appearance of the real world. Two
Dog Roses is a fne example of this second fgurative period, much reliant
upon formal pattern and accentuated colour for its potent efects, before
she once more began to venture into abstraction around 1953. Flowers were
always a favourite motif for Mellis and here they are the central component
in a surprisingly joyous composition — perhaps indicative of her new-found
happiness with her second husband, the collagist Francis Davison.