Lot 158: Mary Ethel Young Hunter , 1878-1936 red slippers oil on canvas

signed and dated l.r.: Mary Young Hunter 1910 oil on canvas

measurements note 132 by 102 cm., 52 by 40 in.

London, Royal Academy, 1910, no. 894;
London, Pyms Gallery, Edwardian Pre-Raphaelites, The Art of John and Mary Young Hunter, June 2000, no. 43

Royal Academy Pictures, 1910, illustrated p. 113;
Pictures of the Year, special edition of Pall Mall Magazine, 1910, illustrated p. 100

By descent through the artist's family

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION
Mary Young Hunter was best-known for her portraits of child sitters and it is in this genre that she excelled. Her flamboyant style and sophisticated colour harmony are demostrated in this delightful portrait of her five year old daughter Gabrielle. The little girl appears to be playing with her mother's fur stole, wreated in her cloak and beneath a spring bonnet decorated with a large white ostrich plume. The implication is that she has been playing 'dress up' with her mother's clothes which suggests a charming interaction between the painter/mother and the daughter/sitter. The chair in which she is seated appears over-size which emphasises her petiteness as do her red-slippered toes which do not meet the ground. These slippers that give the painting its title, also give an accent of bright colour, picked up by the lacquer of the chair and the flowers on the painted screen and the cherubic lips of the girl.