Notes

An early work of 1944 in Preller's characteristically staccato-like and fluttering paint marks of the period, Woman with Red Hair or Ophelia, depicts a striking young woman with a distinctive, elongated profile and full lips. Her forehead is prominently defined by a horizontal headband of twisted cloth that encircles her head, and is fixed by a floral metal hairpin.

Her pink pallor within the dominantly blue work seems to allude to theatrical make-up that suggests that she is enacting a part. Her lithe and nubile body is tinted in a sheath of blue shades, and decorated with a scattering of delicate flowers, buds and a butterfly wings. This ambiguous reading of body surface, skin and embellished flower-like symbols is similar in style to the rendition of the enigmatic figure, lying on a white petal-strewn cloth, in the artist's famous and psychologically-charged painting, Fleur du Mal, from the same year.

Besides the rare self-portraits, or images of people in his close circle such as his sister Minnie, Christi Truter, and much later Guna Massyn, Preller seldom did portraits of identifiable figures. But a small work from 1952 entitled The Profile, an unusual portrait of Pat Philip that showed the sitter's full lips and auburn hair, seems to link her to the earlier, theatrical rendering of the young woman in the present lot. Further evidence that Pat Philip is indeed the Woman with Red Hair or Ophelia can be seen in a contemporary photograph of her next to The Profile at the opening of Preller's 1952 exhibition at Gallerie Vincent in Pretoria.

Provenance

The Collection of the Late Mrs Liselotte Hardebeck.