Portrait of a Woman (Self-portrait)

A recently acquired painting by Kathleen Fox (1880-1963), currently hanging in Room 16. 

From Glenageary in Co. Dublin, Kathleen studied art in Dublin’s Metropolitan School of Art under William Orpen, and worked for a time as his assistant. This curious picture, characterised by the sitter’s eccentric attire, owes a debt to the costume portraits of Orpen. The picture, like many equivalent works by Orpen, is unashamedly studio-based. The contrived background, dominated by an expansive sky, and the particular attention paid to the sitter’s eccentric costume call to mind An Aran Islander, Orpen’s fanciful portrait of Margaret Clarke. Fox was not alone among Orpen’s pupils in seeking to emulate this particular portrait type. Many similar pictures feature among the work of Seán Keating, in particular.

Like Orpen, Fox dresses the figure for theatrical effect rather than authenticity. The individual items, from the starched white headdress and rustic necklace to the heavy woven shawl seem, as a consequence, disparate and incongruous. Similarly peculiar is the presentation of the sitter herself. The hands, orientated carefully and placed on the chest, recall traditional representations of female saints, but the décolletage and very visible wedding ring lend the picture a distinctly secular character. These contradictions suggest that the picture is a self-portrait, supported by comparisons with confirmed self-portraits by Fox.