Ref:  7040

An intriguing late work oil on canvas by Dorothy King (1907-1990), she was a well known painter, educator and gallery curator and known for her interior and figure studies.
This one is colourful and executed with skill and suggestive in theme, whilst ‘young woman reading book’ is a sub-genre of Western art probably since Vermeer and throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, in which the female subject is captured in a moment of private and un-self conscious absorption while she reads, King’s contemporary version subverts convention by normalising the main subject and not objectifying her in a suggestive erotic appeal, she is a young woman perhaps in her parents home in quite boyish attire, sat much at ease but hardly in a lady-like manner, the ‘act of reading’ is under scrutiny here & in a different way, exploration of identity, the role of art to present forms of representation & challenge convention is to the forefront here and this must have been a life-long concern of King’s career and art. Marked to reverse "Rowley Gallery".

English       c.1980s

H: 92cm (36.2in)
W: 64cm (25.2in)
D: 2cm (0.8in)

SOLD