Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell 1883-1937

Probably Glasgow Institute of Fine Art, 1926, no. 103 as Girl with a Fan;
London, Bourne Fine Art, Cadell to Eardley, Fifty Years of Scottish Painting, 1989, no. 4

STRUCTURE This picture is in very good original condition with strong colours throughout. The paint surface appears to be stable and there are no signs of craquelure. There is a pinhole on the top of the brim of the hat on the right side and another pinhole to the left of the left side of the painted frame. These are very minor and would not be difficult to rectify. UNDER ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT There are minor retouchings on the bowl of the hat, to a small area close to the top edge of the canvas and a small horizontal line of retouching above the fan. These retouchings have been well undertaken and are not visible to the naked eye. FRAME This picture is contained in an attractive simple gilt frame.
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The importance of Miss Bertia Don Wauchope’s role as Francis Boileau Cadell’s muse for at least fifteen years should not be underestimated. Cadell appears to have first met Bertia when she was thirty-five in 1911 a year in which Cadell was expanding his artistic repertoire and painting society portraits. Unlike the professional models that worked for many of the Royal Scottish Academicians, Don Wauchope (1864-1944) was a lady of independent means who posed for Cadell because she wanted to be painted, rather than because she was paid to do so. It is possible therefore that she had initially been introduced to Cadell in order for him to paint her portrait as part of a commission. Alternatively, she may have met Cadell at one of the society events a portrait painter is expected to attend to gain introductions to potential patrons. Whatever the circumstances of their introduction, the pictures he painted of her should not simply be seen as society portraits as they were intended to be studies of a more abstract aristocratic elegance.  This refinement permeated Cadell’s entire aesthetic, from the sophisticated still lifes and interiors, to his own elegant and extrovert dress and Edinburgh home which was decorated with beautiful objects, paintings and furniture.  The fashionable glamour of the portrait is emphasised by the stark drama of the colour scheme and paint application; 'In the nervous speed of his application of paint, Cadell draws sustenance from the late work of Monet... he endeavours to convey the immediacy of his experience in brilliant slashing strokes.' (Kenneth McKonkey, Edwardian Portraits - Images in an Age of Opulence, 1987, p.215)

Cadell loved women, perhaps not romantically but certainly aesthetically, and his sensitive and intimate portrayal of Bertia Don Wauchope surpasses all his other depictions of women, many of which were commissioned portraits of patrons wives and daughters. Cadell’s portraits of Miss Valentine Ford, Mrs Harrison and Mrs Chiene lack the intimacy of the paintings of Bertia, as Cadell appears to have felt confined by the restrictions of painting portraits of women he did not know well and who were paying to be depicted in a particular way. With the ‘Black Hat’ interiors Cadell knew the sitter very well and was able to depict her in the way he chose, without having to worry about whether he was fulfilling a commitment to the sitter. Thus they have a relaxed, expressive beauty in which female beauty is combined with a suggestion of wisdom and character in the glint of the eyes and the confidence of the stance.

Miss Don Wauchope’s first significant appearance in Cadell’s art was in Afternoon of 1913 (Sotheby’s, Gleneagles, 30 August 1988, lot 1087) a glittering painting of three women taking tea in Cadell’s studio, which combines elements of John Singer Sargent, James Abbott McNeil Whistler and John Lavery’s approach to figure painting. The picture is undoubtedly beautiful but the women’s faces are undefined and shadowed and it is implied that their presence is to suggest abstract elegance rather than individuality. Around the same time that Cadell completed Afternoon he began a series of paintings of interiors featuring Don Wauchope wearing black hats, including Reflections (Summer) and The Black Hat (Sotheby’s, 14 April 2004, lot 110). The subject of these pictures continued to fascinate Cadell for at least fifteen years and stylistically the present picture appears to date from a later period. The impressive size of the painting makes it highly likely that the picture was exhibited either in Glasgow or Edinburgh but the vague titles of pictures exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy and the Glasgow Institute makes identification of this picture difficult. However several of these recorded exhibits can be ruled out. A Portrait of a Lady in Black in the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh is almost certainly the painting exhibited at the Royal Glasgow Institute in 1921 and was painted standing on an easel within Cadell’s interior The Gold Chair of that year. The picture A Lady in Black that was exhibited at the Royal Glasgow Institute in 1926 was purchased for Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum, the first picture by Cadell bought for public display. It is almost certain that the present picture was also exhibited in Glasgow in 1926, with the title Girl with a Fan. Girl with a Fan was exhibited with the considerable price-tag of £200, which would be appropriate to a painting of the size and importance; when Cadell’s famous The Buddha (Black and Gold) was exhibited in 1921 it was also priced at £200 and the Portrait of a Lady in Black of 1921 was priced £180.

A likely influence upon The Black Hat was John Lavery (FIG 1), who shared a respect for the work of Manet, Whistler and Velasquez and created a new language in Scottish portrait painting based upon these artists’ influences and his own flair; ‘Sir John Lavery created the prototype for the variety of society portrait which became so popular in the Edwardian period. Lavery did not attempt the elaborate and highly finished type of portrait that had been painted by his Victorian predecessors, but preferred simpler compositions which he painted with fresh and loosely-handled brush-strokes and with an emphasis on tone rather than local colour.’ (Christopher Newall, Society Portraits 1850-1939, 1985, p.108) Lavery and Cadell were fellow members of the Society of Eight, founded in Edinburgh around the time that Cadell began the series of pictures of Miss Don Wauchope and they continued to be friends for the rest of their lives. A less first-hand, but perhaps no less important influence upon Cadell’s figure painting was John Singer Sargent. Perhaps, more than any other artist of his generation, Sargent changed the way in which artist’s approached figure painting in the powerful flamboyance of his portraits of the wealthy and famous. His memorial exhibition at the Royal Academy following his death in 1925 was the largest exhibition of its type since Alma-Tadema’s memorial in 1913 and although it is not recorded whether Cadell viewed the exhibition, he would have read the reviews in the art press. Very few figure painters of Cadell’s age were not influenced by Sargent and in the present picture it is possible to draw a parallel with two portraits by Sargent of Leon Delafosse (Galerie Schmit, Paris) and W. Graham Robertson (Tate Britain) painted in 1893 and 1894 respectively. The three pictures share the same pose and colour scheme of black and white and although Sargent’s portraits depict men and Cadell’s picture depicts a female sitter, they share a similar grandiose air.

The present picture is a variant of Cadell’s famous The Black Hat of 1914 (FIG 2, City Art Centre, Edinburgh Museums and Galleries) in which Don Wauchope adopts the same pose, holding a fan in one hand and with her other hand resting nonchalantly upon her hip. If the present picture is the picture painted and exhibited in 1926, it is interesting that he returned to a composition he had painted fourteen years earlier. The style of the painting shows a progression to an even more dramatic and expressive use of colour and form. A significant difference between the two pictures was Cadell’s decision to replace the mirrored mantle-piece in the 1914 picture with one of Cadell’s own still-lifes in the present picture. By placing an example of his own art within the painting, Cadell reiterates the importance that his still life compositions had in other aspects of his art; determining the colour schemes and carefully considered placing of objects within his interiors. This painting is not simply a painting of a woman holding a fan, it is a complex arrangement of arcs and angles that simultaneously harmonise and contrast with each other to create a geometric rhythm within the confines of the frame.

There is a Spanish flamboyance in The Black Hat; the gold-hoop earrings, large feathered fan and the wide-brimmed sun hat that gives the picture its title. Cadell was a great admirer of Valazquez and in this painting, his influence is clear. A similar Spanish influence can be found in Crème de Menthe of 1915 in which the model is dressed in a bull-fighter’s jacket, and also The Matador of 1913 (Sotheby’s, Hopetoun House, 20 April 2001, lot 116). Paper fans frequently appear in Cadell’s still lifes and were usually used to emphasise the oriental elegance of the Chinese ceramics and lacquer-ware. However in The Black Hat the fan gives a note of Spanish, rather than Chinese, glamour.

The Black Hat captures the confidence of the sitter and also the fully developed and confident style of the painter. There is nothing tentative or contrived in the rendering of feminine beauty and there is no restraint in the artist’s desire to capture the flamboyant elegance of the age in which she lived. This is one of the last ‘Swagger Portraits’ of a time of opulence when women dressing for the theatre or cocktails swathed themselves in flowing black silk and no outfit was quite complete without a fan or hat and a corsage pinned at the breast.