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Transparencies

Artist: Cowie, James, RSA LLD · 1886-1956

The present work is one of a body of works by Cowie, including for example 'Noon' and 'Evening Star' [both Aberdeen Art Gallery] and 'Tanagra Out of Doors' [Perth Museum and Art Gallery, formerly SAC Collection]; with an almost surreal quality to them, where he deployed everyday objects, including fruit, glasses of water, sculptures, mirrors, etc in effectively a still life grouping, often set against a real landscape background. These works are termed 'metaphysical still-lives.'

The present work is clearly related, by virtue of a near identical composition, to a slightly larger, and marginally later, oil painting titled 'Composition,' which was lent by Sir William Oliphant Hutchison PRSA to the 'James Cowie Memorial Exhibition,' mounted by the Scottish Committee of the Arts Council of Great Britain which toured to 6 Scottish venues in 1957, cat. 35 (illus full page, b&w). The Catalogue dates 'Composition' to 1949 but cites an exhibition history of its being shown at Arbroath and at Annan's in Glasgow, both in 1947. It is possible that one or both of these 1947 exhibits was the present work rather than 'Composition.'

'Composition' has a more ethereal quality to it than the present work, with the postcard image of Ingres' 'La Grande Odalisque' of 1814 [The Louvre] rendered far less sharply than in the present work. The other major difference is that 'Composition' has a small statuette of Pan at the right in place of the figure of the woman in long pleated dress and cape which features at different angles to both the left and right of the present work, and to the left of 'Composition.' The transparent planes by which the surface is divided are also more convincingly rendered in 'Composition' than in the present work, and the sketchy chalk outline figures at bottom left and right in the present work have been removed completely form 'Composition' which substitutes the rear view of the nude Pan sculpture at the left side in the middle distance.

Cowie showed a work titled 'Transparency' at the RSA AX in 1947 (cat.439).