Jessica Dismorr

(British, 1885-1939)

Venice with Gondolas and Church 40.2 x 32.3 cm. (15 3/4 x 12 5/8 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
With Mercury Gallery, London, 26 April 1974, where acquired by
The Edward Payne Trust
With Anthony Hepworth, London, where acquired by the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
London, Mercury Gallery, Jessica Dismorr, 3 April-4 May 1974, cat.no.1

In the early 1910s, Jessica Dismorr travelled Europe, beginning in Paris where she studied at the Académie de La Palette under the tutelage of Jean Metzinger, André Dunoyer de Segonzac and the Scottish Colourist John Duncan Fergusson. Around this time, Fergusson, along with other British and American painters working in Paris in the years immediately before the First World War, became heavily influenced by Fauvism, the stylised forms and the bold, energetic palette adopted by the movement. Painting at a time when British artists were not particularly familiar with the language of abstract art, the group's work began to push at the boundaries of what figuration could be. The Rhythm group – comprising Fergusson, S. J. Peploe, and Anne Estelle Rice, among others – and aptly named after the avant-garde magazine of the same title, went on to exhibit together at the Stafford Gallery, London, in 1912, where Dismorr had two works included, both depicting Italian scenes.

In Venice with Gondolas and Church, Dismorr's growing association with the group is evident. The stylised approach to her subject and bold use of paint and colour signals this influence, for example in the gondoliers sketchily depicted rowing across the lagoon in the middle distance, and the hazy outline of San Giorgio Maggiore beyond, contrasted with the deeply pigmented verticals of the paline and the diagonals of the gondolas in the foreground. These eye-catching though subdued tones then vibrantly contrast with the bright green daubs of paint the artist has used to describe the shadows of the midday light bouncing across the water of the sea-green lagoon, mirroring the brilliance of light and colour characteristically employed by the Fauves.