Woman Resting Among Lotus Leaves and Seed Pods — Print & Oil Painting

A botanical study occupies the lower third of the canvas, and it is by a distance the most exactly painted thing in the work. Three large pads are shown from above and from beneath with their radiating veins drawn one by one, their rims curling over and turning gold and rust where the leaf has begun to die back. Two seed pods stand on stiff stems with every socket and every seed picked out, and one of them carries a spray of pale fibres around its head.

The figure above is handled in the opposite way. She is modelled in low contrast greys and warm creams, the contour of the shoulder melts into the mist within a few centimetres, and the pale gauze wrap crossing the body is barely separated in tone from the air behind it. The plants are the facts; she is the weather.

Her gesture is small and self contained: one hand is brought up behind the neck, the head is carried back and round toward us, the eyes are level with the viewer and the mouth carries the faintest lift. A dark ponytail falls forward across the collarbone.

Three blossoms are placed at three depths. One open pink and white flower with a yellow centre stands on a stem at the middle of the canvas, one closed bud sits lower at the left, and a small pale bloom hangs high at the right. Together they climb the picture in a slow diagonal.

Colour barely registers in the readings while the overall value stays high, and that is what a pale mist carrying half a dozen exact touches will always give back. Part of our Vietnam collection. Lotus taken into autumn appear again in an ao dai woman among autumn lotus leaves and a dragonfly, and at much closer range in a close view of a pink lotus with small fish below.