Zelda Glows Amid Blue Lotus Flowers — Print & Oil Painting

Colour has been rationed here to a degree that is almost startling. Nine tenths of the surface is grey-green mist and slate water; the flowers are a single cold blue used at four or five strengths; the figure is warm ivory and old gold. There is no third family of colour anywhere on the canvas.

Hair is the structure. It falls from the crown in two heavy curtains that widen as they descend, reaching past the hips and spreading into the water at the bottom of the frame, and because it is the lightest value in the picture it makes an hourglass that holds everything else in place. The white dress inside it is barely modelled at all.

She stands waist deep, head bowed, hands closed together at her chest over something too small to identify, with a gold torc at the throat and a broad gold band at the waist. Her expression is not serene: the brows are drawn together and the mouth is unhappy.

The lotuses come forward on their stems out of the mist, near ones sharp and blue, far ones fading to a grey suggestion of pads and buds, and a few red sparks drift at the left. From our Zelda collection, alongside the fairy cupped in dark water and the reach for leaves among lily pads.