Lot 5: Elisabeth Collins (1904-2000)

A Woman Reading in a Pond
signed 'Elisabeth Collins' (lower right)
pencil and ink
14 3/4 x 20 in. (37.5 x 50.8 cm.)
Executed circa 1945.

London, Albemarle Gallery, Elisabeth Collins, Gouaches, Drawings and Sculpture, May - June 1989, no. 8.

Exhibition catalogue, Elisabeth Collins, Gouaches, Drawings and Sculpture, London, Albemarle Gallery, 1989, p. 3.

Born Elisabeth Ramsden in Yorkshire in 1904, she attended Leeds College of Art and then the Royal College of Art, where she met and married Cecil Collins. Elisabeth and Cecil worked in harmony throughout their life and it was Elisabeth who suggested and created the first image of 'The Fool'.
Bryan Robertson says Collins' works 'have their own kind of sophistication in a re-definition of innocence and spiritual grace which has nothing to do with naivety but relates them to a fresh awareness in art from the beginning of this century [1900] onwards' (Exhibition catalogue, Elisabeth Collins, Gouaches, Drawings and Sculpture, London, Albermarle Gallery, 1989, p. 3).

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