The Red Skirt

Dame Ethel Walker (1861 - 1951)

Oil on canvas

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Image of The Red Skirt
  • About the work
    Location
    Country: USA
    City: Washington DC
    Place: British Embassy
    Dating from c.1936, The Red Skirt is one of three oil on canvas portraits by Dame Ethel Walker depicting the same young woman dressed in a long red skirt and dark jacket. A lesbian artist, Walker is best known for her portraits of women and girls that celebrate the female form. She preferred her models to be as ‘natural’ as possible, removing all forms of adornment such as make-up and jewellery, to allow her to focus on an individual’s expression and temperament.
     
    The straightforward title of the painting, combined with the woman’s casual dress and relaxed pose, create an unusually candid portrait that broke with convention of late Victorian artists of Walker’s generation. Traditionally, portraitists like John Singer Sargent, and slightly later, Augustus John, named their sitters and represented them in more elaborate formal attire. Walker favoured the use of generic titles and informal poses more commonly used by late 19th-century French artists, such as Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet. The loose, open brushwork of Walker’s painting similarly reveals the influence of Impressionist techniques, as well as that of the work of her teacher, Walter Richard Sickert, a former pupil of James McNeill Whistler and a disciple of Degas.

  • About the artist
    Born in Edinburgh, Ethel Walker studied at Westminster and the Slade. In 1900 Walker was elected the first woman member of the New English Art Club, but was not elected as an Associate Member of the Royal Academy until 1940, at the age of 79. Three years later, she was appointed a DBE. After her death in 1951, her obituary in The Times noted that she had been ‘the most important woman artist of her time since Berthe Morisot’. Many of Walker’s early paintings were floral still life and intimate interior scenes in muted colours. Her later work was influenced by the bright colour and light of French Impressionist painting. Walker is best known for her portraits of women and girls. She preferred models to be as ‘natural’ as possible, removing all forms of adornment such as make-up and jewellery, to allow her to focus on an individual’s expression and temperament.
  • Explore
    People
    unknown woman
    Places
    Subjects
    vase (as Subject), female portrait, flower, fire, woman, 20th century costume, mirror, mantlepiece, fireplace
    Materials & Techniques
    canvas, oil, oil painting
  • Details
    Artist
    Dame Ethel Walker (1861 - 1951)
    Title
    The Red Skirt
    Date
    Medium
    Oil on canvas
    Dimensions
    height: 74.50 cm, width: 49.00 cm
    Acquisition
    Presented by the Hon. Mrs Wood, November 1950
    Inscription
    none
    Provenance
    With Agnew’s Gallery, London by 1950; from whom purchased by the Honourable Mrs Wood (neice of Lord Bryce, HM Ambassador to Washington 1907-13); by whom presented to the Ministry of Works for the Ambassador's Residence, Washington
    GAC number
    1194