Worshipped by great artists, who often fell for the faces they repeatedly depicted on canvas, many famous muses had lives tinged with tragedy and regret.
THE painting submitted to the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy by portraitist James Gunn in the penultimate summer of the Second World War was a picture of his second wife, Pauline. Labelled by The Daily Mail ‘the “Mona Lisa” of 1944’, Pauline in the Yellow Dress caused a sensation and, within an hour of the exhibition opening, sold for £1,000.
Despite wartime privations, Gunn had depicted Pauline in a flowing yellow acetate frock imported from the USA; the former Elizabeth Arden vendeuse is immaculately coiffed, manicured and made-up.
Gunn’s is a languorous, elegant, luxurious, seductive image and the adoring gaze of the white Pekingese on Pauline’s lap was matched by many visitors at a moment of austerity and matched by Pauline’s artist-husband, too.
The following year, Gunn painted Pauline again. In Venetian Souvenir, she wears a dramatic crimson gown and its plunging neckline displays the Venetian necklace that gave the picture its title. In a portrait of 1946, Scots-born Gunn swathed Pauline in Macleod tartan.
In the two decades of their marriage, he would paint Pauline repeatedly. That these portraits are among his best is testament not only to the strength of his love and desire for her, but the extent to which she inspired him creatively.
The gift of spurring an artist to new heights of brilliance has traditionally transcended love, admiration or attraction between painter and subject. It is the role credited to a select group of women (and, in fewer cases, men) whose faces, bodies or personalities have changed the course of an artist’s output.
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