Gipsy Girl, by Robert Walker Macbeth R.A., R.W.S., R.E., R.I., R.O.I. (1848-1910). c.1875-80. Oil on board; 8 1/4 x 11 7/8 inches (21 x 30 cm). The Orchar Collection of Dundee Art Gallery, accession no. 272-1987-169. Available via Art Uk and downloaded for non-commercial study purposes. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Paintings featuring gipsies were a popular theme amongst Idyllist painters who attempted to emphasize social problems among rural people living at the margins of respectable society. Macbeth had previously exhibited his watercolour Gipsies to acclaim at the Old Water-Colour Society exhibition in 1871 and later painted The Gipsy's Sunday showing a half-naked gipsy girl washing at a stream.
Donato Esposito says of Macbeth's Gipsy Girl:
He returned to the subject in an undated painting, Gipsy Girl now in Dundee, which shows a dejected young girl camped beside a fire under a tree. The palette is bright and the main focus of the work is the charming apron of the female protagonist at the centre of the composition, accented by her bright orange dress. Smoke wafts gracefully from the smouldering fire, and flowering foxgloves punctuate the surrounding bright green landscape. [139-40]
A boy sits in the shade to the left of the girl, with his back resting against a large ancient gnarled tree, feeding kindling onto the fire. A dog sits by his side. A gipsy caravan wagon and the two horses that pull it are in the midground to the left with a stream to the right. The background is obscured by the smoke coming off the fire.
Bibliography
Esposito, Donato. Frederick Walker and the Idyllists. London: Lund Humphries, 2017, Chapter 6, 139-40.
Gipsy Girl. Art UK. Web. 1 June 2023.
Created 1 June 2023