Girl in Blue
Henry Meynell Rheam, RI (1859-1920)
1891
Watercolour on paper
Size: H 89 x W 58 cm
Penlee House Art Gallery & Museum; accession no. PEZPH: 2012:192
The single figure of the young woman, her pale blue apron tied up on one side, stands against a background of bay and village, looking away from the observer. Her hands rest on the railing, one of them on top of a loop of fishing net. This is one of Rheam's best-known works. The girl has been identified as "a known local model, Effie James," and, despite all the detail of her surroundings, we can see here the same "decorative beauty that characterises Rheam's later imagined romantic subjects" ("Girl in Blue," Art Fund).