Miss Winny MacEwan

Jacques-Emile Blanche 1861 - 1942

Summary

Half-length portrait painting of Miss Winny MacEwan, a young woman seated and leaning to the left with her elbows resting on her lap, her head resting on her clasped hands. She wears a pale dress with a polkadot design and a black hat with a white feather pinned by a brooch, and holds a white handkerchief in her hands. She sits against a plain, dark background. Her mouth is half-open as if contemplating speech. She wears pink and white pearls around her neck. A thin, green band is tied around her waist.

Display Label

Miss Winny MacEwan about 1905 Jacques-Émile Blanche 1861-1942 Oil on canvas Blanche was a French artist who visited England every year, equally at home in the social and cultural worlds of London and Paris. He gave painting lessons, and one of his favourite pupils was Miss Winny MacEwan. He called her a ‘candid soul’ and ‘the happiest creature I ever had in my class’, capturing her frank and joyful nature here in her questioning gaze. Blanche gives an endearing portrait of MacEwan in his memoirs as the youngest of three sisters, ‘timid creatures’ who inherited unexpected wealth in middle age. MacEwan was suddenly able to fulfil her dream of becoming an artist, and she travelled all over the world, painting Rajahs and Colonial Governors in uniform. She was never professionally successful, which she attributed to her style having an unfashionable ‘feminine touch’. Gift of Miss Helen J MacEwan 1936.366