PORTRAITS BY DUCHESS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 210, 5 August 1937, Page 12

PORTRAITS BY DUCHESS

The Duchess of Kent has not allowed her artistic talent -to lie fallow since her marriage (writes a London correspondent). At the Society of Women Artists’ Exhibition, recently opened in London, she showed two fine charcoal studies. Both are drawings of women who are her personal friends. The most arresting is a hall'-iength, full-faced portrait of a young woman with a ribbon bandeau fastening back her curly hair. The girl is shown with folded arms. She is wearing what appears to be a woolly jumper ornamented at the neck with two posies of flowers. But it is the expression that commands the attention. The head is tilted to one side, and the finely-pencilled brows are half-raised as if to question the admirer’s gaze. The second portrait is a half-face view of an older woman whose long wavy hair is parted in the centre and coiled in loose folds at the nape of the neck. Again it is the eyes and eyebrows which give life and character to the black and white drawing. Both portraits are signed by the Duchess, and both bear the title. "Study.” Last year she exhibited a charcoal portrait of the Duke of Kent.