拍品专文
This painting is a splendid example of Mellis’ first figurative period and is one of at least two paintings she made in the Italian Riviera resort of Rapallo, where she and Adrian Stokes spent a fortnight on honeymoon in the summer of 1938. The other painting is Palms and Olives, Rapallo, and both were painted from the window of their hotel, looking down towards the sea. There is a deliciously feathery lightness of touch to the paint-handling in these pictures, also an apparent informality and spontaneity, but beneath this dazzling surface is a sure sense of pictorial construction already learnt at Edinburgh College of Art and reinforced by her studies at the Euston Road School. However relaxed the application, the picture maintains its formal balance and continues to delight.
A.L.