Girl with Palmettes

The title of Malcolm Drummond’s visually striking portrait, Girl with Palmettes, was not the artist’s own but one bestowed upon it by the art dealer, Kyril Bonfiglioli, for an exhibition of Drummond’s work in Oxford in 1965. The painting depicts the head and shoulders of a young woman wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a tailored coat with a pale frilled collar. She faces directly out of the painting at the viewer. Behind her is a cream-coloured wall upon which, just visible in the top right-hand corner of the painting hangs a framed and mounted picture. The identity of the ‘Girl’ had remained a mystery until recently, when descendants of the artist’s first wife, Zina Ogilvie (1887–1931), suggested that it represents a portrait of her.1 Comparison of photographs of Zina (figs.1 and 2) and another painting of her by Drummond reveal a certain facial similarity to the sitter.2

Bonfiglioli’s title draws attention to the most distinctive aspect of the work, the brightly coloured mural frieze, which is partially obscured by the head of the woman. A palmette is a decorative moulding or painting in the form of a stylised palm leaf. The visible portion of the frieze is composed of two large fan shaped palmette motifs linked by the representation of an animal, probably a lion, of which only the head and legs can be seen. The design appears to be painted on to the plaster of the wall in the manner of a stencil. Unfortunately, despite the distinctive appearance of the background, the setting for Girl with Palmettes has never been identified. It was not recognised by Drummond’s daughter from his first marriage, or the artist’s second wife, Margaret, who did, however, raise the suggestion that ‘the decorative motifs could have been in a “pub” in the neighbourhood of his studio in Yeoman’s Row, Chelsea’.3 A further possibility is that this design is part of an original and experimental scheme decorating a private, domestic room similar to that in another undated painting by Drummond, Interior (private collection).4 In this work the viewer looks through an open door to a passageway which is decorated with a horizontal frieze border characterised by repeated blocks of colour with a semi-circular fan-like motif. The setting in Interior is also unknown, but, furnished with a chair and an umbrella stand, it looks like the hallway of a house. Drummond’s interiors often contain visual references to artistic practice, either in the form of paintings hanging in the background or in the depiction of a particularly noticeable feature of the décor, such as the highly coloured floral cloth covering the grand piano in At the Piano c.1912 (fig.3), or the painted panels and glass lanterns of the Hammersmith Palais de Danse 1920 (Plymouth City Art Museum and Art Gallery).5