Head of Isabel: M.50-1997

Titles

Head of Isabel

Maker(s)

Sculptor: Giacometti, Alberto

Entities

• Head

Categories

• Sculpture

Description

Bronze with dark brown patina. The sitter faces front. Her hair is dressed in a short bouffant style reminiscent of Ancient Egyptian wigs.

Notes

History note: The sitter, Isabel Delmer (1912-92), née Nicholas (later Lambert and Rawsthorne), by whom lent to The Fitzwilliam Museum in 1987; by descent to Juliet Ryan Morchoisne

Legal notes

Purchased with the Ann Ashard Webb Fund, and grants from the National Art Collections Fund, and the Museums and Galleries Commission Regional Fund administered by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Place(s) associated

• Paris ⪼ France

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bought (1997) by Morchoisne, Juliet Ryan

Dating

1930s
20th Century
Circa 1936 CE - 1962 CE

Note

The sitter was English painter and designer, Isabel Rawsthorne (née Nicholas, 1912-1992). A successful artist in her own right, Rawsthorne studied at the RCA in London, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris and spent two years in the studio of Jacob Epstein. During the war, she worked for the Poltiical Warfare Executive and subsequently painted, depicting dancers, and later, the Essex countryside where she lived for the last forty years of her life. Her paintings were also adapted into designs for the ballet and opera. Her early career brought her into the friendship circles of many high-profile male artists in London and Paris for whom she modelled, including Jacob Epstein, Andre Derain, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon. During the second half of the twentieth century, Rawsthorne was better-known as a muse and model but more recent critical attention has focussed again on her own, impressive, artistic output.

The sitter was Isabel Rawsthorne (1912-92), née Nicholas, (later Delmer, and Lambert).

This head, also known as ‘The Egyptian Woman’, was produced during Giacometti’s period of intense pre-occupation with drawing and modelling from life between 1935 and 1940. Another portrait, Head of Isabel II of about 1938, is in the Sainsbury Collection at the University of East Anglia. The survival of both heads is exceptional because Giacometti destroyed much of his work during the 1930s.