Alison Watt

Scottish artist Alison Watt' diptych Madame Recamiere - Fragment VI to be featured at this year's Open Art Fair (18 - 24th March, 2020, located on Duke of York Square). In the work, Watt re-imagines Ingres' Portrait of Marie-Francoise Riviere (1805), adopting the sensuous pose of the sitter, and depicting the luxurious folds of fabric in hyper-realistic detail. According to Sotheby's : "Watt forges her own path, juxtaposing the drapery with the severely cropped female figure so that the series of curves and folds echo the wrinkles and creases of the body." A similar diptych was sold at Sotheby's this summer and her auction record of £78,000 was achieved for a similar work from the same series.

Ingres has long been an inspiration for Watt; she was struck by his 'Madame Moitessier' on a visit to the National Gallery, London, as a child.

She once said: "Whenever I look at Madame Moitessier I find myself being drawn away from her face, which is looking at me...My eye always drops to the fabric of the dress and I find myself becoming lost in that area of the painting. The longer you look at it, the stranger it becomes because your eye begins to play tricks on you. The fabric moves in and out of focus, cetain areas loom forward, others recede."

Madame Recamiere - Fragment VI reference her earlier, more representational style, such as her seminal portrait of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (1989). The abstracted counters of the softly folding fabrics are prophetic of her more recent work, including her 2000 exhibition Shift at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, which featured twelve large-scale paintings, taking materials as their sole subject matter.