"Dorset", watercolor, signed l/l, inscribed verso,
9" x 14" unframed.



"English Landscape", ink and watercolor, signed l/l,
20" x 14" unframed.

About the Paintings: Excellent condition. Painted on fine quality watercolor paper.

About the Artist: DOROTHY COLLES was an artist gifted in portraits of children. Her book on the subject, Portraying Children (1953), proved invaluable for artists aspiring to emulate her in recording these most elusive subjects.

Colles would usually paint two portraits of a child during several sittings, one full-face, one three-quarter-face, the parents then having a choice. She rarely painted full-length portraits, almost all being half- to three- quarter-length. "Whether it is a small girl looking at her porridge as if she hated it or another seated in the garden in a hat, it was the face that was the key feature that Dorothy chose to concentrate on," says her friend Pru Scurfield. "Her portraits are fresh, with a spark of character, and can be wonderfully lively."

Few admirers of Colles's portraits of children and adults, shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Pastel Society, of which she was a member, had any idea of her youthful versatility. Her early career entailed much more than capturing a human image.
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She was born in Cairo in 1917. Her father, Morris Colles, was a forensic scientist working for the Egyptian government, and also a medical-school professor. He eventually retired to England, where in the 1930s Dorothy began her training at the Central, Westminster, Epsom and St Martin's schools of art. Parental reaction to this career choice was mixed. Dorothy Colles had a good grounding, her teachers including the painters Bernard Meninsky and Mark Gertler and the printmaker John Farleigh.

Soon after she began at St Martin's the Second World War began. Colles was keen to join the war effort and from 1940 to 1945 was in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. She served in the UK and the Middle East, involved in aerial reconnaissance, photographic intelligence and model-making prior to the invasion of Sicily.

Colles returned to St Martin's, intent on becoming a sound draughtsman. This was important when she joined the Egypt Exploration Society. She was attached to the Abydos expedition, recording hieroglyphs on temples threatened with the rising desert water- table. The agreement with the society discloses that her fee for the 1946-47 season was for "not exceeding six months' field work, with board and lodging free of charge". She was also promised pounds 150 to cover her return journey, plus expenses.

While busy in Egypt, Colles began work for the Jordanian government, which continued beyond the Egyptian commitment. In Jordan, she drew records of ancient sites as well as painting portraits of the king's immediate circle, part of the royal family and Bedouin warriors.

Returned to England in the late 1940s, Colles appears to have taken a pointer from her Jordanian experience in developing a freelance career. She concentrated on portrait painting, finding that she liked sketching and painting children. Other sketches she completed for herself, landscapes and townscapes, she chose not to exhibit. "She didn't pursue these, perhaps, as much as she should have done," says Pru Scurfield.

In the 1950s Colles met the painter, calligrapher and writer Heather Child, then in the West Country working and looking after her family. From the early 1960s, the two artists lived together. It was Child's firm Christian belief that lay behind their joint 1971 book Christian Symbols Ancient & Modern. Child would often entertain Colles's child subjects while they were being painted. This chatter encouraged spontaneity and change of mood.

Although she took part in mixed shows and had a solo exhibition at Leighton House, Kensington, in 1962, Colles worked substantially to commission. Initially the portraits were in oil and pastel, latterly almost exclusively pastel. She told me that the pastelists she especially admired were Chardin, Degas, La Tour and Angelica Kauffmann, the draughtsmen Rubens, Ingres and Augustus John.

By the time she died, Colles was almost blind. She had continued painting until about eight years ago, when a degenerative eye disease developed.

Dorothy Margaret Tyas Colles, artist: born Cairo 14 January 1917; died Petersfield, Hampshire 12 November 2003.

from The Independent, The (London), Dec 15, 2003, by David Buckman

Thistle Fine Art · P. O. Box 714 · 8A Main Street ·
Rockport, MA 01966 · 978-546-2020