Dimensions: unconfirmed: 1524 x 1092 mm
Copyright: © Leonard McComb | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: So, this is Leonard McComb's "Young Woman Holding Duck." It's a very large painting, over five feet tall. It feels both classical and quite odd. What strikes you most about it? Curator: The woman's gaze, definitely. There's a Pre-Raphaelite quality, but complicated by the somewhat unsettling juxtaposition of woman and animal. Do you see how it echoes themes of fragility and the subjugation of the natural world, mirroring perhaps the historical objectification of women? Editor: I do see that now. It's not just a pretty portrait. Curator: Exactly. It invites us to question the power dynamics inherent in representation itself. It makes you think, doesn't it? Editor: It definitely does. I'll never look at portraits the same way.
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http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/mccomb-young-woman-holding-duck-t06785
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From 1970 to the late 1980s McComb, a painter and sculptor, painted exclusively in pencil and watercolour. These seemingly insubstantial materials enabled McComb to build up lines and touches of colour in a manner which he likened to 'adding clay to the armature'. His strikingly rich and dense images retain a sense of luminosity, while also suggesting an inherent energy. When the model was posed, McComb decided that a second focus was needed to counterbalance the intensity of the sitter's gaze. He asked her to hold a model duck, which gives an idiosyncratic quality to the portrait. Gallery label, August 2004
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