Baba and Billy (portrait of the artist's daughter, Vivian) 1920

John Duncan painted this portrait of his daughter, Vivian, with oil on canvas. There’s such a tenderness in the way the little girl’s face is rendered, all soft and luminous. It’s offset by the slightly more stylized depiction of the background details. The texture is really interesting here, especially in the way Duncan handles the paint. It's not about hiding the process. You can see the individual brushstrokes, particularly in the background foliage. There’s this lovely contrast between the smooth, porcelain-like quality of Vivian's skin and the more roughly textured areas around her. The impasto is subtle, but it's there, giving the painting a tactile quality. The black cat has a wonderful quality too, it is flat but the brushstrokes denote fur on its body. The combination of realism and stylization makes it feel almost dreamlike. It reminds me a bit of Paula Modersohn-Becker in its straightforwardness, and its almost naive quality. But Duncan's got this other thing going on, a kind of pre-Raphaelite fairy-tale vibe. It's all part of the ongoing conversation that is art.