Portrait de Madame Winston Frederick Churchill Guest, née Lucy Douglas Cochrane 1958

Salvador Dalí painted this portrait of Lucy Douglas Cochrane, Madame Winston Frederick Churchill Guest, in 1943, probably in oil on canvas. I love the softness of the colors, a muted palette that makes everything feel a bit dreamy, like a half-remembered memory. You can see how Dalí builds up the forms with layers of paint, especially in the face and the sky. Take a look at the way he renders the horses in the background, almost like ghostly apparitions. They're there, but they're also not quite there, fading into the landscape. It’s like they're running away from something, or maybe towards something, who knows? It’s this kind of ambiguity that makes Dalí so fascinating. He's not giving us easy answers; he's inviting us to question what we see, to look beyond the surface. Thinking about other artists, perhaps de Chirico, with his own brand of surreal landscapes and uncanny juxtapositions, springs to mind. Ultimately, art is about opening up possibilities, rather than closing them down.