Miss C. 

Curator: Take a moment to gaze upon "Miss C.", a portrait realized in oil by Rose O’Neill, housed in a private collection. What strikes you initially? Editor: She seems somehow both present and distant. Those blue eyes—almost startling against the soft focus everywhere else. A romantic, maybe slightly melancholic sensibility? Curator: The composition is fascinating. Note the darker tones framing the face—the black hat and fur—they create a sense of intimacy, drawing us closer. I love that Rose O'Neill uses an impasto style which emphasizes that sense of a surface that comes forward towards the viewer and adds a sense of drama with brushwork creating the light on skin that the woman carries. I get the melancholic sensibility that you mentioned; in some way the high impasto marks a fleeting image of youthful skin, since such smoothness never truly returns to us after youth. Editor: Absolutely. There's something theatrical about the high contrast. A symbolic layering perhaps? The dark fur could represent both status and concealment, even mourning. It suggests layers beneath layers, secrets unspoken. Curator: Or the need for privacy, an acknowledgement that female personhood has always faced a battle on what of its intimate experience would remain its own or become common property and thereby cheapened or used against her. O'Neill, a complex person in herself, also used to sign her pieces backwards in the mirror as an invocation, or charm! Editor: An invocation? I am also seeing the echo of Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics here. The idealized beauty, the slight flush to her cheeks… Do you think the symbolism intended here draws on the concepts of love, death and beauty associated to these older art tendencies? It has that sense of looking towards myth as the core of experience. Curator: I see that influence too, though with a knowing wink. I suspect O'Neill would appreciate the reading. It is a moment caught and made permanent. Editor: A moment…or a mystery? Anyway, I’ve truly enjoyed the chance to ruminate about this beautiful work of Rose O'Neill. It gave me plenty to think about in terms of our perception of how otherness is represented in art, don't you think? Curator: Exactly, and in thinking through those themes it helps to connect this private "Miss C." to ourselves and our expectations today!