In 1927, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition made a star of one exhibitor and her picture. Dod Procter's Morning toured the provinces for two years before going to the Tate, admired by critics and the public for its sensuous but sombre style, for the way in which the silver light of west Cornwall picked out the contours of the sleeping girl.
And that was that. In the art-history books, Procter (1890-1972, right) is a one-hit wonder, but, as a retrospective and a new biography show, she was nothing of the kind.
The price Procter asked for Morning (£300, a tenth what she could have got) is a clue to this modest artist's later obscurity. Male condescension also affected Procter, who was often dismissed as a painter of flower pieces, her quietness and subtlety taken for weakness.
As the Penlee House show makes |
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Procter was often dismissed as a painter of flower pieces, her quietness and subtlety taken for weakness, says rhoda koenig
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clear, however, her painted women exude the monitory power of the stone statues they resemble: the girl in Morning could be an effigy on a medieval tomb, stirring back to life; the earth goddesses in Virginal and The Orchard are dappled in shimmering green, the latter's sleeping body arched to present us with her pubic area as one outstretched arm lies inches from a green apple.
Procter's subjects gaze inward, sidelong, one girl in outsize pearls seeming weighed down by the symbol of approaching womanhood. In her later work, her technique - very thin paint scrubbed into the canvas and partly scraped away - came to match her style. What this artist had to say, she said in a penetrating whisper. 
Dod Procter, Penlee House, Penzance, to 24 November.
A Singular Vision, by Alison James, Sansom & Co. £19.95.
FIRST POSTED SEPTEMBER 21, 2007
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