Rachel Reckitt:
Matador, c. 1955
Framed (ref: 10362)

Oil on panel

Signed

39 x 29 in. (99.1 c 73.7 cm)

Tags: Rachel Reckitt oil panel animals sport 49 pictures Rediscovering Women Artist

Provenance: The Artist's Studio

Reckitt studied wood engraving at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London from 1933 to 1937, where she was taught by the School's founder, Iain Macnab. Although painted in oil, this work has all the hard-edge stylisation of a print, and stays true to the mission of the School in its rendering of ordinary subject matter with great movement and vitality.

Reckitt travelled extensively in Europe, and many of the works she produced were influenced by her journeys in France, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal. A painting in the Salford Museum & Art Gallery of a Farm House in Catalonia shows that Reckitt was in Spain during the thirties, and she would return in the mid 50's to paint scenes of matadors and bullfighting. A painting in the Museum of Somerset by her also portrays the castration of a bull.