Fay & Jane Birkinshaw by Rita Angus

Fine Art Print

Image size in millimetres: 340 x 430

Sold Out! Last one left, this print run has very nearly sold out and the publisher is not re-printing again. Rita Angus gave this 1938 portrait to the girls’ parents, but their mother, Margaret, secretly loathed it. She felt it verged on caricature. Margaret tried to leave the painting behind when she left for England but a friend raced to the docks with it just as the gangway was rising. The blonde girl in this picture, Fay Birkinshaw who later became the novelist Fay Weldon recalls posing with her sister: ‘We were put in our matching check dresses and told to sit still.’ According to Weldon, ‘My mother said she nearly dropped it overboard [when the portrait was returned to her on the boat], but good manners intervened and instead she told the friend to give it back to Rita.’

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