1943
Oil on Canvas
h67cm x w36cm

Exhibited:
Leicester Galleries, London

Girl with Rose is a portrait of Lamb’s oldest daughter, Henrietta. He painted Henrietta very often and paintings throughout her childhood and into adulthood feature prominently in his work. They are usually sitting portraits often of her reading, making this small portrait of her standing and clutching a rose more curious. It bears some similarity to James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s full length portraits, with its monochromatic ground and limited colour palette. The colours are kept to browns, pinks, white and green, a far cry from the vivid patchwork of The Infant. Yet still flashes of other colours emerge- vermilion buttons, ultramarine shadows. Whistler’s influence on the Camden Town Group is most visible through Walter Sickert, the group’s de facto leader, who had worked in Whistler’s studio as a young artist. Whistler would fall in Sickert’s estimation, who he considered ‘excessively tasteful’, but the importance of Whistler to Sickert’s artistic development and by extension the rest of the Camden Town Group has often been underlined. It is interesting to see Lamb revive some tropes of Whistler’s painting three decades later.