Madame Figaro

Ethel Leontine Gabain (1883-1950) was a French-English artist who grew up in Le Havre but had a Scottish mother and went to boarding school in England, before studying at the Slade School of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. Gabain was a renowned painter and lithographer and among the founding members of the Senefelder Club of printmakers, including John Copley (1875-1950) who is also represented in Te Papa's collection, and Joseph Pennell. In 1913 she married Copley and was also known by her married name of Ethel Copley. While she was known for her oil portraits of actresses - which relate in turn to this print - Gabain was one of the few artists of her time able to live on the sale of her lithographs, of which <em>Madame Figaro</em> is a good example. She also made etchings, dry-points, as well as some posters, and in her senior years during World War Two, was a major official war artist, depicting the women's war effort and young evacuees.

<em>Madame Figaro</em> depicts a young woman in a fancy flounced dress and bloomers, about to exit a grand looking room, raising her left hand conspiratorially to her mouth, addressing an unseen character - and you the viewer. While this is necessarily speculative, the woman could well be playing the part of Susanna in Mozart's famous opera, <em>The Marriage of Figaro</em>  (1786), who has to keep one step ahead of the dastardly, lecheorus Count Almaviva, who wants to seduce her despite her imminent marriage to Figaro. John Copley did the original drawing for this lithograph, and it bears his initials as well as Gabain's signature. This testifies to the close collaboration of this talented husband-wife team of printmakers.

See: Wikipedia, 'Ethel Leontine Gabain', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethel_L%C3%A9ontine_Gabain

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   April 2018