Portrait of N M Seedo

This portrait is one of three associated works depicting émigrée Sonia Husid (1906–1985), known by her nom de plume N. M. Seedo. Possibly a distant relative of Kossoff’s, she was an important model for the artist in this period. Seedo refers to their friendship in her semi-autobiographical account, 'In the Beginning was Fear' (1964), which also movingly describes her experiences of pogroms, fear and loss in Romania. In this empathic portrait Kossoff clearly conveys her strength through suffering.

Seedo was also known in her own right in Britain as a Yiddishist. Born in Bessarabia and educated in Vienna, she was a member of the socialist Zionist youth group Hashomer Hatzair and the (then illegal) Romanian Communist Party before she settled in England in 1930. Seedo married fellow immigrant and Yiddish writer Y. I. Lisky (originally Yehuda Itamar Fuchs, official name Summer Fuchs) in London in 1935; they subsequently divorced and remarried in 1970.

'Portrait of N. M. Seedo' bears a striking resemblance to 'Seated Woman', a 1957 oil painting, and a charcoal and conté drawing of the same title exhibited in Kossoff’s second and third London Group exhibitions. Heavily delineated with fluent thick black marks and depicted in three-quarters profile, N. M. Seedo sits with her hands together, and eyes downcast. The tubular arm-rest that portions off the bottom left corner is a compositional device that recurs in later works.