Paris was the place to be in the 1920s. This was especially true for adventurous artists, writers and performers, who flocked to this ‘City of light’ in the years following the First World War. Goodsir, an Australian by birth, had come to know Paris well. At the time of painting The Parisienne she was living in an apartment at 18 rue l’Odéon in Montparnasse. Sylvia Beach (1887–1962), the renowned American who established the English-language bookshop Shakespeare and Company in Paris and first published James Joyce’s Ulysses, lived in the same apartment block with her partner Adrienne Monnier (1892–1955). The sitter in The Parisienne is another American, Goodsir’s close companion Rachel Dunn, nicknamed Cherry. She had divorced and moved to Paris to be with Goodsir. The combination of propriety and a sense of adventure was integral to their lives in Paris, as it is to this gently seductive portrait.
Cherry sat for numerous portraits by Goodsir, although many of them are more conventionally feminine and more domestic in their settings. Here Goodsir captures a sense of Parisian style, combining theatricality with elegant restraint. The sitter is placed against a muted cream background and her garments are simplified in shape and colour, giving strength to the composition. The tonal palette and delicately modulated forms recall Goodsir’s early training in contrast with modernist practices at the time. Yet a more subtle feeling of modernity pervades the sitter. Stylishly dressed in a high collared jacket with a contemporary flapper’s cloche hat she is casually holding a cigarette (perhaps the brand known as the Parisienne![1]). Smoking was considered a sign of emancipation and the rather masculine style of dress epitomised modernity in the streets, cafes, bars and theatres of the Latin Quarter in the 1920s. The sitter’s eyes are in shadow, adding to the sense of mystery, while her lips are bright cherry red. Her hands are relaxed with each bearing the glint of a ring, perhaps indicating past and present lives.
When Goodsir visited Australia on Valentine’s Day, 1927, she was hailed as ‘a portrait painter of international repute’.[2] Apart from Cherry, Goodsir painted numerous famous and well-connected people including Leo Tolstoy and Banjo Paterson. Yet her portraits and likenesses of Cherry are, by and large, her most intimate and confident works. Goodsir returned to Paris for good later in 1927. It was where her heart resided; she too had become a Parisienne.
Deborah Hart
https://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=169716
