Notes

With her new archaeologist husband, Revel, Judith Mason spent her honeymoon in 1963 in Northern Africa: he on various excavating sites; she on discovering, among many other things, the Nile. Although painted much later, the present work references Mason’s interest in the representational and symbolic qualities of that river. The thick, grey impasto in the foreground suggests the well-known fertile layers of silt formed when the river breaks its banks after the monsoon season in Ethiopia, the origin of the Blue Nile at Lake Tana. These layers contributed directly to the establishment of the ancient Egyptian civilisation. Hardly distinguishable towards the left of the middle ground is a pencil drawing of a fragile phoenix, the mythological bird of regeneration, which was of great significance to the artist's practice and her personal iconography.