Daffodils 1897

Daffodils, Pemberton’s first painting to be accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, marked a turning point in her art career. It is a life-size, full-length portrait study of a seated woman leaning sideways to retrieve a few flowers that have fallen from the vase behind her. In this technically demanding work, Pemberton demonstrates her mastery of the academic realist style of painting she had learned at the art school run by Arthur Cope (1857–1940). Another inspiration might have been the prominent artist Louise Jopling (1843–1933), whose portraiture included female subjects.

The model twists in her chair, right arm and shoulder facing outward, left arm and torso obliquely turned away, forming a complex version of the classic S curve before the viewer. The dramatic lighting focuses on the blooms even as it accentuates her stance and ripples across the folds in her gown. The highly polished brush strokes are almost invisible. By depicting a moment in time, Pemberton infuses the study with a feeling of intimacy.

Daffodils received high praise at the Royal Academy exhibition, where it was placed “on-the-line” at eye level in the coveted Gallery 1. The Academy Notes published that year with “illustrations of the principal pictures” included a sketch reproduction of Daffodils, one of only eighteen paintings selected from the one hundred oil paintings in that gallery to be reproduced in that format.

The Chelsea Mail commented favourably, but, as was typical of much reporting of paintings by female artists, dismissed the subject matter as irrelevant: “A conscientious piece of work, but scarcely worthy, as a subject, of the labour and talent bestowed on it.”  In contrast, the Lady’s Pictorial wrote: “A large picture… both unusual and clever. The figure of the seated girl, who stoops to pick up one of the flowers from the floor, is well drawn, and the lines are graceful and pleasing.”  Pemberton’s supportive mother and sisters came over from Canada to see her triumph.

In a very different half-length portrait composition, A Daffodil, 1910, Laura Muntz (1860–1930) positions the sitter looking outward to the viewer, clasping a single flower. She paints in the Impressionist style, one that Pemberton partly adopted in subsequent works. Pemberton and Muntz spent a day together in 1909 in Montreal with their mutual friend Harold Mortimer-Lamb (1872–1970), and they may have met earlier in Europe.