Esme and Alba in Madison Square Garden (2015)

With her paintings featuring primarily women or girls, Chantal Joffe brings a psychological and emotional force to the genre of figurative art and portraiture. The source of her images comes from unposed or unplanned ‘snaps’ of her family, friends, domestic life, and the artist herself, as well as anonymous models sourced from magazines. Through the use of casual
brushstrokes and vivid colours, combined with distorted perspectives, Joffe creates contained and provocative portraits.

Three of the four intimate pastel portraits acquired for The New Art Gallery Walsall depict Joffe’s daughter Esme, a subject she has painted over and over again, in different environments, either alone or in the company of a friend. The bright colour palette and the slight distortion of scale and form give these sensual portraits a striking immediacy.

Joffe’s four portraits have strong resonance with The New Art Gallery’s Garman Ryan Collection, donated to the people of Walsall by Lady Kathleen Epstein (née Garman) and sculptor Sally Ryan in 1972. The representation of family members is a common theme in this collection. Sir Jacob Epstein, Lady Kathleen’s late husband, and other artists affiliated with the family, such as Lucian Freud, form a large part of it, as well as images of Lady Kathleen’s children, Theo and Esther Garman. The close emotional connection between Joffe and her daughter make her small-scale portraits a compelling addition to Walsall’s collection.

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