The verse reads:’Little brains of daughters/ Working in a band/ Have a mighty notion/ How to help the land./ Just as little WAAC girls/ Help the work of men/ So these little blue girls/ Help the WAAC and WREN.’ It’s rather hard to tell if this is straight or ironic… Maybe a bit of both: there is a slightly wry expression on the face of the ‘little blue girl’.

Rest Time in the Life Class was painted by Dorothy Johnstone (1892-1980) in 1923. It’s ‘a kind of self-portrait of the artist. She is in the shadows at the back, hand on hip, authoritatively teaching an all-female life drawing class at Edinburgh College of Art. In the foreground is a model, being carefully observed and drawn by two other young women. Johnstone’s painting is a rare, fascinating and arresting portrait of women at their creative work: drawing, thinking, and communing with one another’: from Charlotte Runcie’s piece in the Telegraph, which ends: ‘This show is a call to arms for more research and critical celebration of talents, who have been heavily neglected, suppressed and ignored for too long.’

Norah Neilson Gray (1882-1931) painted The Scottish Women’s Hospital: In the Cloister of the Abbey at Royaumon just after the war was over: ‘she had volunteered as a nurse at the Scottish Women’s Hospital outside Paris that was funded, set up, run and staffed by women. Off duty, she painted scenes from the wards’ (comment taken from a very good article in The Herald here).  And there is an excellent blog post about The Women of Royaumont – in the first photograph Cicely Hamilton is the one sitting down.

Romance 1920 by Cecile Walton is in the exhibition (and has been on the Post before). Here are some incisive sentences about it: ‘The title of the painting is ironic. Walton depicts herself holding up her new-born son, Edward, for intense scrutiny, whilst her elder boy, Gavril, aged 5, looks on. The image of mother and baby is usually associated with the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus but this picture, which deliberately echoes a well-known impressionist image of a prostitute – Olympia by Edouart Manet, suggests a more uneasy attitude to motherhood.’  The comment that the title is ironic parallels the discussion we were having in the shop about a Valentine Day’s Special Offer – what about an ironic one involving eg. To Bed with Grand Music, Hostages to Fortune and They Were Sisters rather than more conventionally ‘romantic’ books?

Charlotte Nasmyth (1804-84) painted this Pastoral Landscape. The National Galleries of Scotland site tells us usefully: ‘A member of a large and gifted family, Charlotte was the sixth daughter of the landscape painter Alexander Nasmyth. All the girls were talented artists, trained to draw and paint by their father so that they could run art classes from their Edinburgh home and eventually support themselves independently. Charlotte painted romantic landscapes which were widely exhibited.’ There is a self-portrait here.

There is a stunning exhibition in Edinburgh (on until June) Modern Scottish Women: Painters and Sculptors 1885-1965 . The show has prompted all kinds of interesting comment germane to Persephone Books, for example Claudia Massie in the Spectator began, ‘Modern Scottish Men, a new exhibition celebrating the achievements of male artists in the 20th century, opens next month in Edinburgh. Men only; no women. Bold! Only joking. That show would never happen today. How could it? Where would an exclusive, specifically male-only exhibition be tolerated these days? A women-only show, on the other hand, would be fair enough; we need to point out that the wee dears can paint too.’  The Indian Rug or Red Slippers by Anne Redpath was painted in 1942.