Mary Potter 1900-1981
The Okapi
oil on board
11 x 15 ins


Provenance
Mrs Hugo Pitman
Sir Laurens Van der Post
Peyton Skipwith

Exhibited
Mary Potter A Selective Retrospective, Oriel 31 Davies Memorial Gallery, September - November 1989 and touring to:
Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria
Victoria Art Gallery, Bath
Norwich Castle Museum
Usher Gallery, Lincoln

The Fine Art Society, London, 6-31 July 1998



Painted in 1950 while she was still living in a flat in Harley Street, The Okapi reflects Mary Potter’s characteristic tendency to use whatever subject matter was near at hand. Regent’s Park and London Zoo were, literally, just up the road and they provided a substantial part of the material for her painting during this period of her life. It was understandable enough too: married to the celebrated author and broadcaster Stephen Potter and with a young family to bring up, her painting time was severely limited. Not that any of this is remotely apparent in this delicate little painting; if anything it suggests the opposite, the apparently casual glance of something caught out of the corner of the eye mysteriously suggesting a sense of complete timelessness and a withdrawal from the routine and everyday.

Much of this quality in her work at the time comes from the subdued colour harmonies she had begun to adopt, suggesting that she had been looking closely at Whistler’s London paintings in particular. The pale, veiled and misty London light that envelops The Okapi and transforms it into something intense and almost intangible was entirely her own, however. As Marina Vaizey so eloquently put it 'the look of a moment refined into memory...born and distilled from a lifetime'.