Roma Catriona Macfarlane

Date created: 1914

Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1914, No. 118: "Roma Catriona, daughter of the Rev. D. Macfarlane, Parish Minister of Kingussie".

"A survey of Waterhouse's pictures will show him to have been as susceptible as any to the visual appeal of red hair, and his 1914 Academy portrait of Roma Catriona Macfarlane illustrates this well. The little girl, then aged about ten, was the daughter of the minister of the Church of Scotland at Kingussie in Inverness-shire, and it was there that the artist saw her walking with her mother. Struck by the beauty of her waist-length Titian hair, he asked permission to have her sit for him. She did so with some reluctance, as perhaps the picture betrays, but it was excellently received when shown in the Academy. The Studio observed: 'Mr. Waterhouse does himself full justice with his delicately treated Annunciation, his vigorous colour-note The Love Philtre, and three portraits, the most memorable of which is a charming painting of a child.'"\r\n(The Art and Life of J.W. Waterhouse, p. 132, Anthony Hobson, 1980).",