ABSTRACT
It is a commonplace of contemporary criticism to talk of Marie Laurencin as the essentially feminine painter. I did it myself three weeks ago in these Pages. Her exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, her first in London, is an Occasion to examine this too easy Commonplace. Certainly Marie Laurencin’s work expresses femininity, but not all of it. Woman is not complete without man any more than man is complete without woman. Marie Laurencin has chosen to express unrelated woman—or rather, woman related only to herself. Mr. Jan Gordon in his ‘ Modern French Painters ’ committed himself to the statement that her paintings “ make one think of those impromptu tales which mothers invent for their children upon a winter’s evening.” With the most respectful deference to so distinguished a critic, I should say that they contain no hint of motherhood or the domestic atmosphere, but make one think rather of those impromptu tales which one imagines women invent for one another in that world where man never comes. In the presence of her pictures a man experiences something of that discomfort which he knows when women talk across him.
