AFVOA Newsletter of Year 2021

Section 6 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 01 / 2021 Page 66 of 123 2 Face to Face Mrs Premila Rajan Genre: Pages from Diary here is a sense of amazement, wonder, and the sheer joy when you unexpectedly come Face to Face with.....Ah! therein lies the mystery! A very long time ago I had painted a portrait of ''Lady Flora'' of uncertain heritage. This was executed in 1975, on canvas with oil paints in the traditional style, at Secunderabad. The aftermath of painting almost 8 hours each day led to eye fatigue and I recall being shut in a dark room with curtains drawn to afford rest for the eyes so poorly mistreated. Nevertheless, the painting is still fresh and hangs in my sitting room with accorded importance! In 1979 on my visit to USA, Washington DC, I was all agog to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The paintings I encountered was simply a very vast spread including all artists of the different periods! It was a fascinating morning going from room to room, gallery by gallery, from ancient Masters to Modern Impressionists. The earlier visit to the Tate Gallery in London, UK did help me identify the various Schools Of Art. The Flemish and Turner schools were delightful as were the Italian Masters. The European Masters led by Titian were a veritable feast for the Eyes. It was then at Gallery 10 that I was suddenly Face to Face with a familiar portrait! Lady Flora in all her amorous beauty spread out as a painting easily 12 feet by 9 feet gracing a huge wall! I was simply dumbstruck as I had enlarged a 4-inch postcard to a 2-foot square! The Portrait was there and goose shivers cascaded, jolting me to read the legend. This was copied by Rembrandt's protege from the Titian original of 1650 vintage! It is to be recalled that Rembrandt was so taken up with the loose blouse the model wore and insisted his school copy the same! So it came to pass that the minor artist, for want of a model chose to paint the portrait using Rembrandt's common-law wife', "Hodrickje Stoffels" as the face for Flora! I have had the honour of continuing that tradition in painting, rather, copying the minor artist of the Rembrandt school. T