Green Woodpecker III (suspended) with Still Life on reverse

Rawsthorne frequently painted animal skeletons or corpses from life, and the detail of this painting suggests this was the case on this occasion. Carol Jacobi, who has written extensively on Rawsthorne, argues that this painting was the artist’s first masterpiece. [2] She draws attention to the fact that the painting was created during a time of great personal uncertainty for Rawsthorne. Various images of birds and harpies were often understood as stand-ins for Rawsthorne herself so the defeated animal, strung up on an empty sheet reflects the uncertainty of her future. At the same time, however, the painting can also reflect issues beyond the biography of its maker. Completed in a particularly cold winter, amidst the threat of nuclear war, the work seems to symbolise the danger and uncertainty of the age. The local population of green woodpeckers, Jacobi notes, had been recently decimated by the freezing temperatures so it may seem that this bird is the symbol of a greater loss: just one victim of a world that had recently torn itself apart in global conflict and was on the verge of doing so again. [3]

The fact that the other work in the collection (50698) depicts a woodpecker in flight may limit the extent to which this interpretation could be extended to other works of similar subject matter. Clearly Rawsthorne was working in an imaginative mode as well as working from life. The different approaches in these two woodpecker paintings does, however, suggest that these works were made during a period of creative experimentation in which Rawsthorne was developing her artistic voice. Rawsthorne would continue to paint birds throughout her career and her depictions of this subject would go on to become more skeletal, and often more conceptual, as her meditations on the difference between the living and the lifeless became more sophisticated. As much as this work epitomises Rawsthorne’s early preoccupations and brims with poetic subtlety, it can also be viewed as the first work in career-long meditation on mortality.

Georgia Kelly, February 2023