HAUNTING GAZE
CHILD INSPIRES PICTURE A picture that no mother who has once seen it can forget hangs in an art exhibition in the Stafford Gallery, London. It is a painting of a ten-year-old girl, Whose wistful, haunting gaze strangely moves all beholders. The portrait is labelled "Evacuee," and the' original is little Sheila Jackson, one of an East End dockland family of seven. Last September she and 24 other little East Enders were evacuated to an Elizabethan manor near Avebury, Wiltshire, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Keillor. All the others are now billeted elsewhere, but Mrs. Keillor grew so fond of Sheila that sho is still looking after her. When tho British Art Centre asked Mrs. Koiller, who is an accomplished painter, to contribute to an exhibition, entitled, "The War As 1 See It,", she determined to take Sheila, whose anxious, worried eyes had made a deep impression on her, as her model.
"But I had to paint her expression from memory," she told a Sunday Express representative. "She has changed so much, ncrt - that she is happy in her new life."
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19400914.2.141.9
Bibliographic details
New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23761, 14 September 1940, Page 2 (Supplement)
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184HAUNTING GAZE New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23761, 14 September 1940, Page 2 (Supplement)
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