Gwen John, The Convalescent, c. 1923-4

The pink cup waits for her hand. It is afternoon, maybe, or morning. Light does not choose its favorites, settling generously into the center of the things it touches, pretending it does not exist at all. Forget the time of day—day has no place here. Look at the edges of the frame, green and bilious and almost black, the source from which the surface splits and frays. The paint erodes itself to reach the girl, straining, breaking into the cracked posture of defeat. She will not be ours. There she sits in mottled blue, a Prussian sheath in a wicker chair, half absent to herself and far away from time. How long will she remain suspended like this? How long until she meets our gaze? There is no response. The paint has long ago hardened into neutrality, luminous and opaque, honest in its surrender to her inscrutability. But the pink cup waits. Has her tea gone cold? Perhaps it has yet to be poured, and in just a moment she will lift her eyes and mend her painted world to wholeness again. She will remember the fading heat of the tea and fill her cup, bringing it to her lips so that her body becomes visible in movement. Then we will know her as one of ours. Still, the pink cup waits.