Annie French 1872-1965

‘The floating garments are decorated with flower patterns and can be very elaborate; not in fact very likely to survive well a forest walk or pulling roses, but reality was not French’s province. ‘ (Jude Burkhauser, 'Glasgow Girls'; Women in Art and Design 1880-1920, 1993, pg. 142)

Annie French’s delicate notion of beauty was partly derived from those lofty maidens painted by Edward Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelites. There is also a marked similarity between her work and that of Aubrey Beardsley and the illustrators associated with The Yellow Book, the seminal Aesthetic publication of the 1890s. The Peacock and the Rose and The Peacock Cloak encapsulate the spirit of the Glasgow School and the decorative decadence of the Aesthetic Movement in which the two most common elements are a richly attired young lady and the all seeing eyes of the peacock. The peacock is without doubt the most potent symbol of the Aesthetics of the turn of the Century, from the lines of Wilde to the decorations of Whistler, from humble fire screens to the fabrics of fashionable Liberty dresses.