Sylvia Plath

A signed painted portrait of an unidentified young woman by Sylvia Plath.

• Sylvia Plath (American, 1932-1963).
• (Wellesley, Mass): n.p, [1948 or 1949].
• Gouache painting on thick paper.
• Signed by Plath on verso: "Sylvia Plath / (Age 16) / 26 Elmwood Rd / Wellesley, Mass." 
• With Plath estate seal on both front (lower left corner) and back. 
• Housed in a metal frame.

An original, bold portrait painted by a 16-year-old Sylvia Plath.

Plath made visual art throughout her life in a wide variety of mediums: from collage and oils to watercolor and pastels. Before she settled firmly on poetry in college, she seriously considered majoring in art. This early piece, painted while she was in high school (and, given the inscription on the verso, likely submitted to an art contest or competition), is executed in colorful gouache in a decidedly modern, almost Fauvist style, and features an unnamed young woman resting her chin in her hand.

The approach to this piece speaks to her early experimentation with the kind of art that would inspire her writing as an adult. Plath would later write to her mother, "I feel I'm developing a kind of primitive style of my own which I am very fond of" (August 28th, 1956). In 1958, she wrote that her "deepest source of inspiration" was "the art of primitives like Henri Rousseau, Gauguin and Paul Klee and De Chirico [...] Once I start writing, it comes and comes" (quoted in Clark, 518). As this letter suggests, Plath did not merely dabble in art: it was in many ways central to her creative practice. According to Dorothy Moss, curator of the 2017 Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery exhibition of Plath's art, ONE LIFE: SYLVIA PLATH, "I think that once you know that she drew and painted and sketched constantly as a child, and realize that she went to college to major in art, you'll start seeing how vivid her descriptions are, and how beautifully she put visual images into words." That exhibition prominently featured Plath's painting "Triple-Face Portrait" (1950), which shares a decidedly similar sensibility with this piece.

A moving and vibrant original work from one of the defining authors of the 20th century, capturing the youthful exuberance she would transform from visual media into the written word

Purchased by a previous owner directly from Sylvia's mother Aurelia, who was a personal friend of the buyer. Plath's mother received little money from Plath's increasingly lucrative estate which was controlled by her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, thus forcing her mother to sell many of Plath's personal items to supplement her meager income.