After the general appreciation and enthusiasm over The Oyster Nymphs, my mother decided to make a follow-up version, The Oyster Nymphs II. The second painting has one more water nymph and it seems to have taken a bit of effort to come up with the design and draw out the details. It does follow the same general plan of nymphs stringing pearls in the foreground while others play in the background. I was fortunate to find the preliminary sketches in one of her notebooks, some shown here after the diary entries.

Reading the diary entries, it’s interesting to note that in between applying herself to this painting, she also painted “Spring” and the “Kichicot” cat painting, before this one was finally finished.

One sad note about this painting is that after a few years one of the components she used to make the turquoise oil paint colour of the nymphs began to break down and start to loose some of the detailed features. This actually happened within her lifetime and she blamed it in on some inferior less expensive paint she bought instead of her usual Windsor and Newton brand. The images you see here are based on photographs I took when I visited in 1975 even though I currently still have access to this painting, it just doesn’t look like what she created back then.

Diary Entries

Preliminary Sketches