Footnotes

Provenance
Galería Marlborough, Madrid
Private Collection
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, London, 16 October 2006, lot 205
Frederico Horta e Costa Antiguidades Lda., Lisbon
Private Collection, Lisbon (acquired from the above in 2007)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Exhibited
Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Paula Rego: Celestina's House, 12 June - 7 October 2001, no. 39 (and later travelled to New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, 18 April - 30 June 2002) (illustrated n.p.)
Porto, Casa de Serralves, Recordações da Casa Rosa: António Areal, Jorge Queiroz e Paula Rego na Coleção da Fundação Serralves, 25 March - 12 June 2011
Cerveira, Fórum Cultural de Cerveira, Paula Rego - No Tempo e no Género - XIX Bienal de Cerveira, 15 July - 16 September 2017
Porto, Casa de Serralves, O Grito da Imaginação, Obras da Coleção de Serralves, 24 October 2019 - 28 June 2020 (and later travelled to Chaves, Museu de Arte Contemporânea Nadir Afonso, 9 July - 18 October 2020; São João da Madeira, Centro de Arte Oliva, 30 October 2020 - 7 February 2021; Póvoa de Varzim, Cine-Teatro Garret, 24 April - 31 July 2021; Aveiro, Museu de Aveiro/Santa Joana, 15 November 2024 - 19 January 2025) (illustrated pp. 14 & 25)
Porto, Museu de Serralves, Quem conta um conto... Paula Rego na Coleção de Serralves, 27 October 2022 - 16 April 2023
Porto, Casa de Serralves, on long-term loan, 2011-2025


Paula Rego's seminal exploration of domestic life and female experience frequently transforms ordinary scenes into profound narratives that crudely yet poignantly depict everyday life. The Salmon-coloured Dress, is archetypal of the artist's highly acclaimed practice; in the present work a seemingly ordinary domestic scene is disrupted by the central figure's awkward and uncomfortable position, while the stiffness in the pose of the figures at the back add an uncanny feeling to the composition. Here, beauty is imbued with an eerie, grotesque aura, reflecting the painter's fascination with the tension between the exquisite and the macabre.

The title of the present work takes inspiration from a poem by Portuguese poet Adília Lopes. The poem tells the story of girl who, upon accidentally ripping her salmon-coloured dress, tears it up and saves the fabric. From one of the pieces of fabric a dress is made for her younger sister's doll, and the remains are later used to make another dress for a smaller doll, the daughter of the first doll. Executed in 2001, The Salmon-coloured Dress was created a year after Adília Lopes' book, Obra, was published. Attesting to the close relationship between the artists, Rego illustrated Obra, highlighting the connection she and the poet shared, as well as the similarities in their respective creative processes, whereby psychoanalysis and social commentary are used to address gender and domestic politics.

Literary sources have always played a central role in Paula Rego's practice, providing a foundation for her interpretations of the human experience. Rather than presenting a fixed narrative however, her compositions resist clear resolution, inviting viewers to draw their own conclusions instead. Drawing from personal experience as well as a variety of sources and influences ranging from folk legends and fairytales as well as literature and the sociopolitical landscape of her native Portugal, Rego's main concern would always be the human psyche, and the often complicated relationships that arise from personal exchanges. By turning ordinary hierarchies on their heads, her compositions – whether tender or tragic – examine the complexities of lived experience, particularly that of women. In the present work, the girl lying on the floor is in a vulnerable position, with the two smaller dolls towering over her. The supposed hierarchy between a child and her toys is subverted here, challenging the accepted societal norms of motherhood and nurture, play and innocence. Indeed, author and curator Fiona Bradley has acutely observed how Rego "is interested in the everyday but supremely uninterested in conforming to what might be expected of her or of her characters" (Fiona Bradley, Paula Rego, London, 2002).

As is perfectly exemplified in the present work, Paula Rego's skill with pastel is unparalleled, a medium she first embraced in 1994 with the Dog Woman series, and which later became emblematic of her work. Pastel's malleability and immediacy allowed Rego to work with an intimacy and force that bring her characters to life with striking vibrancy and emotional resonance. Revered critic Robert Hughes eloquently explained how, for the artist "unlike oil paint or watercolour, pastel is not applied with a tool. The stick of pigment is the tool itself; nothing intervenes in the application of colour layer after layer is built up, and sequences of form, such as the articulation of a knee or the bones of an ankle, become fiercely aggressively shadowed. It is, as Rego points out, an inherently strong medium" (Robert Hughes, 'Paula Rego', in exh. cat., Paula Rego, Madrid, 2007, p. 123). In The Salmon-coloured Dress, Rego shifts from subtle tonal gradations to bold, saturated passages that heighten the drama of her composition. Here, perspective sharpens, detail intensifies, and the work resonates with a visceral immediacy that collapses the boundary between stillness and motion, beauty and unease.

Today Paula Rego stands among the most significant female artists of the twenty-first century and is admired for her powerful and darkly sophisticated compositions that unabashedly address the oppression of women. Having grown under the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal, where Church and State were tightly bound, the artist was always weary of official doctrine and religious ritual, a distrust that would come to shape the uncompromising nature of her art throughout her illustrious career. In her work the artist fearlessly addressed difficult themes such as colonialism, gender inequality and politics, focusing on the female experience and societal norms and expectations that women have had to live with throughout history. The Salmon-coloured Dress delicately yet powerfully embodies Rego's influential practice, exquisitely addressing ambitious and challenging topics that are as pressing today as they were upon the work's execution over two decades ago.