This self portrait riff by Cecile Walton on Manet’s Olympia replete with not very PC black Sambo doll instead of black cat and nurse instead of maid and baby standing in for flowers from 1920 shows just how screwed up referencing the masters can get. Walton was part of the Edinburgh group which prized symbolist motifs. That said, the title, Romance belies it’s matter-of-fact treatment of her two children as she gets her foot massage. Having just re-seen the actual Olympia at the Musee d’Orsay, one of their most respected paintings, I am hard pressed to even make the comparison. Yet I like this painting and wonder about the very forward thinking woman who painted it who has more or less disappeared into obscurity. She lived for a time in a menage a trois with her husband, Eric Robertson, also an artist, and alcoholic—obviously a problem of the period—and another artist Dorothy Johnstone when this work was painted. Hmmm……