Lucy Mullins
Lucy Mullins, by her marriage to Brian Wiles, became a member of the well-known Wiles family who have been artists for several generations and long domiciled in the Knysna region of the Eastern Cape. The style and range of subjects taken up by the artists of this family as a whole has always been conventional, ranging for landscape to portraiture, which they practised to great public acclaim. It was largely through the success of the father of Brian Wiles, Walter Gilbert Wiles, that the Wilderness and Knysna coastlines became known as ‘Wiles country’.
The earlier works of Lucy Wiles are signed with the name Lucy Mullins, and pre-date her marriage. Xhosa woman in the Campbell Smith Collection (plate 56) is from this phase of her career, but is not specifically datable. It shows a young Xhosa woman wearing a traditional ochred blanket-wrap and a beaded headband. Her head is covered in a conventional colonial-style ‘doek’ that is not of traditional Xhosa design, colour or origin. Read More…
