Girl in Red Tights

Girl in Red Tights (c. 1948) is a painting by Australian artist Constance Stokes. Portraying a standing girl wearing red tights, the painting was exhibited in several shows, including the Commonwealth Jubilee Exhibition in Brisbane in 1951, and Twelve Australian Artists, in London in 1953. The work attracted significant critical acclaim.

Constance Stokes was a figurative painter, influenced by Post-Impressionism, and associated with Australian artist George Bell. In around 1948 she painted a work titled Girl in Red Tights. A standing girl wearing only red tights, Anne Summers recounts the circumstances under which it came to be created: "The idea for this painting had come when, arriving early one Thursday evening for her life session at George Bell's, Stokes caught the model undressing in preparation. The relatively informal and intimate nature of the pose was the result of this unexpected encounter".^[1]

The painting was first exhibited in the Melbourne Contemporary Artists exhibition in 1949, at which it was bought by Daryl Lindsay (Director of the National Gallery of Victoria) for his personal collection.^[1] In 1951, the work was included in the Commonwealth Jubilee Exhibition, held at the then Queensland National Art Gallery. Warwick Lawrence, art critic for Brisbane's daily paper The Courier-Mail, described both the work's popularity with viewers and its quality, when he wrote of his visit to the exhibition: "But I found a double-ring around Constance Stokes "Girl in Red Tights", with its flesh tints and background bathed in warm, red glowing light, a painting of considerable artistic merit as disturbing as it is stimulating."^[2]

In 1953, a "significant"

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