Domino

Domino, painted in 1904, shows Philip Wilson Steer working in a mode closer to old master portraiture than his better-known beach and coastal scenes. A domino — a hooded cloak or mask worn at masquerade — had strong associations with eighteenth-century Venetian carnival culture and the fancy dress revival in Edwardian England. The masquerade subject allowed Steer to paint costume, the psychology of concealment and display, and the particular quality of artificial or candlelit light that fancy dress occasions implied. By 1904 Steer had moved away from his most radical Impressionist experiments of the late 1880s and early 1890s toward a more synthetic approach that combined Impressionist colour awareness with the compositional solidity of eighteenth-century English portraiture, particularly Reynolds and Gainsborough. Domino sits comfortably within this more conservative late phase.

The masquerade costume — dark, hood-framing the face — created a strong value contrast between the face and surrounding fabric that Steer uses to organise the composition. The face is the lightest element in a composition otherwise dominated by dark tones, focusing attention with an intensity that Steer's more diffuse landscape compositions did not require. His brushwork in the dark fabric areas is more economical than in lighter passages, using broad strokes and allowing the dark ground to read through.