The Mirror

A young girl stands at her dressing table, one arm raised to her hair where a small white flower rests. Her mirror hands back a second glimpse of her face, quiet and a little curious, as though she is really seeing herself for the first time. Albert Chevallier Tayler painted this gentle scene, called "The Mirror," in 1914, turning a simple everyday moment into something soft and heartfelt. Most of us have had a pause like this in front of a mirror, and that is what makes it easy to warm to.

Light does much of the work here. A glowing red lamp on the table spills orange across the wall and the girl's face, while her pale blue nightdress keeps things cool and calm by contrast. Vases of white roses and glinting glass round out the cozy clutter of her room. Tayler belonged to the Newlyn School, a circle of painters who settled in a Cornish fishing village and preferred honest scenes of real people over grand set pieces. His loose, dabbing brushwork owes something to the Impressionists who were shaking up art at the time, and the finished picture feels less like a formal portrait and more like a private moment we happened to catch.