Mason was best known as a sculptor. His crowded street scenes, often constructed from clay, were well-received by critics and the public, though some were to prove controversial. His 1991 resin and steel statue Forward, which once stood in Birmingham’s Centenary Square, was nicknamed the Lurpak Statue due to its apparent resemblance to a block of butter. It was destroyed in an arson attack in 2003.
Mason studied at both the Royal College of Art and the Slade. After the second world war he gravitated towards the Parisian art world. His portrait of Ginette Neveu is from 1945, the year before he moved permanently to Paris. He saw Neveu performing in his home city of Birmingham and was entranced by the young violinist. Neveu was 25 at the time and had already been a top-level musician for ten years. At the age of 15 she won the highly prestigious Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition and counted members of the British royal family amongst her fans. She performed regularly in Europe and North America before her death in a plane crash in 1949.
Perhaps the most immediately noticeable thing about Mason’s portrait is the way he employs circular and oval forms. Neveu is depicted inside an oval of light, representative of a spotlight. There is also perhaps a reference to the oval portraits that were popular in art – particularly French art – in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mason, an avowed Francophile, is carving out a niche for himself in French art history; his modernist lines are both an evolution and a rebuttal of the more classical techniques that preceded him.
The portrait’s oval form is repeated in the shape of Neveu’s face and shoulders, and in the body of the violin which is composed of two distinct circles in a manner that is almost cubist in its geometric reduction of form. (Picasso and Braque, the two great pioneers of cubism, were avid, almost obsessive, painters of musical instruments). Cubism changed the language of painting, allowing abstract and semi-abstract elements to proliferate and usurping the primacy of traditional angles and naturalistic perspectives. In this respect, Mason’s picture is a prime example of mid-twentieth century portraiture. However, in opposition to much cubist art, Mason’s curved lines have a strong sense of visual harmony.
Mason went on to become one of the most critically lauded British sculptors of his generation, but this small portrait gives us a glimpse of how his career could have unfolded had he pursued a different medium. It also serves as a moving and beautifully executed tribute to Ginette Neveu’s tragically short life.
By Thomas Blake
Visitor Experience Assistant, Museum & Art Swindon
Ginette Neveu is currently on display in How You See Me (11 April 2025 – 31 January 2026), an exhibition exploring four hundred years of portraiture through a selection of paintings from across the collections at Swindon Museums.
Image Credit: Ginette Neveu, 1945, by Raymond Mason, Oil on canvas, Gifted by HJP Bomford, 1946, ©Raymond Mason
