In 1899, a woman losing herself in a novel was a small act of rebellion.
Not a chore. Not a duty. Just a woman, sprawled in the garden, gone somewhere else entirely.
Josephine Muntz Adams doesn’t show us her face – and she doesn’t need to. The painting is all posture: the loose spread of her dress, the unselfconscious slouch, the hat tilted forward. She is completely, unapologetically elsewhere.
Image from Fine Australian paintings, 1840-1970; Trevor Bussell Fine Art Gallery, 1988.
