Sir William Russell Flint, R.A., P.R.W.S., R.S.W. (1880-1969)

The present drawing was part of a series of studies that Russell Flint executed as an investigation into layout and decoration. They were drawn with white chalk on a black background and were reproduced using a very disciplined and technical process known as 'fine line blocks' that depended on the fact that the white chalk remained pure in colour with no smudging or smoothing of the surface allowed.

Russell Flint met the girls who appear in his drawing when he stopped off near Ousson-sur-Loire to record a view from the river up towards a hamlet on the sky-line:

'Gleaming with the river water which trickled down their Amazonian forms the three girls - three modern graces indeed, shapely, amused, alert and delightfully unselfconcious - chattered about my picture with feminine enthusiasm. EN VACANCES? I queried. No, they said, we are from Les Loups. LES LOUPS, the wolves, and a moment ago I had thought of them as panthers!' (Sir W. Russell Flint, op.cit, p. 34).