National Galleries of Scotland

This etching belongs to a series of portraits Bellany made that return to the imagery of Port Seton and the sea. Many of them are linked to his second wife, Juliet, and her death in 1985. Here a woman, possibly Juliet, is depicted wearing a cat-mask. Masks, and the use of use of symbolic attributes, are common features in Bellany?s work and are a characteristic he learned from Max Beckmann. The figure appears to be holding up a skate, exposing its underside, as if a sacrifice. Like many of Bellany?s compositions, along the bottom of the paper is text, in this case it appears to be a ship?s name `Sweet Promise?, perhaps a reference to the premature death of Juliet.