WE THINK - at least, I think - of Paula Regoas a painter, but she is also an able graphic artist and illustrator. I mean "illustrator" in the literal (and literary) sense, since this exhibition is made up partly of nursery rhyme illustrations published in 1989, and partly of a series based on J.M. Barrie's still popular Peter Pan.
Her standing as a painter is high, though personally I find in her paintings too strong a flavour of Balthus and - to a lesser extent - of Lucian Freud. In particular, she seems to have been struck hard by Balthus's series based on Wuthering Heights. Yet Balthus, in turn, was probably influenced in that work by the school of Victorian illustrators, and in the present exhibition Paula Rego often comes close to these by a totally different route. Quite deliberately and openly too, you feel - Tenniel in particular, and even the German nursery, favourite Struwwelpeter, which gives a certain flavour of pastiche.
However, what is sometimes contrived and even repellent in her paintings vanishes in, the illustrations, even if a strain of perversity and mannerism lingers. Paula Rego has visual wit and economy, she avoids cliches and she can tell a story or depict an anecdote without losing her grip or her style. Though many of the works are black and white colour is used too and with a sure sense at effect.
