The Mantilla

The Mantilla, painted in 1927 when Fildes was eighty-six, represents one of his last known works and demonstrates a sustained painterly engagement extending to extreme old age. A mantilla is the traditional Spanish lace veil worn over the head, and the subject invokes Orientalist and Spanish genre traditions popular in Victorian and Edwardian painting — Fildes himself had painted Spanish-inspired subjects in the 1870s including Rosa Siega. Returning to this imagery in his late eighties suggests both nostalgic engagement with early career subjects and the continued presence of a model willing to pose in exotic dress. The Royal Academy of Arts holds this alongside the 1911 self-portrait, providing institutional custody for significant works from across his career. A painting produced at eighty-six is remarkable both as artistic achievement and as evidence of sustained physical and mental engagement with the craft.

At eighty-six, Fildes's technique would have necessarily adapted — the tight academic control of his middle career giving way to a broader, more summary handling. The intrinsic visual interest of the lace mantilla against a face or figure would have provided Fildes's technical attention with a genuine challenge in rendering transparent, patterned fabric.