* MARGARET MORRIS (BRITISH 1891 - 1980)
RAM GOPAL

oil on canvas, signed and dated 1960 verso
framed

image size 74cm x 55cm, overall size 92cm x 73cm

Exhibition label verso: Glasgow Civic Art Association.
Note 1: Margaret Morris was a young English dancer and the wife of John Duncan Fergusson, whom she met in 1913. They settled in Paris in 1929. The following year Fergusson became President of the Groups d'Artistes Anglo-Americans in Paris. Of the four Scottish Colourists, Fergusson was the one who was accepted by the French as one of their own and his reputation was instrumental in bringing about the success of the Paris exhibition in 1931 of Les Peintres Ecossais. Morris enjoyed great success as a Dancer, teacher, choreographer and painter. As dancer and teacher; she developed her own free style of dancing, opening a school in London (1910), establishing the Margaret Morris Movement (1925) and founding the Celtic Ballet (1947) and two Scottish National Ballets, in Glasgow (1947) and in Pitlochry (1960). Although she became an accomplished painter in the Scottish colourist style aided by her marriage to Fergusson and her many years spent in Paris, her first love was always dancing and in the painting of Ram Gopal she brings both of these mediums together with great skill. Morris brings together the portrait of Gopal surrounded by his troupe in many different dance poses, creating a great sense of movement and modernism.
Note 2: Ram Gopal was an Indian dancer and Choreographer. He played a significant role in bringing Indian dance to International audiences between the 1930s to the late 1960s. He and his troupe performed at London's Aldwych Theatre in 1939. During this visit, he also danced at a charity performance for the Hindustani Social Club. According to his passport, Ram Gopal was born in Bangalore in 1917, although some claim his date of birth to have been up to five years earlier. La Meri, the American danseuse, visited India in 1937 and, discovering Gopal, invited him to teach her Kathakali and accompany her on a tour of the Far East. He danced in Rangoon, Malaya, Java, the Philippines, China and Japan. He then went to the USA in 1938 and then on to Europe and was feted when he arrived in London. The press praised Gopal's accomplished dancing, comparing him favourably with Uday Shankar. Ram Gopal received rave reviews and was set to stay in Britain for a long run, but with the outbreak of the Second World War had to return to India.Ram Gopal built a dance school in Bangalore during the war years, and welcomed the London Ballet Company to India. Ram Gopal returned to London in July 1947. He was asked to perform at the reopening of the Indian section of the Victoria and Albert Museum on 17 September 1947. Subsequently he and his company were asked to perform seasons of several weeks at numerous theatres in London, such as The Prince’s Theatre, Adelphi and Cambridge. He founded a school of Indian dance in London in 1962 and spent his last years in England. He died in Surrey in 2003.