The Old Oyster Woman
Notes : The woman depicted in this artwork is Louisa Williams, who, according to Kay, could remember the days back almost a hundred years ago ... her black face and faded eyes canopied by the stiff frilled white 'Dutch kappie'. I painted two portraits of her and later made an etching ... Poor old Louisa was grateful for the job of being a model, as it saved her from having to risk her neck in the sea, wading out chest high in the water, breaking off any oysters to be found on the rocks. Her husband had been washed away, she told me, years before. Old slaves from Madagascar her people were ... her manners the finest that any person of gentle birth could wish to have. Marjorie Reynolds (1989) Everything You Do is a Portrait of Yourself: Dorothy Kay, A Biography, Cape Town: AM Reynolds, page 41.
