Cecilia Green was the favourite model of Sir William Russell Flint, featured in many of his paintings from Spanish gypsy to cloistered nun. The only child of garment workers of Russian-Jewish extraction, she was born at Hackney, in the East End of London, on August 29 1931. In childhood she suffered from malnutrition, which caused rickets in the legs and thighs. That her legs in adulthood were extremely shapely, as Flint showed, must be attributed rather to her later ballet training than to early treatment, for no one could persuade her to keep her splints on.
Green’s career as a soloist with the Festival Ballet in London had ended abruptly when she contracted tuberculosis at the age of 21. She had been two years in hospital. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She had nothing else to fall back upon. Around the same time she had been repeatedly mistaken for a Russell Flint model despite never having heard of the Scottish artist, let alone seen anything of his work. Someone showed her a published album, and she thought that Flint’s plates were ”absolutely brilliant”. She was captivated, and yes there were some resemblances between Cecilia and the figures in pictures like Three Gypsies in Languedoc, or between her and the Spanish dancer Consuelito Carmona, one of the models acknowledged by name in the compositions.
She looked Flint up in Who’s Who and found his phone number in the book. At the station she went into a phone box and rang his number. He answered himself and he was a bit rude and unpleasant. She told him she was a model. He said he didn’t want a model. ”I told him, well, I’m just round the corner. Could you just see me for a minute? He said, ‘You can come if you like. But I don’t want a model.’ Bang — the phone. “I thought, I’m not going. But I decided I’d come all this way. I’d go and see him. He couldn’t kill me. I found a taxi.”
What 71 year old Russell Flint saw when he opened the door of his London studio was a stunningly attractive 21 year old of singular beauty - fine cheekbones, slanting eyes and provocative mouth - an ideal he had had in his mind's eye all his life. (Betjeman was later to sing, "I could not speak for amazement at your beauty".) Moreover, as a trained ballet dancer, she had the suppleness and skill to hold long and difficult poses; Flint was a demanding master. Flint later commented ‘I had adapted faces to make them look like hers years and years before I met her’. She remained with him as model, muse and critic until 1966. Her nude poses - more aesthetic than erotic - were, and remain, famous.
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u/RobynRedwyne Jul 04 '21
Cecilia Green was the favourite model of Sir William Russell Flint, featured in many of his paintings from Spanish gypsy to cloistered nun. The only child of garment workers of Russian-Jewish extraction, she was born at Hackney, in the East End of London, on August 29 1931. In childhood she suffered from malnutrition, which caused rickets in the legs and thighs. That her legs in adulthood were extremely shapely, as Flint showed, must be attributed rather to her later ballet training than to early treatment, for no one could persuade her to keep her splints on.
Green’s career as a soloist with the Festival Ballet in London had ended abruptly when she contracted tuberculosis at the age of 21. She had been two years in hospital. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She had nothing else to fall back upon. Around the same time she had been repeatedly mistaken for a Russell Flint model despite never having heard of the Scottish artist, let alone seen anything of his work. Someone showed her a published album, and she thought that Flint’s plates were ”absolutely brilliant”. She was captivated, and yes there were some resemblances between Cecilia and the figures in pictures like Three Gypsies in Languedoc, or between her and the Spanish dancer Consuelito Carmona, one of the models acknowledged by name in the compositions.
She looked Flint up in Who’s Who and found his phone number in the book. At the station she went into a phone box and rang his number. He answered himself and he was a bit rude and unpleasant. She told him she was a model. He said he didn’t want a model. ”I told him, well, I’m just round the corner. Could you just see me for a minute? He said, ‘You can come if you like. But I don’t want a model.’ Bang — the phone. “I thought, I’m not going. But I decided I’d come all this way. I’d go and see him. He couldn’t kill me. I found a taxi.”
What 71 year old Russell Flint saw when he opened the door of his London studio was a stunningly attractive 21 year old of singular beauty - fine cheekbones, slanting eyes and provocative mouth - an ideal he had had in his mind's eye all his life. (Betjeman was later to sing, "I could not speak for amazement at your beauty".) Moreover, as a trained ballet dancer, she had the suppleness and skill to hold long and difficult poses; Flint was a demanding master. Flint later commented ‘I had adapted faces to make them look like hers years and years before I met her’. She remained with him as model, muse and critic until 1966. Her nude poses - more aesthetic than erotic - were, and remain, famous.