Paula Rego: Margaret and David
Title: Margaret and David
Artist: Paula Rego (1935–2022, Portuguese-British)
Location: Chapel of the Nine Altars, Durham Cathedral (C of E)
Date: 2003
Paula Rego’s pastel depicts St Margaret of Scotland with her son, David. Born in Hungary, exiled from England to Scotland under William the Conqueror, Margaret then married King Malcolm III of Scotland, abandoning a plan to become a nun. During her life Margaret was known for her piety; among many charitable acts she set up a ferry to bring pilgrims across the Forth on their way to St Andrew’s. Malcolm and one of her sons died in the Battle of Alnwick. Grieving, ill and fasting, Margaret also died a few days later. Her son David built Dunfermline Abbey to honour her memory.
Rego’s Margaret is old, her face lined. Her right hand rests on the shoulder of her son, David, the future king, who leans against her; but her left points to her beautifully illuminated Gospel book, and her gaze is fixed firmly, even grimly, ahead, her death imminent. The child David, handsome but strained, clutches a double-headed axe: a reminder of the battle that has just killed his brother and father, and, as a counterpart to his mother’s book, of the tensions within the Church, and in the history of the Cathedral itself.
Paula Rego (1935–2022, Portuguese-British) was born in Portugal to anglophile parents who encouraged her artistically. She spent time at a finishing school in the UK before studying at the Slade School of Art. From early abstraction she moved to the unsettling figurative works that she became known for, which combine fantastical and folk-tale elements with political directness, particularly relating to the position of women. Rego was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1989. In 1990 she became the first associate artist at the National Gallery, London, creating a mural, Crivelli’s Garden, for the dining room of the new Sainsbury Wing, full of depictions of female saints alongside figures from myth.
Further Information
Medium: Pastels
Permanent display
See Paula Rego’s Margaret and David on the Ecclesiart map here.
Commissioner: Dean and Chapter of Durham Cathedral
Other works of modern and contemporary art in Durham Cathedral: Pietà and Tomb of Christ, Fenwick Lawson; Transfiguration Window, Tom Denny.
Related A&C journal article(s): Paula Rego, Margaret and David. Review by David Brown 10/37