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Leaving the world: she was Rufina Cambacérès, who died in Buenos Aires on her 19th birthday in 1902, or so had been thought. It’s a long tragic story of delusion, loss, sedation, overdose, and finally premature burial. Pieced together, she’d led a sheltered life, unprepared for her return at 15 to Buenos Aires after a childhood spent on her grandfather’s country estates. She thought the middle aged gentleman would propose to her on her 19th birthday, unaware that he was her beautiful stepmother’s lover and that the little boy was her half brother. They’d been giving her enough belladonna in the evenings to ensure that she slept through their private time. On her birthday, a servant set her straight about adult relationships, she overdosed, and was put in a coffin in the family tomb by nightfall. Weeks passed, a cemetery worker noticed the coffin wasn’t exactly in place, he called the family, the coffin was opened to find that she had awakened and died in it.

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“Leaving the world: Rufina Cambacérès at 19, 1902, after Aigner” 6 January 2018 As often, the best view of her face was not at the same angle as the best view of her body so I had to put two images together from my photographs. Marble looks lovely on a cloudy day, I had to paint the sun in.