SKU: p0603

Gone With the Wind - Melanie by artist Raymond Kursar. Third issue in the series. Knowles China Company, 1980. Plate size approx 8.5 inches. Suggested Retail $78.00

She is the ultimate Southern lady serene, sheltered. happy in the gentle traditions that shape her world yet unflinchingly courageous in the face of disaster: she is Melanie Hamilton Wilkes.

Gone With the Wind as it lives on the printed page, on film, and now in this limited-edition series of collector's plates is a love story played out against the background of the American Civil War and its aftermath. In this third issue of Knowles' Gone With the Wind series, the brush of Raymond Kursar captures Melanie as she waits for her beloved Ashley at the gate of Aunt Pittypat's house in Atlanta.

On this early summer afternoon, she is surrounded by reminders of the tranquil life of the Old South: the graceful doorway and rambling porches of antebellum architecture, the luxuriant roses that climb the neat white fenceposts. Poised at the center of the composition, Melanie is framed by columns of the porch and the gateposts, their strong verticals contrasting with the gentle, rounded lines of her dress, her neck, and her smoothly coifed hair. She rests her hand lightly on the gate and tilts her body to see more clearly down the road that will bring Ashley back to her arms. Every aspect of her outward appearance is rendered by Kursar to suggest the Southern belle.

But fragile and vulnerable though Melanie may seem, her face is radiant with an inner conviction that will carry her through war, physical pain and deprivation. In her dark, glowing eyes Kursar evokes the fierce cour
age that will defend Scarlett and Rhett against all enemies and that will protect Ashley from all turmoil.

Kursar deftly uses color and detail to capture Melanie's dual nature. In the rustling, light-reflective surfaces of her graceful hooped skirt, the soft bow at her bosom and the gossamer shawl on her arms, Kursar conveys her softer, feminine qualities. By contrast, he employs traditional color symbolism in painting Melanie's dress to indicate the formidable side of her character: rich gold to signify virtue; bright crimson, the age-old symbol of courage. By placing her radiant image against the subdued, receding grays of the house behind her, he presents Melanie as a metaphor for the human values that always endure, even as the charmed life of the Old South disappears forever.

In the forty years since the classic film Gone With the Wind first captured the public imagination, Melanie has always been perceived as a great heroine. Now, for the first time in the collector's plate medium, Raymond Kursar convincingly evokes the paradox of fragility and strength that makes her memorable. In this definitive work, he has given us a new insight into a gentler era, a closer look at the true lady who embodies all that was admirable about the South.