SKU: p0633

Gone With the Wind -- Scarlett by artist Raymond Kursar. First issue in the series. Knowles China Company, 1978. Plate size approx 8.5 inches. Suggested Retail $400.00

Shoe is an enchanting minx, high-spirited,
impetuous, a dashing green-eyed charmer who is a highbred lady one minute, a hoyden the next: she is Scarlett O'Hara.

Behind her, crowning a grassy knoll abloom with azaleas and dogwood, is her beloved Tara, its welcoming verandas symbolizing a way of life which cannot endure. With organdy skirts billowing like the petals of the magnolias around her, Scarlett herself is the last flower of the Old South.

Gone With the Wind. both as the book by Margaret Mitchell and the 1939 film starring Vivien Leigh, is a love story played out against the background of civil war and its aftermath. Above all, it is Scarlett's story, and the brush of Raymond Kursar depicts her as a captivating young woman, still secure in a world of wealth and privilege which will soon be gone forever.

But in Kursar's gifted hands. -Scarlett- transcends the literal scene and becomes an exposition of what Kursar himself calls her -timeless essence.- Through the rendering of small details—the tilt of her head, the provocative uplift of an eyebrow, the thrust of her small, pointed chin—he captures the very core of her animation and vivacity.

-Scarlett- is a Romantic conception in which beauty is idealized and boldly defined contrasts create emotional and dramatic vigor. Kursar creates a mood of almost nervous intensity by juxtaposing warm colors with cool, pink with green, sunlight with shadow. Carrying the contrasts still further. he makes Scarlet's soft coloring a striking foil for her chestnut hair, just as her demure dress contradicts her teasing manner.

These outward contrasts reflect the contrasts in her complex character which the artist ultimately seeks to define: the struggle between head and heart, outward decorum and inward turmoil. And it is Kursar's great accomplishment that his -Scarlett- succeeds in taking us beyond the cool facade of the Southern gentlewoman to the passionate nature that is betrayed by her willful eyes.

It is this rare ability to go beyond the obvious, the physical, that will make the scope of Kursar's Gone With the Wind series so exciting to all who have been touched by the movie.

It is now forty years since filming began on Gone With the Wind; even longer since the book was published. But the appeal of the indomitable girl who could toss -fiddle-dee-dee!- in the teeth of disaster is timeless. and her magic has never dimmed. Now, with all the sensitivity that is the hallmark of a great artist, Raymond Kursar gives us this vital, unforgettable Scarlett—a vivid evocation of her dauntless spirit, a definitive portrait of the laughing girl who will always run joyfully to meet life head-on.