Fate and Coincidence: Elizabeth Colomba Joins the PMA Collection

Sometimes, the most exciting moments in the museum happen unexpectedly.

When visiting the museum in preparation for Elizabeth Colomba’s Mythologies, something unusual caught the artist’s eye: the McLellan House wallpaper.

Although the museum was founded in 1882, the PMA’s downtown campus really took shape through the PMA’s first benefactor, Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat. In 1908, Sweat bequeathed the McLellan House and the necessary funds to build the L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries in memory of her late husband. Designed by John Kimball, Sr., and completed in 1801, the McLellan House is a federal-style, three-story mansion perched atop High and Spring Streets that was restored and reopened to the public in 2002. As part of that restoration, meticulous attention was paid to ensuring every detail reflected what the home may have looked like in its day. That, of course, included the wallpaper, something that often defines Colomba’s work.

Elizabeth Colomba (France, born 1976), Study of a Face, 2009, ink on paper, 7 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches. Courtesy the artist. © 2023 Elizabeth Colomba / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

“I like working with wallpapers,” shares Colomba, “as it adds on another layer to a painting. I usually refer to a wallpaper as something back from my heritage... so usually they are French.”

The wallpaper pattern on the ground floor of the McLellan House is inspired by a famous French design called “Deux Pigeons,” created by Jean-Baptiste Réveillon in the mid-18th century. Colomba herself was born in Épinay-sur-Seine, France, of Martinican descent, and her work employs the visual language of classic portraiture to address both the presence and absence of the Black figure in the history of academic painting. As the artist toured the Portland Museum of Art for the first time, and indeed her first time in Maine, she stopped upon arriving in the McLellan House. “I realized I’ve seen this somewhere,” she shares, “and it just was in my brain. And then I realized, and I asked my friend, who’s also the co-curator of the show, I said, do you happen to have Study of the Face on your phone? And she pulled it out, and I’m like, oh my god, this is the same wallpaper!”

Colomba’s Study of a Face is a black and white watercolor and gouache of a Black woman that was featured in the PMA’s Elizabeth Colomba: Mythologies, her first-ever solo museum exhibition. The discovery of the wallpaper element was taken as a sign for both artist and curator. “In that moment,” recalls Shalini Le Gall, Chief Curator at the Portland Museum of Art, “we realized that our interests were deeply aligned.” “I just took it as a wonderful omen for this upcoming exhibition,” seconds Colomba.

Fortunately for everyone in the PMA community, the closing of Mythologies does not mean goodbye to Colomba’s work at the museum— Study of a Face will remain in Portland, having joined the PMA collection this summer. It’s a powerful work that asks us to reflect on history, gender, race, and luxury.

“What draws me to portraiture is storytelling,” adds Colomba. “It’s a way to represent the Black body and Black figures in a different setting, and using the techniques of old masters, allows me to tell their story in a different way.”

Study of a Face certainly investigates the complexities of Colomba’s Black, Caribbean, and European identities, and this serendipitous moment has only made us more excited to have her powerful work here at the PMA.