Chalk pastel on board

Prov: Roger Folley
Private Collection

Autumn and the Poet was Dunbar's last picture, completed in the year before her sudden and tragically early death at the age of 54. Gill Clarke, Dunbar's biographer, describes it as “her greatest and most significant allegorical work”. It was more than ten years in the gestation and represents the summation of her profoundly-held belief that there is “no death, only the discarding of the physical body”. The male figure on the right of the picture – modelled on Dunbar's husband, Roger Folley – awakes to a magical vision of a goddess representing autumn. Two versions of 'Autumn and the Poet' are known to exist