Portrait of a Girl

Portrait of a Girl is among Joan Brown’s most startling and engaging self-portraits, a memory picture, allegorical and mysterious. It is based on two photographs of Brown as a child. The Chinese dragon screen that looms behind her is based on a black-and-white illustration in a book Brown owned. She imaginatively combined her image and the screen, presenting them together to establish a tension between the two elements that provokes the viewer to muse on the relationship between Brown as a little girl and the menacing dragon.