Curio

State Library of New South Wales
The convex mirror

The convex mirror

George Washington Lambert, c. 1916
ML 1292
oil painting on wood panel
Helen Selle bequest 2012

The unusual composition of this painting depicts a group of friends reflected through a mirror image. They stand in the low-beamed living room of Belwethers, a cottage where the Lamberts stayed in the village of Cranleigh, Surrey. The artist appears in the foreground and his wife, Amy, dressed in blue, stands in the centre of the composition.

The convex mirror was one of a number of paintings that were in Mrs Selle’s family for several decades; her children remember growing up with them in the family home.


The Arnolfini portrait – an oil painting on oak panel dated 1434 by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck – features a convex mirror on the rear wall of the space which reflects the space and participants.


George Lambert (1873–1930) was born in Russia.


Approach nature with a simple palette but an extravagant love of form. (George Lambert, 1918)


This work was lent to the National Gallery of Australia for a George Lambert retrospective exhibition, 29 June – 16 September 2007