Gabrielle Ray – Oval Beauties Rare – The Daily Mirror – Tuesday 29th August 1911

OVAL BEAUTIES RARE

Round Face Becoming the Type of English Loveliness.

ARTISTIC OBJECTION.

 

There are signs that efforts are being made to establish the “round” face as the true type of English beauty and to condemn the “oval” face, which has for generations been the inspiration of poets and painters alike.

The leaders of the campaign in favour of the round face, according to a well-known male novelist, are to be found chiefly in the ranks of the women novelists, who invariably make their heroines round-faced and describe them as “sweetly pretty” and as preserving “a girlish charm.”

In the course of a letter to The Daily Mirror attacking this new cult, the author, with some temerity, gives a list of popular musical comedy favourites, who represent, he says, the apotheosis of the round-face type.

 

ROUND-FACE TYPE.

The following list – in the order of the popularity of their photographs – of ladies of the stage of the round-face type was supplied yesterday to The Daily Mirror by a prominent photographer of London actresses:-

1. Lily Elsie.
2. Gabrielle Ray.
3. Gertie Millar.
4. Lily Brayton.
5. Constance Collier.
6. Marie Studholme.
7. Tessie Hackney.
8. Norah Kerin.

“I grant,” writes the novelist, “that they are pretty, winsome, attractive and charming, but they are not beautiful in the sense that the old masters regarded beauty nor as the leading modern artists regard it either.

“The truth of the matter is that round faces are becoming more and more common in Great Britain, and they are now in such a great majority that they are able to take up and popularise the fashions of dress, millinery or hairdressing that best suit their own type of beauty, and the rare oval-faced beauties are forced by fashion to follow them, greatly to their own disadvantage.

“Modern hats, modern hairdressing and modern clothes are all in favour of the round-faced girl, and she has won thereby a purely fictitious reputation for beauty.”

Miss Ivy Lilian Close, adjudged in The Daily Mirror beauty competition to be the most beautiful woman in England, is a striking example, however, of the English admiration for the round-face type.

America, on the other hand, still clings to the oval face type of beauty, the artistic type, the type beloved of the old masters, as is instanced in the case of Miss Katherine Frey, judged to be the most beautiful woman in America.

 

ACTRESSES OF OVAL FACE TYPE.

 “La Gioconda” is yet again another instance of admiration for the long-recognised type of beautiful face – the oval, delicate, finely-chiselled and spirituelle features always given by painters to beautiful women of other days.

That this type of face still has its admirers in England was also instanced by the same photographer who supplied another list of actresses of the oval-face type, the names, as before, being given in the order of the popularity of their photographs:-

1. Phyllis Dare,
2. Julia Neilson.
3. Neilson Terry.
4. Pearl Aufrere.
5. Marie Wilson.
6. Gaby Deslys.
7. Evelyn Millard.
8. Grace Lane.

Mr. George Henry, A.R.A., told The Daily Mirror yesterday that the delicate oval face is still the recognised type of beauty in artists’ studios.

“It was also the recognised type in Japan when I was there some years ago,” he said, “and although I only saw two women who possessed the true oval face, all the round-faced women insisted upon their pictures being painted as if they were of the oval type of beauty.”

 

The Daily Mirror – Tuesday 29^th August 1911

 

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