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Ithell Colquhoun arrived in Surrealism with everything to seduce: dreams, strange bodies, landscapes sliding into desire. Then she added something far less convenient for the gentlemen’s clubs: a genuine belief in magic. In 1938 she painted Scylla from a reflection in her bath. Knees turn to rock, water becomes myth, the body becomes a snare for sailors. An erotic self‑portrait that poses as a decorous landscape—very polite, until you realise what you’re looking at. A year after joining the British Surrealists, Colquhoun was expelled for refusing to give up the occult. Bad call on their part. That refusal is exactly what makes her work magnetic: she doesn’t treat magic as an accessory; she uses it as a secret intelligence. Direct access Artist: Ithell Colquhoun Key work: Scylla, 1938 Collection: Tate Portrait: Man Ray, c.1932, Centre Pompidou Sources: Tate, Centre Pompidou, Art Basel