GoldenTimes

GoldenTimes comes from Candida Romero’s Little Girls series, a remarkable body of approximately one hundred paintings created between 2003 and 2008. The series originated from a collection of anonymous late Victorian photographs assembled by Pierre-Jean Rémy, the French novelist, diplomat, literary figure, and member of the Académie française. Almost all of the children in these photographs remain unnamed. Their families have been forgotten, their histories dissolved, and what survives are only their faces, gestures, clothing, and expressions, suspended outside biography.

It was precisely this silence surrounding each child that fascinated Rémy and Romero. The original photographs were small nineteenth-century keepsakes, softened by time, with sepia tones, worn edges, and surfaces gently marked by generations of handling. Rather than attempting to recover the factual lives of the girls, Rémy imagined new ones, writing fictional texts that restored a sense of identity, personality, and destiny to children history had left anonymous.

Romero then transformed these photographs and literary fragments into independent pictorial worlds. Her paintings are not illustrations of Rémy’s texts; they are layered acts of reinvention. Across the series, she worked with photography, silkscreen, gesso, acrylic, oil, ink, and, in certain works, antique textiles, lace, paper, and other historical materials. The diversity of materials mirrors the diversity of the imagined narratives themselves, with each painting developing its own atmosphere, surface, and emotional register. The completed series was exhibited in a solo presentation at the Fondation Azzedine Alaïa in Paris.

GoldenTimes belongs to the gilded convex-lens family within the Little Girls series. In these works, Romero transforms anonymous portraits into poetic, dreamlike visions of childhood, using convex optical glass to create both intimacy and distortion. The lens gives the piece an almost theatrical quality, as though the child exists within a private world that the viewer is invited to look into, but never fully enter. The PDF notes describe these convex-lens works as intimate and surreal, recalling Victorian optical curiosities, childhood games, and the imaginative atmosphere associated with Lewis Carroll.

At the center of GoldenTimes, a young girl appears beneath the curved glass, framed by a warm golden field. The classical oval shape feels almost like a locket or treasured keepsake, while the bright colored dots across the figure introduce a playful, modern rhythm. This contrast is what gives the work its special charm: it feels precious and historical, but never static. It has the elegance of an heirloom object and the freshness of a contemporary artwork.

I chose GoldenTimes for the Kara Childress Collection because of its stately golden presence and its wonderful balance of classical form and modern spirit. The oval lens immediately draws you in, almost as if you are looking into a miniature world or a piece of jewelry. Then the bright dots bring an unexpected sense of joy and movement. I love that tension: refined, elegant, and traditional on one hand, but imaginative and slightly whimsical on the other.

In my own design work, I am always drawn to pieces that can bring history into a room without making the space feel overly formal. GoldenTimes does that beautifully. The gilded surface gives it warmth and richness, while the convex glass adds depth, curiosity, and a sense of discovery. It is the kind of piece that would feel just as natural in a layered traditional interior as it would in a more modern room that needs one special, storied object.

I have admired Candida Romero’s work for years, and GoldenTimes captures so much of what makes her practice compelling to me. Her work has the ability to make a space feel personal, collected, and memorable. This piece blends two things I love in a home: timelessness and modernity. It feels intimate, beautifully crafted, and full of imagination, the kind of artwork that can become part of a family’s story and be cherished for generations.