Early in her career, Colquhoun demonstrated an interest in gender roles that makes her work particularly resonant today. As a student, she produced paintings of biblical scenes such as Judith Showing the Head of Holofernes (1929)—a depictionof the young Israelite widow after she decapitated the Assyrian general—and Susanna and the Elders (1930), in which two elders voyeuristically watch a beautiful woman as she bathes naked in a stream. Both paintings exude female defiance . Colquhoun’s Judith raises Holofernes’s head triumphantly into the air, while her Susanna subverts the male gaze by making no attempt to conceal herself from the predatory old men. It is likely that Colquhoun found inspiration in the works of 17th-century Italianartist, who produced empowered versions of both of these stories. Colquhoun’s rebellious and idiosyncratic artistic approach was encapsulated by her art teacher, who once said : ‘‘The only danger in your development is that with your active and curious mind you may be led to run after all strange objects. You go out to gather strawberries and come back with two strange beetles and a spider instead.”