Misplaced Pages

Love and the Maiden

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
1877 painting by John Roddam Spencer Stanhop

Love and the Maiden
ArtistJohn Roddam Spencer Stanhope
Year1877
TypeOil, gold paint and gold leaf on canvas
Dimensions86.4 cm × 50.8 cm (34.0 in × 20.0 in)
LocationFine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA

Love and the Maiden is an oil painting (previously mistaken for tempera) on canvas by English Pre-Raphaelite artist John Roddam Spencer Stanhope (executed in 1877) that is currently housed at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

History

Known as one of the "second-generation" of Pre-Raphaelites, Stanhope was among Dante Gabriel Rossetti's mural-painting party at the Oxford Union in 1857, together with Arthur Hughes, John Hungerford Pollen, Valentine Prinsep, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. He was a founder member of the Hogarth Club, a direct descendant of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

This painting is considered one of Stanhope's best, and represents two radically different artistic phases of his life. Although he began as fervently Pre-Raphaelite in outlook, Stanhope was deeply attracted by the Aesthetic movement during the 1860s. Love and the Maiden is a succinct mingling of these two equally formative phases in his career. Its presence in the 1877 exhibition at the Grosvenor GalleryAestheticism's most famous exposé — demonstrates his adherence to the latter movement, whereas the painting's similarity to the work of Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti - the group of dancing women in the background are similar to those portrayed by Rossetti in The Bower Meadow (1871–72) - betray Stanhope's Pre-Raphaelite background.

During his time in Oxford in 1857, Stanhope wrote that he spent most days painting with Burne-Jones; possibly as a result of this, a great deal of Burne-Jones' influence can be seen in his work - although it could be argued that Burne-Jones also drew ideas from Stanhope's work. The androgynous physiques, Grecian-style draperies and facial expressions depicted in Love and the Maiden are classic Burne-Jones hallmarks, even though the facial similarities probably also arose from use of the same models.

See also

References

  1. Truth & beauty : the Pre-Raphaelites and the old masters. Melissa E. Buron, Susanna Avery-Quash, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. San Francisco. 2018. p. 258. ISBN 978-3-7913-5728-7. OCLC 1019840657.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  2. See Art sales: Stanhope's maiden tells a tale, article on The Telegraph, 27 January 2003.
  3. A.M.W. Stirling, "The Life of Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Pre-Raphaelite, a Painter of Dreams," in A Painter of Dreams and Other Biographical Studies (London: Lane, 1916).
  4. Jane A. Munro, "'This Hateful Letter-Writing': Selected Correspondence of Sir Edward Burne-Jones in the Huntington Library", Huntington Library Quarterly 55 (1992). Cf. also V. Schuster, "The Pre-Raphaelites in Oxford," Oxford Art Journal 1 (1978).
  5. T. Hilto, The Pre-Raphelites, Thames and Hudson (1970).

Further reading

  • Hilto, Timoth, The Pre-Raphelites, Thames and Hudson (1970).
  • Robinson, Michael, The Pre-Raphaelites, Flame Tree Publishing (2007).
  • Todd, Pamela, Pre-Raphaelites at Home, Watson-Giptill Publications, (2001).

External links

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (paintings)
Associated
artists and
figures
Some
well-known
works
(period and
post-period)
Models
Related
Categories: