She clearly opts for Tennyson’s account, and appears to be alluding to Marie Spartali Stillman’s painting of 1867, with its bottle-glass windows, although her composition looks original. Henrietta also painted her version of Mariana (1892), a motif which I examined earlier. Henrietta Rae (1859–1928), Mariana (1892), oil on canvas, dimensions and location not known. Numerous other artists featured her in their works, usually in similar settings. Miss Nightingale at Scutari, 1854 (1891) is a chromolithograph of what was probably her best-known painting, showing the pioneer nursing performed by Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War, giving rise to Nightingale’s epithet of the lady of the lamp. Chromolithograph by courtesy of Wellcome Library, no. Henrietta Rae (1859–1928), Miss Nightingale at Scutari, 1854 (1891), chromolithograph of oil on canvas painting, dimensions and location of original not known. She decided not to alter her style, and remained firmly committed to the salon style of Prinsep, Leighton, and others. In 1890, the family moved to Paris, where Henrietta studied at the Académie Julian under Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, and gained experience of Impressionism and its artists. Would give you some violets, but they wither’d all when my father O, you must wear your rue with a difference! There’s a daisy. There’s rue for you,Īnd here’s some for me. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts. There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. In Act 4 Scene 5, she scatters flowers and herbs while reciting their names and symbols in front of King Claudius and Queen Gertrude, as shown here: It shows Ophelia, from Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, when she has become mad from grief. I regret that Henrietta’s painting of Ophelia (1890) is shown poorly in this image, but I have been unable to find any better colour version. Henrietta Rae (1859–1928), Ophelia (1890), oil on canvas, 171.5 x 230.5 cm, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England. In Ovid’s version in his Metamorphoses, Zephyrus abducted the nymph Chloris or goddess Flora, and Botticelli shows the metamorphosis of Chloris into Flora as a result of that abduction. Zephyrus Wooing Flora (1888) is a delicate ‘faerie’ painting of a far less wholesome classical myth, part of the reading of Botticelli’s renowned Primavera (Spring). Henrietta Rae (1859–1928), Zephyrus Wooing Flora (1888), further details not known. The ring finger on his left hand is already occupied, suggesting that he may even be proposing an adulterous relationship. Around her are the signs of his attempts to charm her, with baskets of flowers. Behind her, forcing his attentions on her, is an older man who is dressed as a tasteless fop. A young woman sits on a garden bench, clearly in a quandary. Wikimedia Commons.ĭoubts (1886) seems something of a ‘ problem picture‘, which may have been more biting social comment. Henrietta Rae (1859–1928), Doubts (1886), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, Christchurch, New Zealand. It still caused quite a stir, and Henrietta was offered unsolicited advice not to show such works in public again. The alabaster-like skin and classical setting make it academic rather than erotic, and the thyrsus (staff) held in the left hand and bunch of grapes in the right seem to have made all the difference to the hanging committee. Wikimedia Commons.Ī Bacchante (1885) was the first of her nudes to be exhibited at the Royal Academy. Henrietta was unconventional in continuing to work under her maiden name. In 1884 she married Ernest Normand, a painter who even The Times reluctantly admitted was not as good as she was, and the couple lived in Kensington, London, adjacent to Val Prinsep and Frederick, Lord Leighton, who became her mentor. Her early work was fairly conventional, and she started to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1880 (or 1881), showing portraits and narrative works at first. She was born in London, and was a precocious artist who attended private art schools until finally gaining admission to the Royal Academy Schools in 1877, where she was taught by Frank Dicksee, William Frith, and Lawrence Alma-Tadema. One of those who broke down the barriers was Henrietta Rae (1859–1928), whose paintings of nudes finally became socially acceptable. Indeed, with the strict moral codes of the late nineteenth century, painters such as Thomas Eakins found themselves being ostracised for encouraging the use of nude models. For a long time, women artists, no matter how successful, were prohibited from attending life classes.
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