Iasius, the old Arcadian, teaching the Mysteries of Demeter

This is a typical work of Calvert's later, 'pagan', period when, after a tour of Greece in 1844, he equated the geographical Arcadia in the Peloponnese with the idyllic Arcadia of earlier painting and literature. Samuel Calvert quotes a letter to him from his father, of June 1879, discussing his pictures of 'Idylls': 'Of simple antique men, I will substitute for any dissertation concerning them a quotation from one of my little written idylls. The suggestion was from a friend of mine, a lady, who, in the course of a conversation on antique life, exclaimed: "I want an old Arcadian - a grand primitive old man!" Not wanting to let her words lose their zeal, my version fell into a kind of musical cadence, the natural accomplishment of that which springs from conception. So with this you will receive my rather rough lines of ONE PRIMITIVE OLD MAN'. The lines, Samuel Calvert reports, are now lost, but he goes on, 'The Old Arcadian has been painted several times in golden hues. We have one rendering in photogravure, inserted herewith, Iasius, the father of Atalanta, teaching the mysteries of Demeter'. Calvert's account may in part reflect a confusion between the various figures called Iasius, Iasus and Iasion, the last of whom was Demeter's lover and, according to Hesiod, fathered Plutus by her, while it was Iasus, son of Lycurgus of Arcadia, who was Atalanta's father.
Another version, 5 7/8 x 9½ in., in which the hill rises higher behind the two figures and Iasius' staff is placed differently, was sold at Sotheby's London, 21 November 1825, lot 71, illustrated.