A Tanagraean Pastoral

According to Frank Rinder in discussing the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1902 which included this painting: "Mr. G.H. Boughton, in a "Tanagrean Pastoral" has discovered a happy motive. As the title suggests, he aims to revitalize some of those exquisite Greek figures in rythmic draperies, found, after centuries of burial, in the neighborhood of Tanagra, where, hundreds of years before the Christian era, the Spartans defeated the Athenians. Pan presides over the fountain, at whose base are those who make music on pipe and lyre and tambourine. The dancers, in swirling draperies, move on glad-green grass, the green of the poplars behind is tender, the hills are bathed in purple."