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拍品专文
This fine early example of Cowper's neo-Pre-Raphaelite style (see lot 17) illustrates one of two linked poems, 'Mariana' and 'Mariana in the South', by Tennyson. First published in 1833, the poems were inspired by the image of Mariana abandoned in a lonely 'moated grange' by her heartless fiancé, Angelo, which Shakespeare evokes at the beginning of Act IV of Measure for Measure. Cowper shows the heroine lamenting her fate in song, accompanying herself on a lute:
But 'Ave Mary', made she moan,
And 'Ave Mary', night and morn,
And 'Ah', she sang, 'to be all alone,
To live forgotten, and love forlorn'.
The subject had made a powerful appeal to the Pre-Raphaelite imagination. Rossetti painted Mariana as Shakespeare portrays her in a life-size painting, modelled by Jane Morris, of 1870 (Aberdeen Art Gallery). But it was Tennyson's treatment of the theme that proved most fertile. 'Mariana' was the subject of an important early painting by Millais (Tate Gallery), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1851, and the two poems were illustrated by Millais and Rossetti in the famous Moxon edition of Tennyson's works published in 1857.
Rossetti chose 'Mariana in the South', showing the bored and sexually frustrated woman passionately kissing a crucifix while her faithless lover's letters lie strawn around her (fig. 2). This haunting image would undoubtably have been known to Cowper. His design may lack the intensity of Rossetti's, but he too shows the unhappy heroine surrounded by her lover's letters. His emphasis on the musical dimension to the story also suggests the influence of Rossetti, who so often uses music to create atmosphere and mood. Mariana, his painting of 1870, is a case in point. The lady is seen as Shakespeare describes her, listening to a song sung by a page with lute accompaniment:
Take, O take those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn.
But Cowper was not content to reflect the Pre-Raphaelites themselves; he also makes conscious references to a picture which he must have known had inspired them, namely Jan Van Eyck's double portrait celebrating the marriage of Giovanni Arnolfini and Giovanna Cenami in the National Gallery, London (fig. 1). The picture had entered the collection in 1842, and Holman Hunt recalled in his reminiscences how it had helped to shape the ideas of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood when it was formed six years later. Hunt himself borrowed the motif of the circular convex mirror behind the bridal couple for his early illustration to another poem by Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott, and echoes of the picture occur in many subsequent paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites and their followers Ford Madox Brown's Take your Son, Sir (Tate Gallery) is an obvious example. Burne-Jones often turned to the Van Eyck for inspiration, still expressing his admiration for it in the 1890s, while the circular mirror becomes something of a signature motif in the work of Ricketts and Shannon. This tradition, fully explored, would make a fascinating subject for an article.
Cowper's Mariana in the South could not fail to have a place in the survey since it borrows from the National Gallery picture with an almost reckless abandon. The carved wooden settle, draped in red, on which Mariana reclines, is lifted bodily from the far wall of the Van Eyck. So is the circular mirror, though admittedly its design is made simpler. Moreover, just as Van Eyck uses this detail to elaborate the picture's narrative, showing the couple from the back and himself, the artist, as a sort of witness to the marriage, so Cowper makes the mirror tell us more about the mysterious 'grange' in 'the south' where the hapless Mariana is marooned:
Close-latticed to the brooding heat,
And silent in its dusty vines:
A faint blue ridge upon the right,
An empty river-bed before,
And shallows on a distant shore,
In glaring sand and inlets bright.
Nor are these the only appropriations. Mariana's dress is made of one of Cowper's favourite Renaissance brocades, but the white silk linings to her sleeves echo Giovanna Cerami's white wool over-sleeve facings. As for her wooden pattens, they are copied almost exactly from the two pairs in the Van Eyck. Where the Flemish master shows the floor covered with wooden boards and a Persian carpet, Cowper prefers a mosaic of medieval tiles, but the Arnolfinis' little long-haired terrier is transmogrified as Mariana's greyhound or whippet, looking as bored and weary as his mistress in the stifling heat.
Cowper was not alone in seeking to prolong the Pre-Raphaelite tradition by illustrating Tennyson's poem. J.W. Waterhouse (1849-1917) had done so in a picture exhibited at the New Gallery in 1897, twelve years before the appearance of Cowper's interpretation. The primary version (private collection) was included in the Treasures of the North exhibition shown at Christie's in London and at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, last year (no. 74) while a full-scale oil study, slightly different in detail, is at Leighton House, Kensington.
Mariana in the South was one of two pictures that Cowper showed at the Royal Water Colour Society in 1906. The other, The Patient Griselda (no. 126), was sold in these Rooms on 6 November 1995, lot 113.
But 'Ave Mary', made she moan,
And 'Ave Mary', night and morn,
And 'Ah', she sang, 'to be all alone,
To live forgotten, and love forlorn'.
The subject had made a powerful appeal to the Pre-Raphaelite imagination. Rossetti painted Mariana as Shakespeare portrays her in a life-size painting, modelled by Jane Morris, of 1870 (Aberdeen Art Gallery). But it was Tennyson's treatment of the theme that proved most fertile. 'Mariana' was the subject of an important early painting by Millais (Tate Gallery), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1851, and the two poems were illustrated by Millais and Rossetti in the famous Moxon edition of Tennyson's works published in 1857.
Rossetti chose 'Mariana in the South', showing the bored and sexually frustrated woman passionately kissing a crucifix while her faithless lover's letters lie strawn around her (fig. 2). This haunting image would undoubtably have been known to Cowper. His design may lack the intensity of Rossetti's, but he too shows the unhappy heroine surrounded by her lover's letters. His emphasis on the musical dimension to the story also suggests the influence of Rossetti, who so often uses music to create atmosphere and mood. Mariana, his painting of 1870, is a case in point. The lady is seen as Shakespeare describes her, listening to a song sung by a page with lute accompaniment:
Take, O take those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn.
But Cowper was not content to reflect the Pre-Raphaelites themselves; he also makes conscious references to a picture which he must have known had inspired them, namely Jan Van Eyck's double portrait celebrating the marriage of Giovanni Arnolfini and Giovanna Cenami in the National Gallery, London (fig. 1). The picture had entered the collection in 1842, and Holman Hunt recalled in his reminiscences how it had helped to shape the ideas of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood when it was formed six years later. Hunt himself borrowed the motif of the circular convex mirror behind the bridal couple for his early illustration to another poem by Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott, and echoes of the picture occur in many subsequent paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites and their followers Ford Madox Brown's Take your Son, Sir (Tate Gallery) is an obvious example. Burne-Jones often turned to the Van Eyck for inspiration, still expressing his admiration for it in the 1890s, while the circular mirror becomes something of a signature motif in the work of Ricketts and Shannon. This tradition, fully explored, would make a fascinating subject for an article.
Cowper's Mariana in the South could not fail to have a place in the survey since it borrows from the National Gallery picture with an almost reckless abandon. The carved wooden settle, draped in red, on which Mariana reclines, is lifted bodily from the far wall of the Van Eyck. So is the circular mirror, though admittedly its design is made simpler. Moreover, just as Van Eyck uses this detail to elaborate the picture's narrative, showing the couple from the back and himself, the artist, as a sort of witness to the marriage, so Cowper makes the mirror tell us more about the mysterious 'grange' in 'the south' where the hapless Mariana is marooned:
Close-latticed to the brooding heat,
And silent in its dusty vines:
A faint blue ridge upon the right,
An empty river-bed before,
And shallows on a distant shore,
In glaring sand and inlets bright.
Nor are these the only appropriations. Mariana's dress is made of one of Cowper's favourite Renaissance brocades, but the white silk linings to her sleeves echo Giovanna Cerami's white wool over-sleeve facings. As for her wooden pattens, they are copied almost exactly from the two pairs in the Van Eyck. Where the Flemish master shows the floor covered with wooden boards and a Persian carpet, Cowper prefers a mosaic of medieval tiles, but the Arnolfinis' little long-haired terrier is transmogrified as Mariana's greyhound or whippet, looking as bored and weary as his mistress in the stifling heat.
Cowper was not alone in seeking to prolong the Pre-Raphaelite tradition by illustrating Tennyson's poem. J.W. Waterhouse (1849-1917) had done so in a picture exhibited at the New Gallery in 1897, twelve years before the appearance of Cowper's interpretation. The primary version (private collection) was included in the Treasures of the North exhibition shown at Christie's in London and at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, last year (no. 74) while a full-scale oil study, slightly different in detail, is at Leighton House, Kensington.
Mariana in the South was one of two pictures that Cowper showed at the Royal Water Colour Society in 1906. The other, The Patient Griselda (no. 126), was sold in these Rooms on 6 November 1995, lot 113.