Lot Essay
The picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1894, together with Summer Slumber (private collection, India; Ormond, op.cit., pl.190), Fatidica (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight) and The Spirit of the Summit (Auckland City Art Gallery; Ormond, pl.161). F.G. Stephens described it in the Athenaeum as 'a large, upright canvas which displays a comely Greek maid of those lofty proportions Sir Frederic affects, draped from head to foot in a fine tissue of primrose colour, open at the side to show a massive thigh and shapely leg. Lifting one elbow, she slips along her rounded arm a bracelet, at which she looks admiringly. Behind her stands a chair with drapery thrown over it; behind this again are the rich tints and deep tones of an autumnal landscape, consisting of vines and a dark blue sky, features of great value in contrasting with and supporting the damsel's dress and flesh. A little child at her feet holds a casket of jewels from which she has taken an armlet.'
Leighton's art was constantly oscillating between different pictorial approaches, and he would often go back and pick up an earlier idea. Nothing shows this better than the contrast between The Bracelet and The Spirit of the Summit, one of the pictures shown with it in 1894. Whereas the latter shows him in his most symbolic vein, referring obliquely to his own aspiration to the highest artistic ideals and the ascetisim this demanded, The Bracelet is an unashamed celebration of decorative or 'aesthetic' values. The name of Albert Moore leaps to mind, and indeed the picture was included in the Moore exhibition of 1972, the catalogue describing it as 'clearly influenced by Moore's many studies of single female figures in classical draperies, especially those of the 1870s.'
'Influence' is perhaps too strong a word; the picture should be seen as marking a return to an idiom which Leighton, Moore, Armstrong and even Whistler and Burne-Jones had shared twenty or more years before. Taking the motif of a female figure standing in an interior, he treats it in terms of a colour-scheme in the key of yellow (a favourite 'aesthetic' colour) and a composition in which the eye is led up irresitably from the child, with its upward glance, in the foreground, through the spirals of the principal figure, to the touch of light in the sky, and on into the shadowed recesses above. The 'aesthetic' intention of the picture is revealed most vividly in the interretationship of canvas and frame, the columns within the picture being echoed by the frame's Ionic pilasters. Many of Leighton's pictures have frames of this kind, specially designed by the artist, but few show so clearly how he thought in terms of a decorative ensemble.
The closest parallel in Leighton's later work is the well-known Bath of Psyche (Tate Gallery), exhibited at the RA in 1890 and bought for the Chantrey Bequest. Here again a partially-draped female figure is represented in a classical setting with great subtlety of colour and design, although the composition is based on verticals and horizontals rather than spirals.
Leighton's art was constantly oscillating between different pictorial approaches, and he would often go back and pick up an earlier idea. Nothing shows this better than the contrast between The Bracelet and The Spirit of the Summit, one of the pictures shown with it in 1894. Whereas the latter shows him in his most symbolic vein, referring obliquely to his own aspiration to the highest artistic ideals and the ascetisim this demanded, The Bracelet is an unashamed celebration of decorative or 'aesthetic' values. The name of Albert Moore leaps to mind, and indeed the picture was included in the Moore exhibition of 1972, the catalogue describing it as 'clearly influenced by Moore's many studies of single female figures in classical draperies, especially those of the 1870s.'
'Influence' is perhaps too strong a word; the picture should be seen as marking a return to an idiom which Leighton, Moore, Armstrong and even Whistler and Burne-Jones had shared twenty or more years before. Taking the motif of a female figure standing in an interior, he treats it in terms of a colour-scheme in the key of yellow (a favourite 'aesthetic' colour) and a composition in which the eye is led up irresitably from the child, with its upward glance, in the foreground, through the spirals of the principal figure, to the touch of light in the sky, and on into the shadowed recesses above. The 'aesthetic' intention of the picture is revealed most vividly in the interretationship of canvas and frame, the columns within the picture being echoed by the frame's Ionic pilasters. Many of Leighton's pictures have frames of this kind, specially designed by the artist, but few show so clearly how he thought in terms of a decorative ensemble.
The closest parallel in Leighton's later work is the well-known Bath of Psyche (Tate Gallery), exhibited at the RA in 1890 and bought for the Chantrey Bequest. Here again a partially-draped female figure is represented in a classical setting with great subtlety of colour and design, although the composition is based on verticals and horizontals rather than spirals.