Lot Essay
This picture would appear to be A Sainted Maiden, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1890, no. 724. References to the maiden's virtue and chastity certainly abound in the painting. The lilies to the left, prevalent in depictions of the Annunciation, were often used in a wider context in Christian iconography to denote purity and virginity, while the cherries below the neck of the saint, known as the 'Fruit of Paradise', were given by the Trinity as a reward for virtue and symbolize heaven. The lamp to the right of the picture denotes eternal vigilence, while the goldfinch to the left carries a branch of laurel, a wreath of which also encircles the head of the saint, further symbolizing her purity. Goldfinches, along with doves, symbolic of the Holy Spirit, are found in religious paintings following the legend that the bird acquired its red spot when a drop of Christ's blood fell on its head after it had extracted a thorn from His brow on the way to Calvary. The saint is playing a psaltery, found in depictions of choirs of angels surrounding the Virgin and of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of music.
Louis Fairfax Muckley acquired his knowledge of iconography through his study of the early Italian pictures hanging in the National Gallery. The Studio of 1894 (no. 4, p. 149) informs us 'during his student days at Birmingham he made it a rule to spend yearly at least one whole week in London,... imbibing the spirit of those early pictures'. The influence of the Italian quattrocento permeates this picture, as well as that of the contemporary masters Burne-Jones and William Blake Richmond, from whom 'both by their addresses and their individual counsel he received much help' (loc. cit). Burne-Jones had accepted the Presidency of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists in 1885 and had taken a keen interest in the Municipal School of Art, making his first visit there to criticise students' work in October of that year. The picture was very much in keeping with paintings exhibited by Burne-Jones and his associates in London in the summer of 1890, including the master's famous Briar Rose series, Strudwick's The Gentle Music of a Bygone Day, and Spencer Stanhope's Knowledge strangling Innocence, which Claude Phillips, writing in the Art Journal of 1890 (p. 166) thought 'swerves not an inch from his old striving to attain the outward semblance of a Botticelli'.
Muckley's known oeuvre is small, and only one painting exists in his Witt Library file, namely Autumn, a painting of 1889 which was sold in these rooms on 10 March 1995, lot 125. He was never a prolific artist, exhibiting occasionally at the Royal Academy and the New Gallery and completing only a few illustrated manuscripts and books. His paintings are now extremely rare.
Louis Fairfax Muckley acquired his knowledge of iconography through his study of the early Italian pictures hanging in the National Gallery. The Studio of 1894 (no. 4, p. 149) informs us 'during his student days at Birmingham he made it a rule to spend yearly at least one whole week in London,... imbibing the spirit of those early pictures'. The influence of the Italian quattrocento permeates this picture, as well as that of the contemporary masters Burne-Jones and William Blake Richmond, from whom 'both by their addresses and their individual counsel he received much help' (loc. cit). Burne-Jones had accepted the Presidency of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists in 1885 and had taken a keen interest in the Municipal School of Art, making his first visit there to criticise students' work in October of that year. The picture was very much in keeping with paintings exhibited by Burne-Jones and his associates in London in the summer of 1890, including the master's famous Briar Rose series, Strudwick's The Gentle Music of a Bygone Day, and Spencer Stanhope's Knowledge strangling Innocence, which Claude Phillips, writing in the Art Journal of 1890 (p. 166) thought 'swerves not an inch from his old striving to attain the outward semblance of a Botticelli'.
Muckley's known oeuvre is small, and only one painting exists in his Witt Library file, namely Autumn, a painting of 1889 which was sold in these rooms on 10 March 1995, lot 125. He was never a prolific artist, exhibiting occasionally at the Royal Academy and the New Gallery and completing only a few illustrated manuscripts and books. His paintings are now extremely rare.