Artemis

Artemis was first modelled in 1879 when Thornycroft, under the influence of his friend, the poet and literary critic, Edmund Gosse, abandoned his work on a half-size statue of Diana to concentrate on this new subject. Thornycroft's model for Artemis was an Italian named Antonia Paria, the wife of a local ice-cream seller, and the model for the greyhound was a stray that Thornycroft had taken in and named Diana. The plaster maquette for the work was completed in 1880 and was exhibited at the Paris Salon (and now resides at Macclesfield Town Hall). The work was greatly praised by Gosse, who enthused about it to the architect Alfred Waterhouse, who was then designing Eaton Hall for the Duke of Westminster. The Duke subsequently commissioned a lifesize marble version of Artemis which, between its completion and installation in Cheshire, was exhibited at the Salon of 1882 alongside Alfred Gilbert and Auguste Rodin.
It is interesting to note that almost since the moment of its completion it has been viewed as the female complement to Frederic, Lord Leighton's Athlete, with an emphasis on the physical grace of the body arrested in motion (E. Gosse, Art Journal, 1894, p. 141).