Day, and Night

Edward Hughes was a nephew of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Arthur Hughes (1832-1915), under whom he studied. He then entered the Royal Academy Schools and became studio assistant to William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), helping the elderly painter, whose eyesight was failing, to complete some of his later works. The best known example is the second, larger version of The Light of the World (St Paul's Cathedral, London; see Christie’s, London, 30 September 2021, lot 94 for Hughes' watercolour study of the subject, fig. 1). Hughes was also in contact with Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) and knew the poet and novelist George Macdonald, many of whose books for children were illustrated by his uncle Arthur.
Apart from in his assistance of Holman Hunt, Hughes worked mainly in watercolour, painting symbolist subjects and obscure literary themes, often Italian in origin, as well as beautiful, slightly idealised red chalk portraits of women.
Hughes exhibited regularly with the Royal Watercolour Society, becoming an Associate in 1891, a full member in 1895 and Vice-President (for two years) in 1901. He also showed at the Royal Academy from 1870 to 1911, and was represented at the first Venice Biennale in 1895. For some years he was a popular teacher at London County Council evening classes.
This elegant, ethereal pair of heads are typical of Hughes, falling somewhere between his idealised portraits of female sitters and his more symbolist compositions. They are closely related to his 1912 picture Night with her Train of Stars (fig. 2), which has become his most famous work since it was included in the Last Romantics exhibition at the Barbican in 1989 and reproduced on the cover of the catalogue. Hughes' interest in this type of cosmic symbolism may owe something to George Frederic Watts (1817-1904), and Burne-Jones’ allegorical figures of Day and Night (figs. 3 and 4), executed for the Liverpool shipping magnate Frederick Leyland in the early 1870s (Winthrop Collection; Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard).