The Dawn of Love (painting)
The Dawn of Love | |
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Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum |
The Dawn of Love, also known as Venus Now Wakes, and Wakens Love, is an
leaning across to wake the sleeping Love by stroking his wings. While Etty often included nude figures in his work, he rarely depicted physical intimacy, and owing to this, The Dawn of Love is one of his more unusual paintings. The open sensuality of the work was intended to present a challenge to the viewer mirroring the plot of Comus, in which the heroine is tempted by desire but remains rational and detached.While a few critics praised elements of its composition and execution, The Dawn of Love was very poorly received when first exhibited. Etty had developed a reputation for painting realistic figures, and his stylised Venus was thought unduly influenced by foreign artists such as
Background
While some nudes by foreign artists were held in private English collections, the country had no tradition of nude painting and the display and distribution of nude material to the public had been suppressed since the 1787
Composition
And on the tawny sands and shelves
Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves
By dimpled brook and fountain-brim
The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim
Their merry wakes and pastimes keep;
What hath night to do with sleep?
Night hath better sweets to prove,
Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.
Come, let us our rites begin;
'Tis only day-light that makes sin
Which these dun shades will ne'er report.
Hail! Goddess of nocturnal sport.
The Dawn of Love illustrates an early passage from
Etty's painting is not a direct illustration of a scene from Comus. Instead, it is inspired by an early passage in which Comus, prior to his meeting with The Lady, muses on the notion that sin is only problematic if others become aware of it, and thus that it is right and natural to surrender to base desires while under cover of darkness, arguing that "What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove, Venus now wakes, and wakens Love".[16] Etty's painting shows the nude Venus, as "Goddess of nocturnal sport", reaching across to wake the sleeping Love by stroking his wings.[16][17] While Etty had built his reputation on his renowned ability to paint realistic human figures, Venus in The Dawn of Love is highly stylised, and painted in a deliberate pastiche of the style of Rubens.[16]
The Dawn of Love intentionally presents a moral dilemma to viewers. By his open depiction of nudity and sensuality, Etty makes the same argument as that presented by Comus, that it is rational for the viewer to succumb to their lustful thoughts while in private. The picture presents the same moral challenge to the viewer as that which Comus presents to The Lady, that of remaining true to her better, moral and rational, nature, despite there being no apparent disadvantage in surrendering to desire.[16]
While Etty regularly painted nudity, he rarely depicted physical intimacy other than in combat, and The Dawn of Love is unusual among his works; Etty's biographer Leonard Robinson commented in 2007 that The Dawn of Love "is a subject so untypical of Etty that one finds difficulty in understanding why he painted it".[18]
Reception
Etty exhibited the painting in February 1828 at the British Institution under the title of Venus Now Wakes, and Wakens Love.[16][20] It immediately met with a storm of derision from critics for the style in which Venus was painted;[16] one of the few positive reviews was that of The New Monthly Magazine, whose critic considered "the figure of Venus is delightfully drawn and most voluptuously coloured; and the way in which she awakens love, by ruffling the feathers of his wings, is exquisitely imagined and executed".[17] The Times commented that "the drawing is free and flowing" and "the colouring, though rich, is perfectly natural", but felt that "the subject is, however, handled in a way entirely too luscious (we might, with great propriety, use a harsher term) for the public eye".[21] The Literary Gazette conceded that the painting was "very attractive, especially in colour", but considered the painting's "voluptuousness" as "one of the most unpardonable sins against taste", and chided Etty's "careless" drawing, observing that "it is impossible that an artist who has for so many years, and so unremittingly, studied the living model, can err in that respect from want of knowledge".[22] The Monthly Magazine complained of Venus's "sullen colour and corpulent shape", as well as Etty's "excessive exposure of [Venus's] figure".[23] La Belle Assemblée, meanwhile, felt that Etty's representation of Venus "though a fine voluptuous woman, is not, either in supremacy of beauty, or according to any received description of the love-inspiring goddess, a Venus", and complained that "the colouring of the flesh is chalky".[24]
The harshest criticism came from an anonymous reviewer in The London Magazine:
This small picture ... we utterly condemn, not for the nudity or indecency of which some have complained, but because there is a total want of beauty, grace, and expression, to clothe the nakedness and abstract the mind from it. Mr. Etty seems conscious of the coldness of his flesh-colour, and atones for it by the flabbiness of his figures. They are any thing but voluptuous or alluring. We would recommend to our artist to leave these small unfinished vignettes, these little doughy Rubenses as "toys of desperation" to others. His firm, broad, manly pencil, requires wider scope and a different subject.
— The London Magazine, April 1828[25]
An anonymous reviewer in the same publication later that year returned to the theme, chiding Etty for his imitation of foreign artists rather than attempting to develop a new and unique style of his own, observing that "we cannot imitate the voice or the actions of another, without exaggerating or caricaturing them", complaining that there is "[no] propriety in seeing the Venuses of Titian, the fables of heathenism, or the base occupations of Dutch boors, placed in parallel with those subjects which form the basis [of] all our future hopes", and observing that "surely, Rubens ought here [in England] to be held up as rock to avoid, not a light to follow".[26]
Legacy
In February 1828, shortly after the exhibition of The Dawn of Love, Etty defeated
The Dawn of Love (under its original title of Venus Now Wakes, and Wakens Love) was exhibited in 1829 at the
Footnotes
- ^ Etty's male nude portraits were primarily of mythological heroes and classical combat, genres in which the depiction of male nudity was considered acceptable in England.[15]
- ^ In Etty's time, honours such as knighthoods were only bestowed on presidents of major institutions, not on even the most well respected artists.[28]
References
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/8925. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ Gilchrist 1855, p. 23.
- ^ Burnage 2011a, p. 157.
- ^ Smith 1996, p. 86.
- ^ a b c Farr 1958, p. 15.
- ^ Green 2011, p. 61.
- ^ Farr 1958, p. 12.
- ^ Burnage 2011d, p. 31.
- ^ Burnage 2011b, p. 118.
- ^ Burnage 2011c, p. 198.
- ^ "About the artist". Manchester Art Gallery. Archived from the original on 11 February 2015. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
- ^ Smith 2001b, p. 53.
- ^ Smith 2001b, p. 55.
- ^ Smith 2001a, p. 54.
- ^ Burnage 2011d, pp. 32–33.
- ^ a b c d e f g Burnage 2011b, p. 116.
- ^ a b Fine Arts. Vol. III. London: Henry Colburn. 1 April 1828. p. 157.
- ^ Robinson 2007, p. 259.
- ^ Burnage 2011b, p. 113.
- ^ Burnage & Bertram 2011, p. 23.
- ^ "British Institution". The Times. No. 13506. London. 4 February 1828. col A, p. 3.
- ^ "Fine Arts: British Institution". The Literary Gazette (577). London: 90. 9 February 1828.
- ^ "Fine Arts Exhibitions". The Monthly Magazine. London.
- ^ "Fine Arts Exhibitions, &c: British Institution". La Belle Assemblée. 7 (39). London: 133. March 1828.
- ^ "Notes on Art". The London Magazine. I (1). London: 27. April 1828.
- ^ "The British Institution". The London Magazine. I (2). London: 395. July 1828.
- ^ Farr 1958, p. 52.
- ^ a b Robinson 2007, p. 135.
- ^ Burnage 2011d, p. 42.
- ^ a b Robinson 2007, p. 440.
- ^ Burnage 2011e, p. 243.
- ^ Leslie, Charles Robert (30 March 1850). "Lecture on the Works of the late W. Etty, Esq, R.A., by Professor Leslie". The Athenæum (1170). London: 352.
- ^ a b c d Farr 1958, p. 157.
- ^ a b Smith 2001b, p. 56.
- ^ Smith 2001b, p. 57.
- ^ Smith 2001b, p. 58.
- ^ Burnage 2011b, p. 117.
Sources
- Burnage, Sarah (2011a). "Etty and the Masters". In Burnage, Sarah; Hallett, Mark; Turner, Laura (eds.). William Etty: Art & Controversy. London: Philip Wilson Publishers. pp. 154–97. OCLC 800599710.
- Burnage, Sarah (2011b). "History Painting and the Critics". In Burnage, Sarah; Hallett, Mark; Turner, Laura (eds.). William Etty: Art & Controversy. London: Philip Wilson Publishers. pp. 106–54. OCLC 800599710.
- Burnage, Sarah (2011c). "The Life Class". In Burnage, Sarah; Hallett, Mark; Turner, Laura (eds.). William Etty: Art & Controversy. London: Philip Wilson Publishers. pp. 198–227. OCLC 800599710.
- Burnage, Sarah (2011d). "Painting the Nude and 'Inflicting Divine Vengeance on the Wicked'". In Burnage, Sarah; Hallett, Mark; Turner, Laura (eds.). William Etty: Art & Controversy. London: Philip Wilson Publishers. pp. 31–46. OCLC 800599710.
- Burnage, Sarah (2011e). "Portraiture". In Burnage, Sarah; Hallett, Mark; Turner, Laura (eds.). William Etty: Art & Controversy. London: Philip Wilson Publishers. pp. 228–50. OCLC 800599710.
- Burnage, Sarah; Bertram, Beatrice (2011). "Chronology". In Burnage, Sarah; Hallett, Mark; Turner, Laura (eds.). William Etty: Art & Controversy. London: Philip Wilson Publishers. pp. 20–30. OCLC 800599710.
- Farr, Dennis (1958). William Etty. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. OCLC 2470159.
- OCLC 2135826.
- Green, Richard (2011). "Etty and the Masters". In Burnage, Sarah; Hallett, Mark; Turner, Laura (eds.). William Etty: Art & Controversy. London: Philip Wilson Publishers. pp. 61–74. OCLC 800599710.
- Robinson, Leonard (2007). William Etty: The Life and Art. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. OCLC 751047871.
- Smith, Alison (2001a). Exposed: The Victorian Nude. London: Tate Publishing. OCLC 604088100.
- Smith, Alison (2001b). "Private Pleasures?". In Bills, Mark (ed.). Art in the Age of Queen Victoria: A Wealth of Depictions. Bournemouth: Russell–Cotes Art Gallery and Museum. pp. 53–67. OCLC 606665429.
- Smith, Alison (1996). The Victorian Nude. Manchester: Manchester University Press. OCLC 902076112.