A Woodland Nymph, 1883. Oil on canvas; 26 1/4 x 17 1/8 inches (66.5 X 43.5 cm). Private collection. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
This work, dating from 1883, shows Calderon moving away from the typical genre and historical genre subjects that The St. John's Wood Clique were known for towards works influenced by the Aesthetic Movement. By that time the exhibition of full-length nudes depicting classical subjects was well established at venues such as the Royal Academy or the Grosvenor Gallery. The pose of the nymph in Calderon's painting has much in common with G. F. Watts's Thetis of 1867-9, Albert Moore's A Venus of 1869, Lawrence Alma-Tadema's A Sculptor's Model of 1877, and Edward Poynter's Diadumene of 1884.
Sotheby's discussed the place of this painting in Calderon's oeuvre when the work was auctioned in 2007:
In the 1880s Calderon was preoccupied with the subject of women bathing and painted several pictures of nubile young maidens robing or disrobing at the side of pools within forest glades. Examples include The Virgin's Bower of 1870 in which women are gathering water at a stream and Joyous Summer, Pleasant it was When the Woods were Green which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1882 and depicts Grecian girls gossipping while reattiring after bathing. The present picture illustrates the words of John Keats's poem "Hyperion": "Deep in the shady sadness of a vale. Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn/ Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star." Although the subject of the painting was suggested, or is emphasised by, the lines from Hyperion it is not an illustration of the scene in which the usurped Titan Hyperion is led by his sister Thea to a glade where the other Titans sit in melancholy despair lamenting their loss of their battle with the Olympians. The painting is essentially an academic study of feminine beauty but with an added suggestion of ancient mythology and contemporary poetry. The pose of the dryad nymph is similar to traditional depictions of the goddess Aphrodite Anadyonome arranging her hair after rising from the ocean whilst the setting of a woodland glade suggests that the girl may be an oread or naiad water nymph.
Bibliography
Victorian & Edwardian Art. London: Sotheby's (11 December 2007): lot 15.
Created 13 July 2023