A Loving Psyche Who Loses Sight of Love by Matthew Ridley Corbet ARA, 1850-1902 ARSA. Oil on canvas. 1900. H 99.3 x W 208.2 cm. Collection: Southwark Art Collection. Accession no. GA1252. Acquisition method: transferred from the Cuming Museum. The title comes from Elizabeth Barret Browning's "Aurora Leigh," with its insistence on art as a fusion between physical and spiritual: anyone who separates the two
In art, in morals, or the social drift,
Tears up the bond of nature and brings death,
Paints futile pictures, writes unreal verse,
Leads vulgar days, deals ignorantly with men,
Is wrong, in short, at all points. [VII. 764-768]
No doubt the effect of the juxtaposition of the vulnerable nude and the robust departing spirit in this painting is meant to be jarring. But Christopher Wood makes no bones about it: "This large and rather absurd picture represents Victorian classicism at its worst. Perhaps Corbet should have stuck to landscape painting, which suited his talents a great deal better" (211). As a whole, the composition belongs very much to an age when men still liked to sentimentalize women, and when readers were willing to respond positively to question posed in Chapter 13 of James Barrie's Peter Pan, "Do you believe in fairies?"
Bibliography
Wood, Christopher. Olympian Dreamers: Victorian Classical Painters, 1860-1914. London: Constable, 1983.
Created 28 August 2022