Study for “Isabella and the Pot of Basil”

John Melhuish Strudwick (1849−1937)

1879

Graphite on paper

248 x 172 mm (9 7/8 x 6 7/8 inches)

Inscribed lower right: "Study for Isabella (1879) RCW."

Provenance: Bought as Lot 57 at Christie's, 30th June 2010, with a post-auction bid.

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You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the Crowther-Oblak Collection of Victorian Art and the National Gallery of Slovenia and the Moore Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway (2) and link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.

Commentary by Paul Crowther

The subject is taken from Keats’s poem Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil (in turn derived from Boccaccio’s Decameron). Strudwick exhibited versions of this at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1879, and 1886. The narrative involves Isabella falling in love with Lorenzo, one of her brothers’ employees. The brothers had wanted Isabella to find a wealthy husband, and so murder Lorenzo, burying his body in a forest. Lorenzo’s ghost appears to Isabella and tells her what happened. She locates the body, cuts off the head, and hides it in a pot of basil. The plant is watered by her tears. The brothers discover and steal the head, and Isabella dies, her heart broken. In the present work, Strudwick has followed a practice (used also by Rossetti, amongst others) of doing a nude study of a figure before representing it fully clothed.

Bibliography

Crowther, Paul. Awakening Beauty: The Crowther-Oblak Collection of Victorian Art. Exhibition catalogue. Ljubljana: National Gallery of Slovenia; Galway: Moore Institute, National University of Ireland, 2014. No. 126.

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Created 9 January 2015