Beatrice (Lady with the Coronet of Jasmine), by William Dyce (1806-1864). 1859. Oil on panel. 25 3/4 x 19 1/2 inches (65.2 x 49.4 cm). Collection of Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums, accession no. ABDAG003217. Image courtesy of Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Dyce and the Theme of the Fallen Woman
Beatrice was not exhibited during Dyce's lifetime and was painted on commission for the future Prime Minister of Great Britain, William E. Gladstone. Dyce and Gladstone were friends of long-standing and both were religious and members of the High Anglican Church. Beatrice was an appropriate choice of subject because Gladstone was interested in the works of Dante Alighieri, the great Italian poet of the fourteenth century. Beatrice is an idealized portrait of Dante's beloved Beatrice Portinari. Gladstone suggested Maria Summerhayes as the model, a former prostitute that he had rescued "from a life of sin" when he encountered her in July 1859. In the 1840s Gladstone had begun a campaign to rescue and rehabilitate prostitutes. Gladstone was obviously much taken with her, writing in his diary: "Full in the highest degree both of interest and beauty…Altogether she is no common specimen of womanhood!" (qtd. in Shannon 393). Dyce wrote to Gladstone about the model: "If I like your subject, which I have no doubt will be the case, some progress in the meantime might be made by my having some photographic studies made from her" (Dyce papers, qtd. in Ferguson 180). Olga Fergusson has commented on Dyce's use of photography as studies for this picture: "Dyce has given the sitter an air of stillness and it seems possible that this, the pronounced chiaroscuro of her face and the unusual three-quarter view, could be the result of working from photographic sources" (180).
The similarity of this work to Dyce's portrayals of the Madonna is clear: "The pensive stillness of Beatrice, seen in three-quarter view, head and shoulders (a pose William rarely used in painting portraits), the painstaking execution, and a surface gloss on the drapery loosely pinned about the lady's shoulders remind us of Christabel. The mood of both subjects is akin to the devotional half-length paintings of the Madonna or of angels and saints by Dyce and by Eastlake [Sir Charles Eastlake]. But there is a fullness and sculptural quality about the face of Beatrice which distinguishes it from the flat features of Christabel which Ruskin had regarded as a pastiche of Botticelli" (Pointon 166). Pointon was not the only scholar to recognize the relationship of this painting to Dyce's previous portrayals of the Madonna, despite the model being a magdalene: "Dyce avoids the proclivities of his client and the sexual attractions of his model and instead represents Miss Summerhayes as a pure, serene, ethereal being, belonging to another place and time. In this respect she is more akin to Dyce's Madonnas than to the overt sensuality of Omnia Vanitas" (Ferguson 180). It appears Gladstone was pleased with the result and hung this painting at eye level flanked on either side by Old Master paintings by Gaudenzio Ferrari and Lucas Cranach, which was highly appropriate considering the "Old Masterish" nature of Dyce's picture.
Ferguson thinks Dyce's use of the coronet of jasmine flowers [Jasminum grandiflorum] around Beatrice's head may have some symbolic meaning hinting at the reformation of the sitter's character despite the fact that jasmine is not an attribute of Beatrice found in Dante's writings. What is surprising therefore is that the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor John Hancock's sculptures of Beatrice also appear to show her head crowned with a coronet of what looks like jasmine flowers with five petals, and were perhaps chosen for their "star-like" quality. While Dyce would have chosen white jasmine flowers, revered for their purity, as symbolic of Beatrice's purity, it may be significant that in the Victorian language of flowers, white jasmine can symbolize beauty and sensuality — appropriate enough for a stunning former "fallen woman."
Beatrice was also a favourite subject for the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti who painted a number of works based on her life and her relationship with Dante. The most famous painting of another Pre-Raphaelite artist, Henry Holiday, is his Dante and Beatrice of 1883.
Bibliography
Beatrice (Lady with the Coronet of Jasmine). Art UK. Web. 20 December 2024.
Dyce, James Stirling. Dyce Papers, an unpublished typescript of the Life, Correspondence and Writings of William Dyce. Aberdeen Art Gallery archives.
Ferguson, Olga. William Dyce and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision. Ed. Jennifer Melville. Aberdeen: Aberdeen City Council, 2006, cat. 52, 180-81.
Pointon, Marcia. William Dyce 1806-1864, A Critical Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
Shannon, Richard. Gladstone: Peel's Inheritor 1809-1865. Vol. I. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1982.
Created 20 December 2024