Study of a Nude Girl being attended by a Female figure

Sir Edward John Poynter Bt PRA RWS (1839-1919)

c. 1894

Black and white chalk on brown paper

11 x 71/4 inches, 28 x 18.4 cm.

The painting, Idle Fears, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1894, number 253 and represents a mother preparing a nervous adolescent girl for a Roman bath. The present drawing is a study for the figures. It was common practice within the Academic tradition for an artist to demonstrate his learning by borrowing poses from classical and renaissance sources. Poynter has done so here in a playful way, taking the pose of the girl from Michelangelo's powerful Libyan Sibyl on the Sistine ceiling.. — Hilary Morgan

[Compare with an later sketch for the same work]

Peter Nahum Ltd, London has most generously given its permission to use in the Victorian Web information, images, and text from its catalogues, and this generosity has led to the creation of hundreds of the site's most valuable documents on painting, drawing, and sculpture. The copyright on text and images from their catalogues remains, of course, with Peter Nahum Ltd. Readers should consult the website of Peter Nahum at the Leicester Galleries to obtain information about recent exhibitions and to order their catalogues. [GPL]

References

Morgan, Hilary and Nahum, Peter. Burne-Jones, The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Century. London: Peter Nahum, 1989. Catalogue number 113.

---

Victorian
Web

Artists

Edward J.
Poynter

Drawings

Next

Last modified 7 January 2002