Left: Diadumenè. Sir Edward John Poynter (1839-1919), PRA RWS. 1883. Oil on canvas, measuring: H 51 x W 50.9 cm., in the collection of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery. Accession no. 77/1969. Acquisition method: purchased from M. Newman Ltd with the assistance of the Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund and the Veitch Bequest, 1969. Kindly released via Art UK under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Right: A black and white Magazine of Art engraving of another version, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1885. [Click on both images to enlarge them.]
The Magazine of Art critic commented: “Mr. Poynter, again, is very violently carried away from grace indeed: his ‘Diadumene’ is admirably drawn and admirably painted; the figure (once you grant the type) is unimpeachable; the marbles and accessories are the work of a craftsman” (347). But such was the general response that Poynter felt obliged to paint drapery over the nude figure – something which he later regretted (see Vout 212).
Text by George P. Landow and Dennis T. Lanigan. Caption material and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee. You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery, or the University of Toronto and the Internet Archive, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite it in a print one.]
Bibliography
Diadumenè. Art UK. Web. 25 July 2023.
Vout, Caroline. Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018.
W. E. H. “Current Art — 1.” Magazine of Art. 9 (1884-85): 346-52. Internet Archive version of a copy in the University of Toronto Library. Web. 29 October 2014.
Created 29 October 2014
Last modified 25 July 2023