Hans's projected series

Hugh Witemeyer, Professor of English, University of New Mexico

Note 89 to Chapter 6 of the author's George Eliot and the Visual Arts, which Yale University Press published in a 1979. It has been included in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.

Hans's projected series belongs to a Haydonesque tradition of neoclassical history-painting for which George Eliot had little sympathy. Fortunately, Hans himself does not take it seriously. What is valid about the series is the idealizing portraiture of Mirah as Berenice. George Eliot wholly approves Hans's remark that "every painter worth remembering has painted the face he admired most, as often as he could.... He puts what he adores into some sacred, heroic form. If a man could paint the woman he loves a thousand times as the Stella Maris to put courage into the sailors on board a thousand ships, so much the more honour to her" (37:280).'

Last modified 20 September 2000