Diana, Queen and Goddess, Chaste and Fair. c.1876-77. Watercolour and gouache; 50 by 30 ½ inches (127 by 77.5 cm). Private collection. [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Diana, also known as Artemis, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1877, no. 835. Diana was the twin sister of Apollo and the Roman goddess of the hunt. Her symbols included the bow and arrow, hunting dogs, and the moon. When Holiday’s picture came up for auction at Sotheby’s in 2008 Newall pointed out that the picture shows Artemis: “the Olympian goddess who was a virgin and a huntress, and who presided over the transition from girlhood to womanhood. Known as a vengeful and merciless deity in her dealings with men who abused or took advantage of women, even unwittingly, she destroyed Actaeon who glimpsed her when bathing with her nymphs, and killed Tityus for his attempted rape of Leto. Artemis is here seen wandering through a forest. At her side is a deerhound, and in her hand a spear.” Holiday chose to paint the goddess holding a spear rather than the more usual bow and arrows.
Holiday much later described the origins of the painting in his Reminiscences: “I painted this year…Artemis hunting in a wood. The latter was strictly a Hampstead picture. The face was painted from our friend and neighbour, Mrs. Gilbert Scott, whose son [Giles Gilbert Scott] is now building Liverpool Cathedral. The staghound was our own dog, and the wood was painted in the glade, just outside our garden” (248). Ellen Scott was a frequent visitor to Holiday’s studio and modelled for the faces and draped figure studies for a number of Holiday’s work.
When the watercolour was shown at the Royal Academy in 1877 it was commended by the critic of The Art Journal: “The ‘Three Children of the Rev. Clement Prance’ (666), for example, and the richly-toned academic picture of Diana> (835), attired for the chase, and accompanied by her hounds, as she marches through the greenwood, entitle their author, H. Holiday, to a conspicuous place in the honours list” (271).
Other Victorian Representations of Diana
Works featuring Diana were popular with the Old Masters as well as late nineteenth-century painters. Holiday’s work has some similarlity with Walter Crane’s later Diana and the Shepherd that was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1883, no. 75. This watercolour shows Diana with a bow over her right shoulder holding two greyhounds on a leash which lead her towards the sleeping shepherd Endymion. G. F. Watts had previously painted two versions of this subject, the first version having been started in the late 1860s. Edward Poynter painted his version of Diana and Endymion in 1901, showing the goddess upright and hovering over the beautiful youthful shepherd Endymion.
Bibliography
“The Royal Academy Exhibition.” The Art Journal New Series XVI (1877): 269-72.
Holiday, Henry. Reminiscences of My Life. London: Heinemann, 1914.
Newall, Christopher. Victorian and Edwardian Art. London: Sotheby’s, July 15, 2008, lot 2.
>Henry Holiday 1839–1927. London: William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, 1989, cat. 53, 12.
Last modified 18 January 2023