Music. 1876. Watercolour on paper; 24¾ X 19 ½ inches (62.8 x 49.5 cm) [Click on images to enlarge them.]
This watercolour was exhibited in an unfinished state at the Dudley Gallery in 1875, no. 437. This is a quintessential “Aesthetic' subject," with its vaguely classical theme of a nude figure of a Muse seated on a stone bench holding a lyre and with the Japanese motif of a plant in a vase at the lower left. Music is reminiscent of many other earlier Aesthetic Movement paintings, in particular his friend Edward Poynter's The Siren exhibited at the Royal Academy of 1864. Classical figures along the seashore were frequent in the works of Leighton, Watts, Moore and Whistler. Figures playing musical instruments were also common in Aesthetic Movement art and served to represent the correspondences between art and music. This concept had, in particular, been emphasized in Rossetti's works from the late 1850s and the 1860s, but even in his later works, such as A Sea Spell of 1877, the mood is similar to Holiday's Music. Holiday was a great lover of music throughout his life.
When the painting was exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1875 W. M. Rossetti wrote these complimentary comments in The Academy: “Mr. Holiday’s female impersonation of Music (marked ‘unfinished,’ though we hardly know why) has moderate elevation in nude form, with a good deal of nature: she touches a lyre, to the symphonious murmur of the waves on the sea-beach. This portion of the picture, no less than its principal subject-matter, is very attentively studied, and the whole executed with much efficiency” (149).
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Bibliography
Rossetti, William Michael. “Fine Art. The Dudley Gallery.” The Academy VII (February 6, 1875): 149.
Last modified 14 January 2023