For Mirrorspindle

[poliphilo]

Clytemnestra by the hon John Collier

I've loved this gal ever since I was a small boy and she first confronted me from the pages of Guerber's Myths of Greece and Rome.

Comments

[mirrorspindle.livejournal.com]

Aw, thanks. Maybe someday I can aspire to Irene Papas's hair.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Your hair is great the way it is.

[samhain-punk.livejournal.com]

You're right. She definitely needs the axe.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's a marvellous axe- double-headed- as wielded by Robert Graves's White Goddess.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You're not the first to notice this. It drew comment when the picture was new. On the other hand, googling the artist, I found a portrait of his wife- and clearly she was the model for Clytemnestra- or, at least, for the face of Clytemnestra. Interesting, eh?

Collier was an old Etonian, by the way.....

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Collier is really quite good. We have his huge painting of The Death of Cleopatra here in Oldham and it has the status almost of a municipal icon.

He was a pupil of Alma Tadema's and lived long enough to paint a portrait of his nephew, Aldous Huxley.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's rather striking. Alma Tadema's Cleo looks passably like the profile on that coin they just uncovered.

And how on earth did Millais' easel come to be Auckland?