Lilith (painting)

Painting by John Collier

Lilith

Artist| John Collier
Year| 1887
Medium| Oil on canvas
Dimensions| 194 cm × 104 cm (76 in × 41 in)
Location| Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport
Lilith, detail

Lilith is an 1887 painting by English artist John Collier, who worked in the style of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The painting of the Jewish mythic figure Lilith is held in the Atkinson Art Gallery in Southport, England. It was transferred from Bootle Art Gallery in the 1970s.[1][2]

## Description

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Collier portrayed Lilith as a golden-haired, porcelain-skinned nude woman who fondles on her shoulder the head of a serpent, coiled around her body in a passionate embrace.[3] Against the background of a dark, brown-green jungle, stands a naked female figure, whose pale skin and long blond hair falling down her back form a stark contrast with the forest. The head position and gaze of Lilith are turned away from the viewer, concentrating on the snake's head resting on her shoulder. The snake encircles her body in several coils, starting around its closely spaced ankles, past the knee, to her lower abdomen, where it thereby conceals. Lilith supports the snake's body with her hands in the area of her upper body, so that the snake's head can lie over her right shoulder up to her throat. Lilith's head is bent towards the snake, her cheek nestles against the animal. The brown tones of the snake's body stand out in contrast with the pale woman's body, but take up the color scheme of the surrounding jungle. Collier presented his painting inspired by fellow painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 1868 poem Lilith, or Body's Beauty, which describes Lilith as the witch who loved Adam before Eve. Her magnificent tresses gave the world "its first gold," but her beauty was a weapon and her charms deadly.[4]

The magazine The British Architect described the work in 1887: "Here is a nude woman, whose voluptuous, round form is most gracefully represented, surrounded by a great serpent, the thickest part of which crosses it horizontally and cuts it in half; her head slides down her chest and she seems to be pulling it in tighter coils. The background is a coarse kind of green, repulsive and abominable."[5]

## Reception

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When Collier presented his monumental painting to the public, he received mostly acclaim, beginning with the London Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts, in 1887.[6]

On the occasion of the 11th Summer show of London's Grosvenor Gallery in 1887, The Photographic News magazine found the Lilith nude study to be of considerable value.[7] The exhibition catalog itself notes that the painting is worth looking at closely in terms of craftsmanship and sensitivity, and that the painterly execution of the snake is also noteworthy.[8] The British Architect magazine noted that few painters could paint like Collier, and only an handful of them probably would be able to paint the snake like him.[9]

The journal The Athenaeum ruled that Collier provoked a risky comparison by taking inspiration from Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poem Lilith in his painting. His Lilith features a sturdy model of about 25 years of age, standing erect, naked, arms crossed in front of her body, tilting her head slightly to one side so that her light blonde hair could fall down her back like a cloak. She is ensnared by a monstrous snake, which coils around her and pushes its head over her shoulder. The female figure is magnificently painted, thoroughly thought out, carefully worked, but is more reminiscent of Salammbô. Highly commendable as an informed study, it was by no means too similar to Rossetti's.[10]

The Spectator attested to the picture's detailed, skilfully crafted and realistic depiction, which, however, meant that "somehow all poetry and every feeling had slipped away in the execution" and emphasized that in general every nude painting "which only realizes the superficial of the body strives, and in a realistic way, must be bad art” if it is painted uninspired of feelings and thoughts.[11]

The painting was part of the exhibition Wild. Fashion Untamed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, in 2004.[12]

## References

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1. ^ Lilith, Atkinson Art Gallery
2. ^ Lilith artwork analysis
3. ^ Lindsay J Bosch, Debra N Mancoff, Icons of Beauty: Art, Culture, and the Image of Women, Greenwood Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-313-33821-2, p. 146
4. ^ Lindsay J Bosch, Debra N Mancoff, Icons of Beauty: Art, Culture, and the Image of Women, Greenwood Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-313-33821-2, p. 146
5. ^ "The Grosvenor Gallery", in The British Architect: A Journal of Architecture and the Accessory Arts, vol. 27, Pennsylvania State University 1887, p. 339
6. ^ Lindsay J Bosch, Debra N Mancoff, Icons of Beauty: Art, Culture, and the Image of Women, Greenwood Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-313-33821-2, p. 146
7. ^ "The Grosvenor Gallery", 20 May 1887, in The Photographic News: A Weekly Record of the Progress of Photography, vol. 31, Cassell, Petter & Galpin, London 1887, pp. 306-307
8. ^ Grosvenor Notes 1887. A complete catalogue, No. 10, Henry Blackburn (ed.), Cassell, Petter & Galpin, Grosvenor Gallery, London 1887
9. ^ "The Grosvenor Gallery", in The British Architect: A Journal of Architecture and the Accessory Arts, vol. 27, Pennsylvania State University 1887, p. 339
10. ^ "The Grosvenor Exhibition", in The Athenaeum: A Journal of Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Music, and the Drama, No. 3106, J. Francis, 1887, p. 613
11. ^ The Grosvenor Gallery, in The Spectator, June 18, 1887. Volume 16, 1887, p. 831
12. ^ Andrew Bolton, Shannon Bell-Price, Elyssa Da Cruz, Wild. Fashion Untamed, Exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2004, ISBN 978-1-58839-135-3, p. 149

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John Collier

Paintings|

* Charles Darwin (1881)
* The Last Voyage of Henry Hudson (1881)
* Clytemnestra (1882)
* The Pharaoh's Handmaidens (1883)
* Circe (1885)
* Lilith (1889)
* Lady Godiva (1898)
* In the Venusberg (1901)
* Eve (1911)
* Mrs Campbell McInnes (1912)

Related|

* Laurence Collier (son)
* Robert Collier (father)
* Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

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Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (paintings)

* William Holman Hunt
* John Everett Millais
* Dante Gabriel Rossetti
* James Collinson
* William Michael Rossetti
* Frederic George Stephens
* Thomas Woolner

Associated
artists and
figures

* Lawrence Alma-Tadema
* George Price Boyce
* John Brett
* Ford Madox Brown
* Lucy Madox Brown
* Richard Burchett
* Edward Burne-Jones
* Georgiana Burne-Jones
* James Campbell
* John Collier
* Charles Allston Collins
* Frank Cadogan Cowper
* Evelyn De Morgan
* Walter Deverell
* Henry Treffry Dunn
* William Dyce
* Henry Holiday
* Arthur Hughes
* Edward Robert Hughes
* Frederic Leighton
* Robert Braithwaite Martineau
* Louisa Beresford, Marchioness of Waterford
* William Morris
* Alexander Munro
* Joseph Noel Paton
* Valentine Cameron Prinsep
* Christina Rossetti
* John Ruskin
* Emma Sandys
* Frederick Sandys
* Thomas Seddon
* Elizabeth Siddal
* James Smetham
* Rebecca Solomon
* Simeon Solomon
* John Roddam Spencer Stanhope
* Marie Spartali Stillman
* John Melhuish Strudwick
* Algernon Charles Swinburne
* Henry Wallis
* John William Waterhouse
* William James Webbe
* William Lindsay Windus

Some
well-known
works
(period and
post-period)

* Ophelia
* Christ in the House of His Parents
* A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids
* Ecce Ancilla Domini
* Mariana
* The Light of the World
* Our English Coasts ('Strayed Sheep')
* The Scapegoat
* Paolo and Francesca da Rimini
* The Last of England
* Work
* The Awakening Conscience
* The Hireling Shepherd
* April Love
* Found
* Autumn Leaves
* Bocca Baciata
* Oxford Union murals
* Lady Lilith
* Roman Widow
* Mary Magdalene
* The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple
* Morgan le Fay
* Beata Beatrix
* The Shadow of Death
* Proserpine
* A Vision of Fiammetta
* Pygmalion and the Image series
* The Beloved
* Cymon and Iphigenia
* King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
* The Day Dream
* The Golden Stairs
* Dante and Beatrice
* Love's Messenger
* The Magic Circle
* The Legend of Briar Rose
* The Lady of Shalott (Waterhouse)
* The Roses of Heliogabalus
* Lilith
* Eos
* Flaming June
* Hope
* Hylas and the Nymphs
* Lady Godiva
* The Love Potion
* The Lady of Shalott (Hunt)
* I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Said the Lady of Shalott

Models|

* Elizabeth Siddal
* Fanny Cornforth
* Effie Gray
* Sophie Gray
* Annie Miller
* Jane Morris
* Marie Spartali Stillman
* Alexa Wilding
* Maria Zambaco
* Dorothy Dene
* Fanny Eaton
* Ruth Herbert

Related|

* The Germ
* Hogarth Club
* Morris & Co.
* Rossetti and His Circle (1922 book)
* Dante's Inferno (1967 film)
* The Love School (1975 series)
* Desperate Romantics (2009 series)
* Effie Gray (2014 film)

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