Lot 15: Philip Hermogenes Calderon (1833-1898)

'Joyous Summer, pleasant it was when the woods were green' signed and dated 'P H CALDERON - 1882' (lower left) oil on canvas 81 x 65 in. (205.8 x 165 cm.) LITERATURE Art Journal, 1883, p. 217. EXHIBITION London, Royal Academy, 1883, no. 241. NOTES Calderon was preoccupied with the theme of girls reposing by water. The present picture is one of his largest and most succesful compostions, and carries echoes of On the Banks of the River Clain near Poitiers,(R.A. 1866, no. 369) in which the girls are depicted in medieval costume, and The Virgin's Bower, his R.A. exhibit of 1870, (no. 369), sold at Christie's New York, 25 June 1998 ($94,198), in which two figures in classical dress draw water from a stream. A classical figure can also be seen in Springtime, his R.A. exhibit of 1896, no. 263. In this picture a group of beauties are about to bathe. One lower left is testing the temperature of the water, while the standing figure is about to slip out of her robe. Calderon is clearly alluding to a subject popularized by the Old Masters namely the goddess Diana, assisted by her nymphs, bathing in a shady grotto. The reference would have been noted by nineteenth-century admirers. Calderon was born at Poitiers to a French mother and Spanish father who later became professor of Spanish literature at King's College, London. After attending Leigh's Academy in Newman Street, he studied in Paris in the 1850s under Fran‡ois Piot, before returning to London. A member of the St John's Wood Clique of artists, he was a resident of this London suburb from 1858.