3-065-864 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"A Young Greek Woman" by Edith Martineau, in the Exhibition at the Dudley Gallery, 1874. 'In this water-colour drawing, which we engrave, the accomplished lady artist, Miss Edith Martineau, sets us speculating as to whence she derived her model. It may be that the model is a veritable modern Greek maiden, but it is perhaps more likely that she is an Englishwoman, selected for the antique purity of her type, and with her hair bound and knotted behind, after the Greek mode, and her thin white robe, also fashioned in accordance therewith. We Britons may well be proud of the beauty of our sisters. It is a constant theme of admiration with foreign visitors; and what astonishes them most is the great variety yet purity of the types both of the fair and dark races...we have, in Scotland and elsewhere, Greek goddesses, such as we see here, with adorable red hair; the purity of Raphael, the expressiveness of Leonardo, the luxurious forms and hues of Titian, the redundant sensuousness of Rubens, are all to be found in English models...In this drawing the pale background, the white drapery, the greyish colouring, and rather flat treatment, help to complete the resemblance to an antique fresco or bas-relief...'. From the Fine Art Supplement to the "Illustrated London News", 1874.