λ FRANK CADOGAN COWPER (BRITISH 1877-1958)VANITY Pastel Signed and dated '1925' (lower right) 50 x 34cm (19½ x 13¼ in.)Provenance: Sale, Drouot-Richelieu, Paris, 11th June 2004, lot 106The Maas Gallery Ltd, London, where purchased by the present owner, 2006Exhibited:Paris, Exposition des Beaux-Arts, 1936Cowper first painted Vanity in 1907 the year he became at Associate of The Royal Academy. He was so enamoured with it that he bought it back when it came up for auction at Christie's in 1921. Four years later he produced this pastel replica, which was a practice that he often did for his most popular paintings. He gave the 1907 version to The Royal Academy as his Diploma Work when he became a Royal Academician in 1934. Cowper collected antique frames and this pastel was most probably drawn especially for this frame as the proportions differ from the earlier version. The prime version of Vanity was most recently exhibited in Pre-Raphaelites: A Modern Renaissance at the Musei di San Domenico in Forlì, Italy and the influence of Renaissance painting is clearly seen in Cowper's work. He is often seen as the last exponent of the Pre-Raphaelite tradition and the picture pays homage to Rossetti's half-length likenesses of beautiful models with exotic accessories, an idiom itself owing much to sixteenth-century Venetian painting. The elaborate serpentine design on the woman's dress may have been inspired by the portrait of Isabella d'Este attributed to Giulio Romano (Historic Royal Palaces). Edward Burne-Jones had also depicted such a design in his watercolour 'Sidonia von Bork' (1860; Tate Britain). Vanity suggests the romance of the past and alludes to notions of the chivalric and courtly love.The record auction price for the artist was set by Our Lady of the Fruits of the Earth which sold at Christie's in 2011 for £469,250.
λ FRANK CADOGAN COWPER (BRITISH 1877 - 1958)QUEEN OF HEARTSOil on canvasSigned and dated 'July 1898' (lower right)35 x 35cm (13¾ x 13¾ in.)Provenance:Sale, Bonhams, 27 March, 1973
FRANK CADOGAN COWPER, R.A. (BRITISH, 1877-1958) Study for 'The Cathedral Scene from Faust: Margaret Tormented by the Evil... pencil on paper 11 1/2 x 9 1/8 in. (29.2 x 23.2 cm.)
λ Frank Cadogan Cowper (British 1877-1958)Self-Portrait of the Artist in his Eightieth Year, 1957Oil on canvasSigned, inscribed and dated (to label verso)78.5 x 68cm (30¾ x 26¾ in.)Provenance:The artist's familySale, Christie's, London, 14 May 1993, lot 92Where purchased by the present owner (a member of the Cadogan Cooper family)Frank Cadogan Cowper studied at St John's Wood Art School and then at the Royal Academy Schools where he went on to exhibit throughout his sixty-year career. He became an Associate in 1907 and a full academician in 1934. His early work is strongly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, but later he adopted a more Renaissance style, often with an emphasis on rich brocades to create a decorative effect. In 1908-10 he contributed to the murals illustrating Tudor history in the Commons' East Corridor in the Houses of Parliament. He is often seen as the last exponent of the Pre-Raphaelite tradition and was patronised by Evelyn Waugh, a pioneer of the Victorian revival. His worked featured prominently in John Christian's pioneering exhibition The Last Romantics, in 1989 at the Barbican Art Gallery. His popularity continues to rise and in 2011 his picture Our Lady of the Fruits of the Earth sold at auction for £469,250, a record for the artist.
FRANK CADOGAN COWPER (1877-1958) Madonna and Child pencil and watercolour heightened with bodycolour on artists board 14 3/8 x 7 7/8 in. (36.5 x 20 cm.)
FRANK CADOGAN COWPER, R.A. (1877-1958) The Morning of the Nativity pencil, watercolour and bodycolour on artist's board 35 ½ x 15 ½ in. (89.5 x 39.4 cm.)
Frank Cadogan Cowper (English, 1877-1958) oil on canvas portrait of Judith, the only child of Arthur Edmund Moss, Esquire, J.P., of Leygore Manor, Northleach, Gloucestershire. Label and pencil inscription verso identifies the sitter, signed and dated l.r. "F.C. Cowper, 1933" 42" diameter canvas, unframed. Provenance: Babcock Galleries.
§ FRANK CADOGAN COWPER (1877-1958) A LADY AT HER DRESSING TABLE pencil (20cm x 19.5cm) Footnote: Provenance: From Castle of Park, Aberdeenshire Exhibited: Campbell Wilson ‘Frank Cadogan Cowper & Arthur Joseph Gaskin’ 2011, cat no.30
Frank Cadogan Cowper, R.A. (1877-1958) A study signed and dated 'F.C. COWPER/1914' (lower right) and further signed, inscribed and dated 'A STUDY/BY/F. CADOGAN COWPER/"ARTIST'S WAR FUND"/1914' (on the reverse) oil on canvas laid down on panel 13 ½ x 7 1/8 in. (34.3 x 18 cm.)
Frank Cadogan Cowper, R.A. (1877-1958) Rapunzel sings from the Tower '.... in the fire Of sunset, I behold a face, Which sometime, if God give me grace, May kiss me in this very place' (Rapunzel - William Morris) signed and dated 'F.C.COWPER/ 1908' (lower left) pencil, watercolour and bodycolour, heightened with gum arabic on paper 26 7/8 x 16 5/8 in. (68.1 x 41.8 cm.)
Attributed to Frank Cadogan Cowper (British, 1877-1958) Portrait of Francis Christie Pencil on paper 12 x 8-7/8 inches (30.5 x 22.5 cm) PROPERTY OF A LADY, MONTAUK, NEW YORK PROVENANCE: Campbell Wilson, East Sussex, England; Shepherd Gallery, New York. HID04901242017
oil on canvas (lined), inscribed on the verso "Lilla / Daughter of / E. M. Maclaurin, Esquire. / Married / N. H. Signor Sacra De Jordanow / Painted 1930 / By / F. Cadogan Cowper A.R.A.," presented in a period carved and gilt composition frame. SS 49.5 x 39 in.; DOA 57 x 46.5 in. An arresting portrait of a fashionable young woman confidently posed in a green patterned dress accessorized by a long strand of pearls and luxurious fur. In one elegant hand she holds a closed fan featuring a gilt crown of nobility emblazoned above an unidentified cipher. The 1929 edition of The Year's Art published by Macmillan & Co. in London references a painting by Cowper of Madame de Jordanow. Estate of the Late Richard Rivoire of Charles County, Maryland and Raleigh, North Carolina. A noted historical architect, J. Richard Rivoire was a native of Charles County, Maryland and the first to do extensive documentation of historic structures in that county. He moved to Raleigh in 2005 and was actively engaged in the research and documenting of historic structure in this region. Additional high-resolution photos are available at LelandLittle.com
§ Frank Cadogan Cowper (1877-1958) watercolour, 'The Young Duchess', Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours label verso, inscribed 'F. H. Pyman Esq.'; and another bearing the title and artist's name and address in the artist's hand, signed and dated 1917, 27.5 x 19in.
Frank Cadogan Cowper, R.A. (1877-1958) ><i>Ecce Ancilla Domini! (The Annunciation)<i>, after Dante Gabriel Rossetti >the second signed and inscribed '<span style="font-size:9">F.C. COWPERAFTER/D.G. ROSSETTI' (lower left) and with inscription 'Mr Cowper c/o Parfeitt 2 Nov 1901' (on the stretcher) >oil on canvas<br>47 x 17 ½ in. (119.4 x 44.4 cm.); and 47 x 18 ¾ in. (119.4 x 47.7 cm.) >(2)a pair<br>
Frank Cadogan Cowper, R.A. (1877-1958) Our Lady of the Fruits of the Earth signed and dated 'F C COWPER/1917' (lower left) oil on canvas 40 x 29 7/8 in. (102 x 76 cm.)
FRANK CADOGAN COWPER, PENCIL AND WASH, Head Portrait of a Lady thought to be Mary Mayfield of Walberswick, further inscribed "Mary from F Cadogan Cowper 1930", 8" diameter
FRANK CADOGAN COWPER (1877-1958, BRITISH) Pencil and Wash Head Portrait of a Lady thought to be Mary Mayfield of Walberswick, further inscribed "Mary from F Cadogan Cowper 1930" 8" diameter
Frank Cadogan Cowper, R.A. (1877-1958) The Blue Bird signed and dated 'F. C. Cowper 1918' (lower right) and inscribed 'F. Cadogan Cowper A.R.A./Edwardes Square Studios' (on the reverse of the frame) oil on canvas 34 7/8 x 28 in. (88.4 x 71.1 cm.)
FRANK CADOGAN COWPER (1877-1958, BRITISH) Pencil and Wash Head Portrait of a Lady thought to be Mary Mayfield of Walberswick, further inscribed "Mary from F Cadogan Cowper 1930" 8" (diameter)
FRANK CADOGAN COWPER: "PORTRAIT OF LADY LEGARD" circa 1925 signed and titled on paper verso Provenance: Kurt E. Schon, New Orleans The Estate of Ed Limato 50 1/4 x 40 1/4 inches
Pre-Raphaelite painting, mother kneeling with children, portion of a larger work (likely a triptych), unsigned, bears similarities to the work of Frank Cadogan Cowper (British, 1877-1958), oil on canvas, American or British, 19th century, unframed, 33-1/2 x 19-3/8 in. Laid down on plywood panel, nails at all edges, losses to canvas at edges upper right, retouch primarily at edge, crackle, cupping, flaking. Property of a Los Angeles, California, Collector
Portrait of Elizabeth Witts, wearing a white satin gown, and seated before a tapestry signed and inscribed: 'Elizabeth/Daughter of Major-General F.V.B. Witts, C.B.E., C.S.O., M.C./painted 1954 by/F.Cadogan Cowper R.A.' (on label verso), oil on canvas, unframed, 128 x 101cm (50 3/8 x 39 3/4in).
FRANK CADOGAN COWPER (1877-1958) - A full length portrait of a young lady in a white silk strapless dress, oil on canvas, 83" x 42 1/4" (see illustration).
An aristocrat answering to the summons to execution, Paris, 1792 signed and dated 'F.C. Cowper 1904' l.r. watercolour heightened with bodycolour 30 x 25 cm. (11 3/4 x 10 in.)
The Nun's Song, indistinctly signed by both the artist and engraver, engraving, published 1908 by The Fine Art Society, image 43.5 x 62.5cm (17 1/8 x 24 5/8in)
signed and inscribed on an old label pasted to the central stretcher: THE GOLDEN BOWL/ painted 1955 by/ F. Cadogan Cowper, R.A. oil on canvas EXHIBITED Royal Academy, 1956, no. 401
Portrait, three quarter length of Mrs E.H. Evans-Combe wearing evening dress, signed and dated 1920, also signed, titled and dated on label attached to stretcher verso, oil on canvas, 50 x 36 in. (127 x 92 cm.)
Frank Cadogan Cowper, RA (1877-1958) Self-Portrait of the Artist, signed lower right "F C Cowper 1899", oil on canvas, 53 x 49cm. Provenance: A gift from Frank Cadogan Cowper to his landlady, and by descent to her daughter, Mrs Franks, and by descent within the family
Frank Cadogan Cowper, RA (1877-1958) Portrait of a Lady in Mauve, oil on canvas, 44 x 34cm. Provenance: A gift from Frank Cadogan Cowper to his landlady, thence by descent to her daughter, Mrs Franks and by descent within the family
Titania Sleeps, A Midsummer Night's Dream signed and dated 'F C Cowper 1928' (lower left) oil on canvas 371/4 x 451/2 in. (94.6 x 115.6 cm.) Painted in 1928 PROVENANCE Christopher Wood, London. Anon. sale, Christie's, London, 23 June 1989, lot 146. Julian Hartnoll, 1990. LITERATURE Christopher Wood, Fairies in Victorian Art, Woodbridge, 2000, p. 151, illustrated. EXHIBITION London, Royal Academy, 1928, no. 366. Tokyo, Isetan Museum of Art, and three other venues in Japan, Shakespeare in Western Art, 1992-3, no. 91. NOTES Frank Cadogan Cowper was born in 1877 at Wicken in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather was rector. He studied art at the St John's Wood Art School and then spent five years in the Royal Academy Schools (1897-1902), before entering the Cotswold studio of Edward Austen Abbey (1852-1911). After six months working with this American muralist who, like his friend John Singer Sargent, had taken up residence in England, Cowper completed his artistic education by studying for a while in Italy. Although he exhibited widely, supporting the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Institute of Painters in Oil Colours, as well as sending to the Paris Salon, Cowper remained loyal to the Royal Academy, where he exhibited regularly from 1899 until his death nearly sixty years later. He became an Associate in 1907 and a full academician in 1934. Throughout his life he painted subject pictures, whether historical, biblical or literary in theme, although as the taste for these declined in the early years of the twentieth century, he turned increasingly to portraits, specialising in glamorous and slightly fey likenesses of young women which vaguely reflected his literary interests. His early work is strongly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites; a striking example is St Agnes in Prison receiving from Heaven the Shining White Garment (Tate Gallery), a Chantrey purchase of 1905 which quotes from Rossetti, Millais and Madox Brown. Comparisons can be made with Byam Shaw and his friend Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, who were his slightly older contemporaries. Unlike the Birmingham Group of painters and craftsmen, some of whom had met Burne-Jones and all of whom regarded Pre-Raphaelitism as a living tradition, these artists looked on the movement as a phenomenon ripe for revival, going back to the early work of the Brotherhood and attempting to reinterpret it in a more academic spirit. By about 1906 Cadogan Cowper was adopting a more Renaissance idiom, often with an emphasis on rich brocades to create a decorative effect. His RA diploma picture, Vanity, exhibited in 1907, the year he became an Associate, is particularly significant since it borrows motifs from Giulio Romano's portrait of Isabella d'Este at Hampton Court, a picture which had inspired the young Burne-Jones half a century earlier. In 1908-10 he contributed to the murals illustrating Tudor history which a group of artists, supervised by his former master, Abbey, painted for the Commons' East Corridor in the Houses of Parliament. Cowper's subject was The New Learning in England: Erasmus and Thomas More visit the children of Henry VII at Greenwich. But his most sumptuous essay in Renaissance subject matter was Lucretia Borgia reigns in the Vatican in the Absence of Pope Alexander VI, another Chantrey picture which was exhibited at the RA in 1914. Cowper lived most of his life in London, owning a succession of studios in St John's Wood, Kensington and Chelsea. Titania Sleeps was painted in Tite Street, Chelsea, formerly home to Whistler, Oscar Wilde and Sargent. At the end of the second world war Cowper moved to Gloucestershire, settling first at Fairford, not far from where he had served to apprenticeship to Abbey. He died at Cirencester on 17 November 1958 at the age of eighty-one. Cowper's later work undoubtedly deteriorated and is often mawkish in mood, but he is rightly regarded as one of the last exponents of the Pre-Raphaelite tradition. As such he was patronised by Evelyn Waugh and included in the Last Romantics exhibition at the Barbican in 1989. He was in fact responsible for one of the latest pictures in the show, The Four Queens find Lancelot sleeping (Private Collection), exhibited at the RA as late as 1954. In subject, mood and technique, this astonishing example of Pre-Raphaelite survival might belong to the 1900s. Only the types of the figures, which look like 1950s film stars (Vivien Leigh and Glynis Johns as the Queens, perhaps; certainly Kenneth More as Sir Lancelot) give a clue to its real date. Only a year before this, in 1953, Cowper had exhibited Hermia in the Wood, an illustration to A Midsummer Night's Dream . Our picture has the same literary source, but had appeared at the Academy twenty-five years earlier, in 1928. No doubt both works were conscious references to the Victorian tradition of fairy painting, which had found one of its most fertile sources of inspiration in Shakespeare's play. Noel Paton's famous paintings of the Quarrel and Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania, dating from 1847-50, are the obvious examples. Cowper must have known these familiar images, and perhaps even echoes them in the secluded woodland setting he devises for his figure of Titania asleep. The fairy queen herself, however, is pure 1920s. Her dress, for all its Renaissance origins, is essentially Art Deco, while her abandoned pose and exquisite maquillage suggest Hollywood at its most glamorous. Walt Disney could hardly have improved on the owl and rabbit.
Study for 'Patient Griselda' signed and inscribed 'Study for "Patient Grielda"/F.C. Cowper' (lower left, overmounted) and with further inscription 'A Study for Patient Griselda/by F.C. Cowper RA' (on the reverse) pencil 15 x 11 in. (38.1 x 28 cm.) NOTES This is a study for the finished watercolour that was sold in Christie's, London, 6 November 1995, lot 113 (œ35,600). The finished watercolour was exhibited at the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colour, 1906, and reproduced in the Studio the following year. The subject is taken from the tenth tale of the tenth day of Boccaccio's Decameron, a story rendered into Latin by Petrarch and adapted by Chaucer for the 'Clerk's Tale' in the Canterbury Tales. The Marquis of Saluzzo is persuaded by his subjects to marry, and chooses as his wife a humble peasant girl, Griselda. He then proceeds to test her loyalty by subjecting her to a series of cruel trials, all of which she suffers with exemplary fortitude. For the Middle Ages, Griselda was the type or embodiment of Patience. The story of Griselda appealed to several Victorian artists, notably C.W. Cope, who used it for a mural in the House of Lords, 1849. Cowper's painting, however, belongs to a later phase of interest in Italian literary sources, finding parallels in the work of Marie Spartali, Byam Shaw and others. Cowper's Patient Griselda is a charming example of his early style, and the present drawing has something of the same quality.
Rapunzel sings from the Tower '.... in the fire Of sunset, I behold a face, Which sometime, if God give me grace, May kiss me in this very place' ( Rapunzel - William Morris) signed and dated 'F.C. COWPER/1908' (lower left) pencil and watercolour with gum arabic, heightened with touches of bodycolour 261/2 x 161/2 in. (67.3 x 42 cm.) PROVENANCE Mrs A.M.W. Stirling. EXHIBITION London, Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, Summer 1908, no. 102. The Pre-Raphaelites and their Times, exh. circulated in Japan by the Tokyo Shimbun, 1985, no. 37. University of Nottingham, Djanogly Art Gallery, Heaven on Earth, 1994, no. 14. Bunkamura Museum of Art, Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Daimatu Museum, Kobe, and Tsukuba Museum of Art, Ibaraki, The Victorian Imagination, 1998, no. 89. NOTES This fine example of Cadogan Cowper's work, exhibited at the Royal Watercolour Society in 1908 when the artist was thirty-one, illustrates the well-known fairy story by the brothers Grimm. Rapunzel is a beautiful girl who is shut up in the tower by a witch. The tower has no door or staircase, but the witch ascends it by climbing up Rapunzel's long golden hair. In due course a young prince arrives, climbs up by the same means, and he and Rapunzel fall in love. After the inevitable trials resulting from the witch's fury when she discovers the turn of events, the young couple are married and live happily ever after. Cowper was one of the most interesting of the artists who turned their backs on modernism and attempted to maintain the Pre-Raphaelite tradition far into the twentieth century. He was certainly the most persistent, still exhibiting pictures of this kind as late as the 1950s. Born at Wicken in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather was rector, he studied at the St John's Wood Art School before entering the Royal Academy Schools in 1897. On leaving five years later, he enjoyed a six month apprenticeship in the Cotswold studio of Edwin Austin Abbey, the American muralist who, like his friend and compatriot John Singer Sargent, had settled in England. He finally completed his artistic education by a spell in Italy. Although he exhibited widely, supporting the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, as well as sending to the Paris Salon, Cowper remained loyal to the Royal Academy, where he exhibited regularly from 1899 until his death nearly sixty years later. He became an Associate in 1907, and a full member in 1934. This close adherence to the RA tells us much about his approach to the Pre-Raphaelite heritage. Most of the movement's leading figures were now dead. Rossetti had died in 1882, Madox Brown, Millais and Burne-Jones in the 1890s. Only Holman Hunt survived (until 1910). Younger artists who wished to follow in their footsteps tended to be of two types. The Birmingham Group, most of whom were born in the 1860s, had met Burne-Jones as students and saw Pre-Raphaelitism as a living tradition, albeit one they could develop by exploiting its Arts and Crafts dimension. Others, generally slightly younger and without any personal knowledge of the protagonists, regarded the movement as a phenomenon ripe for survival, going back to the early work of the Brotherhood and attempting to reinterpret it in a more academic spirit. This was Cowper's approach, and he shared it with two artists, Byam Shaw and his friend Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, who, both born in 1872, were only five years his senior. Though never, it seems, on intimate terms with Cowper, they must have been acquainted with him. They too showed regularly at the RA, and in 1908-10 both Cowper and Shaw contributed to the murals illustrating scenes from Tudor history that were painted for the Commons' East Corridor in the Houses of Parliament under the supervision of Cowper's former master, Abbey. Cowper shared with Shaw and Brickdale not only an academic approach to the Pre-Raphaelites but a certain campness of vision. In Cowper's case this had emerged strongly by 1907, when he exhibited that whacky masterpiece How the Devil, disguised as a vagrant Troubador, having been entertained by some charitable Nuns, sang to them a Song of Love (private collection). We see the same trend in the portraits which, like so many artists still devoted to the literary themes which had long since gone out of fashion, he was forced to paint for a living. The majority are likenesses of glamorous young women, painted in a rather arch and fey style. But the tendency is most apparent in some of Cowper's late subject pictures. In Titania Sleeps of 1928, sold in these Rooms on 13 June this year, the model wears a modish Art Deco dress, while her abandoned pose suggests Hollywood at its most glamorous and an appropriate Disneyish touch is introduced by the attendant owl and rabbits. Similarly with The Four Queens find Lancelot Sleeping (private collection), an astonishing example of Pre-Raphaelite survival dating from 1954. The subject may look back to Rossettian medievalism but the models could be 1950s film stars - Vivien Lee or Glynis Johns as the Queens, perhaps, certainly Kenneth More as Sir Lancelot. Cowper's first impulse was to steep himself in the early work of the PRB and its associates. This is nowhere more apparent than in St Agnes in Prison receiving from Heaven the shining white Garment (Tate Gallery), a Chantrey purchase of 1905 which borrows freely from Millais, Madox Brown and Rossetti. By the following year, however, Cowper's interest was turning to Rossetti's Venetian manner of the 1860s and he was beginning to evolve a more Renaissance idiom, with an emphasis on rich brocades to create a sumptuous decorative effect. Two rather tentative essays in this style, The Patient Griselda (fig. 2) and Mariana in the South, both exhibited at the RWS in 1906, have been sold in these rooms recently (6 November 1995, lot 113, and 13 June 2001, lot 16). A more significant example, Vanity (fig. 3), followed in 1907. Not only was it Cowper's diploma work, and thus presumably one with which he wished to be closely identified, but we know its visual source. Giulio Romano's haunting portrait of Isabella d'Este at Hampton Court had influenced the young Burne-Jones in 1860, at a moment when, like his master Rossetti, he was moving away from medievalism and looking to sixteenth-century pictures (mostly, but, as this example shows, not exclusively Venetian) for inspiration. The portrait's curiously disturbing mood, the figures who approach so menacingly in the upper right distance, and the serpentine coils of black velvet that cover the sitter's dress, had all helped to form his conception of a uniquely sinister figure in German Romantic literature, Wilhelm Meinhold's Sidonia von Bork (fig. 4). Whether or not Cowper was aware of this (the point had been made in print in 1890 but in a somewhat obscure publication), he followed Burne-Jones in borrowing motifs from the portrait for his picture of Vanity, not only adopting the serpentine patterned dress, but the padded, turban-like head dress, the zazara, for which Isabella d'Este was famous. Rapunzel was painted only a year later than Vanity, and the two pictures have much in common. Both adopt the half-length format, and although Rapunzel lacks the specific references to Giulio Romano's portrait, the emphasis is again on exotic, boldly patterned fabrics. Indeed an opulent sleeve of cream and crimson damask is the picture's dominant motif. The model for the two pictures also seems to be the same, although her demeanor is very different, cool and aloof in Vanity, sexually provocative in Rapunzel. It is as if our heroine has just caught sight of the prince and is going out of her way to vamp him - singing some siren song, displaying her ensnaring coils of hair, and adopting her most coquettish expression. The debt to Rossetti in both pictures needs no emphasis. The focus on a single female figure, seen half-length, leaning on a parapet placed parallel to the picture space, clad in sumptuous robes and favoured with luxuriant tresses - all this is integral to the Venetian or Aesthetic style he evolved in the 1860s. In Vanity, the sitter's string of pearls and silver hand-mirror have many Rossettian precedents, but so equally does the element of music in Rapunzel. One has only to think of The Blue Bower (fig. 5), one of Rossetti's most important works of this period, in which his mistress Fanny Cornforth is seen playing languidly on a Japanese koto or zither. Cowper's earliest essays in the Renaissance style, Griselda (fig. 2) and Mariana, are comparatively gentle and elegiac in mood, but as the voluptuous worldliness celebrated in Rossetti's work in the 1860s strengthened its hold on his imagination, he began, in Vanity and Rapunzel, to express something much more hard and brittle. He changes his model, replacing the pleasant-faced, dark-haired girls found in the former pair of pictures with the more sophisticated beauty represented in the latter. That this new muse had golden hair is surely no accident, since Fanny Cornforth, the presiding genius of Rossetti's Venetian phase, also had locks of this colour. 'A pre-eminently fine woman, with a mass of the most lovely blonde hair, light golden, or "harvest yellow"', was how Rossetti's brother William Michael described her. Moreover, although Cowper's model is a more refined type than Rossetti's handsome, coarse, bedable companion, she too in Cowper's hands projects a sence of animal magnetism and sexual danger. The theme of Vanity was clearly an appropriate one in this context, but in Rapunzel Cowper seems to be so in love with the idea of painting a seductive glamour-puss that he is prepared to twist the story to suit William Morris, who included a version of Grimm's fairytale in his first volume of poetry, The Defence of Guenevere, published in 1858. That he was painting a subject that Morris had already attempted was of course part of his neo-Pre-Raphaelite agenda. Indeed, he quoted from the poem in the RWS catalogue, and there are details in Morris's account, for example the description of the heroine 'bearing within her arms waves of her yellow hair', which he seems to consciously echo. But in general interpretation the poem and the picture would hardly be more different. Morris, surely keeping closer to the original spirit of the story, sees Rapunzel as a beleaguered victim, abused by the witch and pathetically yearning for love. Cowper prefers to make her a knowing and predatory temptress. The very lines he quotes show how far he has moved from the Morrisian concept. It comes from a passage in which Rapunzel, far from playing the aggressive vamp, plaintively describes a vision of the knight who may one day come to her rescue. If any doubt remained that Cowper was currently seduced by the Rossetti of the 1860s, we have only to note the subject of his next important subject picture. There were moments when the appeal that Venetian luxuriance held for Rossetti and his circle - an appeal so different from that of Dantesque piety or Arthurian romance a few years earlier - shaded into a darker preoccupation with the link between beauty and cruelty. This cult of the femme fatale, ultimately to have such enormous repercussions for European Symbolism in general, focused in particular on two images. One was a fictional heroine. Burne-Jones's illustrations (there were in fact a pair of pictures) to Meinhold's spine-chilling gothic romance Sidonia the Sorceress have already been mentioned. Rossetti and Swinburne also admitted to a 'positive passion' for the story of Sidonia, a beautiful, well-born but incurably vicious girl who wreaks havoc in sixteenth-century Pomerania, bewitching the entire ruling house to death or sterility before she is arrested and burnt at the stake. Nor was this a passing craze; as late as 1893 William Morris re-printed Lady Wilde's translation of the book at the Kelmscott Press. The other figure who attracted fascinated attention was historical. Lucretia Borgia was the subject of a watercolour by Rossetti (Tate Gallery), begun in 1860 but extensively reworked some years later. Showing her washing her hands after administering poison to her husband, the picture has close iconographical links with Burne-Jones's contemporary Sidonia von Bork (fig. 4), and the two works, for both of which Fanny Cornforth modelled, are to all intents and purposes twin expressions of the same idea. However, it was Swinburne, always drawn like a magnet to the subject of sadism, who went furthest in fostering a cult of Lucretia, visiting her relics in Milan in 1861, calling her his 'blessedest pet', a member of a 'holy family', and writing both prose and verse in her honour. This is not the place to pursue the most bizarre example of the circle's gleeful delight in flouting conventional morality. The point here is that half a century later Cadogen Cowper deliberately sought to reinvoke the phenomenon. His picture Lucretia Borgia reigns in the Vatican in the Absence of Pope Alexander VI (fig. 6) was begun in 1908 and eventually exhibited at the RA in 1914. It shows Lucretia, once again modelled by the golden-haired beauty who appears in Vanity and Rapunzel, deputising for her father amid scarlet-soutaned cardinals beneath the Pintoricchio frescoes in the Borgia apartments in the Vatican. Within the context of Cowper's current concerns, it would be hard to imagine a more ambitious concept, and indeed, like the earlier St Agnes in Prison, the picture was bought for the Chantrey Bequest.
The Cathedral Scene from 'Faust': Margaret tormented by the Evil Spirit signed and dated '1919' and further signed and dated (on the reverse) oil on canvas 751/4 x 57 in. (190.6 x 144.6 cm.) PROVENANCE Lord Blanesburgh. The Royal Caledonian Schools. Anon. sale; Parke-Bernet, New York, 3 November 1978, lot 243. Anon. SNY. 28/2/90, lot 44 unsold. EXHIBITION London, Royal Academy, 1919, no. 168. London, Wembley, British Empire Exhibition, 1924. Wilmington, Delaware Art Museum, The Pre-Raphaelite Era 1848-1914, 1976, no. 81, illustrated in catalogue. NOTES Frank Cadogan Cowper was born in 1877 at Wicken in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather was rector. He studied art at the St John's Wood Art School and then spent five years in the Royal Academy Schools (1897-1902), before entering the Cotswold studio of Edward Austen Abbey (1852-1911). After six months working with this American muralist who, like his friend John Singer Sargent, had taken up residence in England, Cowper completed his artistic education by studying for a while in Italy. Although he exhibited widely, supporting the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Institute of Painters in Oil Colours, as well as sending to the Paris Salon, Cowper remained loyal to the Royal Academy, where he exhibited regularly from 1899 until his death nearly sixty years later. He became an Associate in 1907 and a full academician in 1934. Throughout his life he painted subject pictures, whether historical, biblical or literary, although as the taste for these declined in the early years of the twentieth century, he turned increasingly to portraits, specialising in glamorous and slightly fey likenesses of young women which vaguely reflected his interest in literary themes. His early work is strongly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites; a striking example is St Agnes in Prison receiving from Heaven the Shining White Garment (Tate Gallery), a Chantrey purchase of 1905 which quotes from Rossetti, Millais and Madox Brown. Comparisons can be made with Byam Shaw and his friend Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, who were his slightly older contemporaries. Unlike the Birmingham Group of painters, some of whom had met Burne-Jones and all of whom certainly regarded Pre-Raphaelitism as a living tradition, these artists looked on the movement as a phenomenon ripe for revival, going back to the early work of the Brotherhood and attempting to reinterpret it in a more academic spirit. By about 1906 Cadogan Cowper was adopting a more Renaissance idiom, often with an emphasis on rich brocades to create a decorative effect. His RA diploma picture, Vanity, exhibited in 1907, the year he became an Associate, is particularly significant since it borrows motifs from Guilio Romano's portrait of Isabella d'Este at Hampton Court, a picture which had inspired the young Burne-Jones half a century earlier. In 1908-10 he contributed to the murals illustrating Tudor history which a group of artists, supervised by his former master, Abbey, painted for the Commons' East Corridor in the Houses of Parliament. Cowper's subject was The New Learning in England: Erasmus and Thomas More visit the children of Henry VII at Greenwich. But his most sumptuous essay in Renaissance subject matter was Lucretia Borgia reigns in the Vatican in the Absence of Pope Alexander VI, another Chantrey picture which was exhibited at the RA in 1914 (fig.1) Cowper's later work undoubtedly deteriorated and is often mawkish in mood, but he is rightly regarded as one of the last exponents of the Pre-Raphaelite tradition. As such he was patronised by Evelyn Waugh and included in the Last Romantics exhibition at the Barbican in 1989. He was in fact responsible for one of the latest pictures in the show, The Four Queens find Lancelot sleeping (private collection), exhibited at the RA no earlier than 1954. In subject, mood and technique, this astonishing example of Pre-Raphaelite survival might belong to the 1900s. Only the types of the figures, which look like 1950s film stars (Vivien Leigh and Glynis Johns as the Queens, perhaps; certainly Kenneth More as Sir Lancelot) give a clue to its real date. Exhibited at the RA in 1919, The Cathedral Scene from 'Faust' is yet another fine example of the 'last romantic' spirit, a quixotic attempt to keep a tradition going long after, by all the laws of historical determinism, it should have been dead and buried. As Cowper no doubt knew, the subject had been a favourite with the young Rossetti, as well as with artists like Delacroix and Von Holst who had fed his youthful imagination. Though five years later than Lucretia Borgia, the picture still has something of its scope, complexity and decorative richness, with the brocaded dress of the kneeling woman to the right striking a particularly characteristic note. Also reminiscent is a picture shown by Cowper at the RA in 1907 and last seen when sold by Christie's on 27 November 1987 (lot 136): How the Devil, disguised as a vagrant troubadour, having been entertained by some charitable nuns, sang to them a song of love. Like The Cathedral Scene from 'Faust', this delightfully camp and tongue-in-cheek performance, even the title of which, in its absurd length, looks back to the Pre-Raphaelite heyday, has an ecclesiastical setting in which deeply shadowed space is pierced by brilliantly coloured stained-glass windows. Indeed,it would be interesting to discover if the windows in our picture, like those in How the Devil..., were based on the famous fifteenth-century glass in the parish church at Fairford in Gloucestershire. This was a part of the country that Cowper knew well from his early apprenticeship with Abbey, and for which he clearly retained a strong affection. He settled there after the Second World War, dying at Cirencester in 1958 at the age of eighty-one.
