Lot 173: GUY HEAD 1753-1800

IRIS CARRYING WATERS OF THE RIVER STYX TO OLYMPUS FOR THE GODS TO SWEAR BY

measurements note
195 by 146cm., 76¾by 57½ in.

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Anon. sale, Christie's, 23rd November 1979, lot 141

EXHIBITED

Royal Academy, 1800, no.229

LITERATURE

Ann Gunn, 'Guy Head's 'Venus and Juno', Burlington Magazine, August 1991, illustrated fig.34

NOTE

'...And there dwells the goddess loathed by the deathless gods, terrible Styx, eldest daughter of back-flowing Ocean. She lives apart from the gods in her glorious house vaulted over with great rocks and propped up to heaven all round with silver pillars. Rarely does the daughter of Thaumas, swift- footed Iris, come to her with a message over the sea's wide back. But when strife and quarrel arise among the deathless gods, and when any of them who live in the house of Olympus lies, then Zeus sends Iris to bring in a golden jug the great oath of the gods from far away, the famous cold water which trickles down from a high and beetling rock'

So wrote Hesiod in his Theoginis (ll. 775-806). Any immortal that pours the waters of Styx and swears the oath is bound to tell the truth. The punishment for breaking such an oath is one year without ambrosia, nectar or air. Thus the water of Styx often was the last device for Zeus to restrain the lying gods and goddesses, especially his wife Juno, who, according to Homer's Iliad, was often made to swear by the waters of the underworld river.

It is not known whether this subject, Iris, was of particular symbolic significance to Guy Head, but we cannot exclude this possibility, as the painter chose it for its morçeau de reception at the Roman Accademia di San Luca in 1793, a year after his election there as accademico di merito. The present lot is an author's replica of the Accademia painting and several later copies of the same composition by followers are known.

Iris represents the idealised type of female beauty so favoured by the neo classicists. The same combination of Grecian features, long-limbed bodies and voluptuous, sensual flesh, dark blonde hair and full lips repeats throughout Head's oeuvre and can be recognised in his other paintings, namely Venus giving her girdle to Juno (Castle Museum, Notingham), Echo flying from Narcissus (Institute of Arts, Detroit), Oedipus and Antigone (Galleria dell'Accademia di Belle Arti, Parma). The composition of the flying Iris is Head's tribute to Guido Reni, and it seems unquestionably to derive from the wind-blown robe from Reni's Aurora, the fresco in the Casino Rospigliosi, which Head is known to have copied. The diagonal composition of the figure was probably derived from another Reni painting, Fortuna, a copy of which was in the Academy's collection, and was much admired by Head.

In his own turn, Guy Head was much admired by his foreign contemporaries and this recognition materialised in academic posts and numerous copies of his paintings. Born in Carlisle in 1760, Head received his first lessons in painting from private teachers and continued his education at the Royal Academy Schools, where he appears to have become a protégé of Reynolds. Between 1781 and 1786 he travelled in Flanders, Germany and Holland and by 1788 has settled in Rome, having already become a member of the Academies of Kassel, Florence, Bologna and Parma. Later, in 1792 he was received into Academia di San Luca and in 1796 he was appointed to direct Academy's external affairs. In 1798 Head evacuated from Italy with Nelson's fleet and returned to England, where he exhibited works at Royal Academy. His death in 1800 was followed by several posthumous sales of his paintings.