1888, After the Festival

Signed lower left, Millet 1888

Millet based his figure paintings on extensive antiquarian research. He was deeply interested in historical costumes and lectured on the subject in Boston and New York. He began painting works with classical themes about six years before the museum’s picture was painted. Its cool, silver tonalities, classical setting and costume, and the woman’s mood of quiet reverie all derive from Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s (1836-1912) most famous and successful work, A Reading From Homer (1885, Philadelphia Museum of Art), which Millet saw in London. It is not clear if the letters he depicted in the back of the marble bench were intended to be read as CAE. C[?]O., an abbreviated form of Caesar Consul.

Paul D. Schweizer  MWPAI

It can be noted that Alma-Tadem was a close friend of Millet’s and a regular guest with his wife, at Russell House,  1885-1900, in Broadway England and clearly influenced several of the Greek/Roman paintings that Millet completed dudring this time.  mgs