Madeleine, by Arthur Hughes (1832-1915). 1862-1865. Oil on panel. 17¾ x 9 inches (44.5 x 23 cm). Collection of Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle, accession no. 1949.125.29. Image courtesy of Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery reproduced for purposes of non-commercial academic research.
While this painting began as a study for the mother in A Music Party, Hughes subsequently decided to make it into a finished painting in its own right. It was originally entitled The Casket and was exhibited under that title at The Winter Exhibition at Ernest Gambart's French Gallery in 1865, no. 59. Instead of the lady holding a lute the painting now features a beautiful young woman, modelled on his wife Tryphena Foord, lifting a string of red coral beads from a casket. She is wearing a purple gown, Hughes's favourite colour.
Eduardo De Maio has explained how changing the title of this work from The Casket to Madeleine has changed the meaning of what he thinks Hughes initially intended to portray:
The original title focuses on the element of the casket painted by Hughes in a medieval style, from which the female figure protagonist of the painting extracts a rich coral necklace. The casket can be considered a possible reference to the plot of Faust (1831) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In the drama, in fact, Faust asks Mephistopheles, the devil, to help him seduce the young Marguerite, with whom he is deeply in love. Mephistopheles will thus find a casket full of jewels in the young woman's room that will then become central to the plot of the work. The substitution of the title from The Casket to Madeleine, however, not only shifts the emphasis from the small casket to the female figure, but substantially changes the meaning of the work itself. Considering the definitive title of the painting, Madeleine, and the element of the coral necklace, it is possible to read the work as a Christian icon: Magdalene, with her characteristic long hair, holds coral in her hands, a Christian symbol of blood and therefore of Christ's passion. As with other paintings of the same years (see April Love (1855-1856), Hughes used his own wife as a model, highlighting her distinctive features, from the showy blond hair that falls on the shoulders of the delicate profile of the woman, absorbed as she admires the coral necklace she holds in her right hand. Hughes's chromatic choices, in particular the juxtaposition between the bright pink of the coral and the greenish background, and between the yellow ochre of the Magdalene's hair and the purple dress, a true distinguishing sign of Hughes's art, must be read in the contemporary climate of the most up-to-date studies of the properties of colours, which in England found fertile ground in the Pre-Raphaelite movement and in Hughes one of the major exponents. [516]
Contemporary Review of the Painting
When the painting was exhibited at The Winter Exhibition at the French Gallery in 1865, F. G. Stephens wrote in The Athenaeum: "Mr. Hughes sends a charming little picture, styled The Casket (59), a delicately-painted figure of a lady examining a necklace which she has taken from a coffer in her hand; the expression is subtly sweet; the shadows appear a little hot" (618).
Related Material
Bibliography
De Maio, Eduardo. Preraffaelliti Rinascimento Moderno. Forli: Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi di Forlì, 2024. cat. VI.6. 516.
Madeleine. Art UK. Web. 10 March 2025.
Roberts, Len. Arthur Hughes His Life and Works. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club, 1997, cat. 58.3. 157.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. The Winter Exhibition." The Athenaeum No. 1984 (4 November 1865): 618-19.
Created 10 March 2025