"In the Wizard's garden" by George Dunlop Leslie

In the Wizard's Garden by George Dunlop Leslie

Dennis T. Lanigan

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In the Wizard's garden

George Dunlop Leslie (1835-1921)

Oil on canvas

c. 1904

42 1/2 x 31 3/4 inches (110.5 x 80.7 cm)

Collection Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwehtu, New Zealand

Presented to the Canterbury Society of Arts by W Harris 1907 and gifted to the Gallery in 1932

This image remains copyright Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu and must not be reproduced for any purpose. Click on the image to enlarge it.

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In the Wizard's Garden was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1904, no. 66, the last time he exhibited at the Academy. Later it was shown at the Christchurch International Exhibition in New Zealand in 1906–07. Its subject appears rather unfathomable but according to Leslie it portrays a young medieval noblewoman who seeks a wizard's guidance to discover the secrets of the future. The subject was based on a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rappaccini's Daughter, a macabre tale set in medieval Padua. An elderly doctor Giacomo Rappaccini and his beautiful daughter Beatrice live in a house with a garden filled with poisonous plants that he cultivates. Leslie's own garden in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, served as the inspiration for the painting's setting. In the painting the young noblewoman dressed in a red gown stares straight ahead at the viewer while in the background the mysterious black-clad figure of the wizard with a book under his right arm can be seen entering the walled garden through a gate. The garden is bleak with no flowering plants, perhaps reflective of the eerie theme of the painting.

This work is unusual for 1904 because it harkens back to Leslie's early work while he was still under the spell of Pre-Raphaelitism. Interestingly the influence does not appear to be either artists of the first or second phases of Pre-Raphaelitism but the work of younger artists like John Byam Shaw and Eleanor Fortesque-Brickdale.

Bibliography

Trumble. Angus. Love & Death. Art in the Age of Queen Victoria. Adelaide: Art Gallery of S62062outh Australia, 2007. 33.

CreatedLast modified 8 September 2013