Daughters of Eve. 1883. Oil on canvas. 73 x 39 inches (185.5 x 99 cm). Private collection. Ex. Sotheby's. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Leslie exhibited this painting at the Royal Academy in 1883, no. 305, which shows three girls picking apples, hence the facetious title suggestive of the first temptation. When the painting sold at Sotheby's in 2007 Christopher Newall described the work in this way:
George Dunlop Leslie's painting Daughters of Eve shows three girls who seem momentarily to have paused in their task of hanging out laundry to pick apples. One stands on a chair, and passes fruit to her sister. A younger girl rests by the trunk of the tree with a half-eaten apple in hand. The subject may be assumed to have been set in the garden of the artist's house near Wallingford on the River Thames. Leslie was passionately interested in plants and gardening, and many of his paintings have horticultural themes or are set in gardens. The girls wear dresses of a Regency pattern, a style that had been adopted by members of the so-called St John's Wood Clique of painters... The sense of period is further supported by the Windsor chair upon which the girl stands, and the white-painted wooden fence in the background. Leslie's conscious avoidance of the contemporary made a powerful appeal to the late Victorian sense of nostalgia for an earlier age, which was seen as more aesthetically pleasing and somehow less threatening. Daughters of Eve recalls the words of Christina Rossetti's poem An Apple-gathering, which symbolises lost love and the changing of the seasons played out through the activities of those bringing in the apple harvest. September heralds the decline of the year and by association, the loss of love;
In brisk wind of September,
The heavy-headed fruits
Shake upon their bending boughs
And drop from the shoots;
Some glow golden in the sun,
Some show green and streeked,
Some set forth a purpose bloom,
Some blush rosy-cheeked."
When it was shown at the Royal Academy in 1883 Henry Blackburn in his Academy Notes simply described it as "a sunny English orchard; green, brown and white dresses" (32). A reviewer for The Art Journal discussed the painting's subject: "'One pretty girl gathering apples, another holding open her apron to catch them as they fall, and the third and smallest busily munching her share" (218). F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum thought this work not up to Leslie's usual standards: "Among the able painters who have not exerted themselves very much this year is Mr. G. D. Leslie, whose Daughters of Eve (No. 305), girls gathering apples and hanging clothes to dry, is hardly worthy of his reputation. The principle group is prettily designed, and the actions are not less acceptable because they are rather dainty than rustic. The figures would be better for revision, and the painting throughout might well be carried further. [607]
Frank Dicksee in 1925 chose the same title of Daughters of Eve for his painting of two girls picking cider apples in an orchard. In view of its subject and title it is certainly possible that he was influenced in his choice of composition by Leslie's earlier painting.
Bibliography
Blackburn, Henry. Academy Notes. Issue IX, London: Chatto and Windus, 1883, 32.
"The Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Art Journal New Series XXII (1883): 217-20
Newall, Christopher. "Victorian and Edwardian Art." London: Sotheby's, (11 December 2007): lot 13
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. The Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 2898 (12 May 1883): 606-08.
Created 10 August 2023