Her Eyes Are Homes of Silent Prayer
Located in London, GB
Henrietta Rae Her Eyes are Homes of Silent Prayer 1828-1928 Oil on canvas, signed lower right Image size: 24 x 20 inches (61 x 51cm) Original gilt frame Henrietta Rae’s painting Her Eyes are Homes of Silent Prayer takes its title from a famous line in Section XXXII of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's elegiac poem In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850). It describes Mary of Bethany's profound faith and love for Jesus, highlighting her silent, intense devotion after her brother Lazarus's resurrection. The line signifies deep love surpassing words, focusing on inner spirituality and divine reverence. The work depicts the head and shoulders of a woman in white, turning to look gently up top left of the canvas, her head crowned with ivy and set against a background of Chinese-style inspired motifs. The serene and pensive expression on the woman’s face reflects the subject of devotion described by Tennyson’s poem. Rae often depicted literary figures and this is not the only work by Rae that drew inspiration from Tennyson, with her painting Elaine Guarding the Shield of Lancelot based on the poem Lancelot and Elaine. However, other than the title and the sitter being lost in thought, there is little to identify the subject as one from literature. Victorian art frequently merged with literature to highlight moral, social and emotional themes, however, artists such as Leighton, with whom Rae was acquainted, chose to move away from narrative and design works based purely on aesthetic appeal. Here we see the same focus on beauty over the narrative of religious devotion on which Tennyson’s poem is based. The background of the work is based on Chinese paintings with auspicious clouds (Xiangyun 祥云; 祥雲) scrolls with Chinese-esque characters and two Chinese lion dogs (shíshī 石獅) flanking the woman’s head. In keeping with Chinese tradition, the shíshī are painted as a pair, symbolising the harmony of Yin and Yang. Chinese art had a significant impact on Victorian art, developing from the 18th Century ‘Chinoiserie’. Here, this is combined with ‘Japonisme’, a trend that had been growing from the 1850s, with its influence from Japanese woodblock prints in the flat pattern and vibrant colours. Rae was also influenced by Chinese and Japanese in her earlier work Azaleas (1895), similarly showing the head and shoulders of a woman, gazing up to the left, dressed in a kimono and holding a fan, against a background of an embroidered Chinese dragon. Henrietta Rae (1856 - 1928) Henrietta Rae was born 30th December 1856 in Hammersmith, London, to a civil servant father and musician mother as the youngest of seven children. Though her mother had trained her as a professional concert singer to ensure her future financial self-sufficiency, she began formally studying art aged 13 at the Queen Square School of Art before becoming Heatherley’s School of Art’s first female pupil. After at least five attempts she was awarded a seven-year scholarship to the Royal Academy of Arts and it was there that she met her husband, fellow painter and Academy student Ernest Normand...
19th Century Portrait Paintings
Oil, Canvas
