Love Locked Out
Love Locked Out is an oil painting by Anna Lea Merritt first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1890 and which became the first painting by a woman artist acquired for the British national collection through the Chantrey Bequest.
Love Locked Out | |
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Artist | Anna Lea Merritt |
Completion date | 1890 |
Type | genre art |
Medium | oil paint |
Subject | Cupid |
Dimensions | 115.6 cm × 64.1 cm (45.5 in × 25.2 in) |
Location | Tate Britain, London |
Accession | N01578 |
Website | TATE online |
The painting of Cupid standing before a locked door was well received when it was shown. Merritt's first painting of a nude model, Eve Overcome with Remorse, had met with unfavourable reviews after winning a medal at the Royal Academy in 1885.[1] But this painting, which was created as a memorial to her husband, was received favourably, though it again featured a nude model - and this time the model was male, a controversial subject for women artists at that time.[1] Merritt escaped censure by choosing a child to portray Cupid, rather than an adult, such as her Eve had been.[2]
As a notable work by an American painter, Love Locked Out was included in the 1905 book Women Painters of the World.[3] The title also became the title for the compilation of Anna Lea Merritt's memoires, published by Galina Gorokhoff in 1982.[4]
References
- Clarke, Meaghan E. (2004). "Merritt, Anna Massey Lea (1844–1930)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/63111. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- Love Locked Out on the website of Tate Britain
- Women painters of the world, from the time of Caterina Vigri, 1413–1463, to Rosa Bonheur and the present day, pp. 77 & 139, by Walter Shaw Sparrow, The Art and Life Library, Hodder & Stoughton, 27 Paternoster Row, London, 1905
- "Love locked out: the memoirs of Anna Lea Merritt with a checklist of her works", edited by Galina Gorokhoff, Museum of Fine Arts of Boston, 1982