Love Locked Out

Love Locked Out
Artist Anna Lea Merritt
Completion date 1890
Type genre art
Material oil paint
Subject Cupid
Dimensions 145 cm × 930 cm (57 in × 370 in)
Location Tate Britain, London
Accession N01578
URL TATE online

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.

Eve Overcome with Remorse, 1885

The painting was well received when it was shown, though her 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] 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] She escaped censure by choosing a child, 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

  1. 1.0 1.1 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.)
  2. Love Locked Out on the website of Tate Britain
  3. 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
  4. "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