18 Works, Today, May 20th. is Edward Armitage’s day, his story, illustrated with footnotes #138
Herod’s Birthday Feast, c. 1868
Oil on canvas
H 155 x W 277 cm
Guildhall Art Gallery
Whether or not the dancer is Salome performing the dance of seven veils in order to secure the beheading of John the Baptist, any image of dancing in the presence of Herod brings to mind the extraordinarily popular fin-de-siecle subject of Salome, the epitome the sexual, destroying woman for the Decadents of the ’90s and those influenced by them. This well-covered dancer strikes one as the opposite of the nude woman who appears in Pierre Bonnaud’s Salome or in Oscar Wilde’s play and Beardsley’s illustrations for it. More on this painting
Edward Armitage RA (20 May 1817–24 May 1896) was an English Victorian-era painter whose work focused on historical, classical and biblical subjects.
Armitage’s art training was undertaken in Paris, where he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in October 1837. He studied under the history painter, Paul Delaroche, who at that time was at the height of his fame. Armitage was one of four students selected to assist Delaroche with the fresco Hémicycle in the amphitheatre of the Palais des Beaux-Arts, when he reputedly modelled for the head of Masaccio. Whilst still in Paris, he exhibited Prometheus Bound in 1842, which a contemporary critic described as ‘well drawn but brutally energetic’…