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Creator:
James Ward, 1769–1859
Title:

Venus Rising from her Couch

Date:
1828
Medium:
Oil on panel
Dimensions:
30 x 25 3/4 inches (76.2 x 65.4 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:

Signed and dated, lower right: "J WARD [monogram] R. A. 1828~"

Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1981.25.662
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Subject Terms:
animals | back | beauty | bed | curtains | doves | goddess | love | morning | mountains | nude | peace | portrait | religious and mythological subject | Roman | swans | urn | vase | woman
Associated People:
Venus
Access:
Not on view
Note: To make an appointment to see this work, please contact the Paintings and Sculpture department at ycba.paintings@yale.edu. Please visit the Paintings and Sculpture collections page on our website for more details.
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:1124
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This panel was painted as a pendant to Diana at the Bath, which is shown nearby. Both paintings reveal James Ward’s admiration for the old masters, particularly Titian and Peter Paul Rubens; but in their mannerist distortions, flesh vitality, and rich sensuality, these paintings also recall the work of Henry Fuseli, who had died a few years earlier. When Venus Rising from her Couch was shown at the Royal Academy exhibition at Somerset House in 1830, one critic remarked that despite its mythological subject matter, the painting “possesses not one redeeming virtue to atone for its indelicacy.” Another critic echoed these sentiments and further protested, “Why are the modest and lovely young females who daily grace the rooms of Somerset House with their presence, to have their feelings outraged, and blushes called into their cheeks, by a work like this,—placed too in a situation in which it cannot possibly escape near notice?”

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016

Connections (Yale Center for British Art, 2011-05-26 - 2011-09-11) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

James Ward (Yale Center for British Art, 2004-05-21 - 2004-08-22) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 236, 237, N590.2 A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Edward John Nygren, James Ward, RA (1769-1859) : Papers and Patrons, Volume of the Walpole Society, vol. 75, 2013, pp. 344-45, no. 402, N12 W35 +A1Oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]


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