Edwin Longsden Long, R.A.

Thomas Agnew & Sons, London;

Acquired by the grandmother of the present owner circa 1940s.

Bournemouth, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, on long-term loan, August 2002 – 2012.

Completed circa 1877, the present work is likely to be a portrait study for Queen Esther, 1877–78 (Private collection), a large-scale painting exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1879. Long submitted two paintings to the RA that year - the other being Vashti (Museum and Gallery at Bob Jones University), both illustrating the Queens from the Book of Esther, a story from the Old Testament. The paintings were much admired, however were not exhibited together at Burlington House, much to the dismay of critics; 'These important pictures, in which there is much dignity and beauty of design should be examined together. It is to be regretted they are not in the same gallery.'¹

Long completed two large-scale versions of Queen Esther, the second being commissioned on 13th April 1878 by Alfred Taddy Thomson for the Art Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, still held there today. The replica varies in scale '... and the attendant figures are painted from different models. Esther herself is also painted from life, and as a necessary sequence, varied in expression.'²

This study is likely to have been painted from life and shows a number of similar features to other women painted in his finished compositions, they represent not only his own idea of feminine beauty but also a Victorian idealised representation of Eastern women.

¹ Academy Notes, 1879, p. 62.

² Edwin Long, letter to The Times, 7th June 1879, p. 8.