The Garden of the Hesperides
Ricciardo Meacci (1856 - 1940)
Category
Art / Drawings and watercolours
Date
1894
Materials
Gouache on paper
Measurements
137 x 210 mm (5 3/8 x 8 1/4 in)
Place of origin
Venice
Order this imageCollection
Lamb House, Rye, East Sussex
NT 204158
Summary
Gouache on paper, The Garden of the Hesperides, Riccardo Meacci (1856 - 1940), signed. Pasted on the back are various manuscript accounts relating to the acquisition of the picture, first seen by Henry James in Venice in 1894, and the Garden of the Hesperides. Five nymphs are watering lemon trees which stand in terracotta urns in front of a stream which flows in the foreground. The Garden of the Hesperides, who were daughters of evening, according to legend, lay in the west on the slopes of Mount Atlas.
Provenance
The picture was given by Henry James to his old friend Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840 - 1894), and hung in her house in Venice (Casa Semeticolo). After her death James brought it back to Lamb House, where it remained until he was persuaded to give it away again, this time to Constance Woolson's sister, Clara Benedict. She gave it to him again but asked for its return on his publication of The Outcry (1910). In recent years, by the inventory of 1975, it had returned to Rye for the second time.
Makers and roles
Ricciardo Meacci (1856 - 1940) , artist