By: Arthur Hughes (1832–1915)
Created: 1862–65, Collection: Tullie House , Carlisle, Cumbria, United Kingdom Rights: CC-By-SA
Try just folding a cotton blouse or cloth and tucking it into a belt to get the pleated affect. Crimp your hair or for a safer option, plait it while it's wet to get the same effect. Oh, and look lovelorn!
This painting was originally called ‘The Casket’ but Hughes changed it to ‘Madeleine’. A beautiful woman wearing a richly coloured dress lifts a string of beads from a casket. Hughes used his own wife as the model.
This painting was intended as a study for ‘A Music Party’ but Hughes decided to make it into a finished painting. Hughes met John Everett Millais and Holman Hunt when he joined the Royal academy, becoming one of the Pre-Raphaelite group of painters. His first picture, Musidora, was hung at the Royal Academy when he was only 17.
In 1855 Hughes married Tryphena Foord, his model for another work, April Love. When Hughes died in 1915, he left about 700 known paintings and drawings, along with over 750 book illustrations. Following the death of his wife in 1921, their daughter Emily had to move to a smaller house. Because of a lack of space, she had her father’s remaining preparatory sketches, and all his private papers and correspondence, destroyed.
Arthur Hughes was the uncle of the English painter Edward Robert Hughes.
Sources of our description: Wikipedia and Tullie House.
