The theme of Diana and her Nymphs was often depicted by Poelenburch. In our work the discovery of Callisto has been included. Stemming from Ovid’s Metamorphoses Diana, identifiable by the crescent moon worn across her brow, is seated on a rock with three of her nymphs drying themselves after their bath. A huntress, Diana’s attributes of a bow and arrow are cast aside in the mid-ground. She was also the personification of Chastity and the nymphs were expected to follow her example. Callisto, one of Diana’s nymphs, was seduced by Jupiter and became pregnant. Depicted alongside the pool in the center is the discovery of her condition by another nymph. Afterwards as punishment Diana changed Callisto into a bear and set her dogs upon her. At the last moment Jupiter rescued her, sending her into the heavens and transformed her into a star. Poeleburch’s emphasis in these works was not on the moral but the sensual. Placed in a sun-filled Arcadian landscape dominated by gently rolling hills the viewer’s eye is intended to linger on the voluptuousness of its inhabitants The panel presents a sweep of flesh from the emerging bathing nymphs in the far left, to the mid-ground scene that culminates with Diana and her acolytes on a hill in the right foreground. Blonds, redheads, brunettes and raven-haired beauties are all represented. Supple skin is nicely contrasted against silky wraps that provide scant covering. Befitting her stature as a goddess, Diana is made the most alluring with alabaster skin that shines forth like a beacon of light. These types of scenes were especially popular; eventually morphing into generalized themes of nymphs or shepherdesses bathing, and became the mainstay of Poelenburch’s production. The tranquility of his settings, accentuated by vibrant color, combined with invisible brush-work that was finished in a high-gloss veneer proved irresistible, earning him the title of the “leading light of the first generation of Dutch Italianate painters”.
When Dr. Waagen visited Temple Newsam he declared “The most important pictures are united in one of the largest and grandest drawing-rooms that I have yet seen in England.” Just outside of Leeds, Temple Newsam is a Tudor country house that has been described as “the Hampton Court of the North” in possession of the Ingram family since 1622. Although we do not know when Poelenburch’s Diana and her Nymphs with the Discovery of Callisto entered the collection, it was certainly there by 1868 as documented by the Leeds’ National Exhibition of Works of Art. Its next recorded owner was Viscount Halifax, who during the Royal Academy exhibition of 1938 to which he had lent the Poelenburch, was appointed the Foreign Secretary following the resignation of Anthony Eden in February. He held the post until 1941, after which time he was sent to Washington D.C. as Ambassador.
Hugo Charles Meynell Ingram, Esq. (1783-1869)
Temple Newsam by 1868
Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, Viscount Halifax (1881-1959), London, 1938
Private collection, New York
Leeds, National Exhibition of Works of Art, 1868, no. 817 (lent by H.C. Meynell Ingram, Esq.)
London, Royal Academy, Exhibition of 17th Century European Art, January 3 – March 12, 1938 (lent by Viscount Halifax)
Waagen, G.F., “Temple Newsam” in Treasures of Art in Great Britain, volume III, John Murry, London, 1854, p. 332 (probably one of “several” pictures mentioned by Polenburg)
National Exhibition of Works of Art at Leeds, 1868 – Official Catalogue, Executive Committee, Leeds, 1868, unpaginated, no. 817
Graves, Algernon, A Century of Loan Exhibitions 1813 – 1912, volume II, Algernon Graves, London, 1913, p. 914, no. 817
Catalogue of the Exhibition of 17th Century Art in Europe, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1938, p. 113, no. 287