The stories behind the paintings

Disney taught us a kiss and a song. John Collier's The Sleeping Beauty (1921) offers neither. A princess lies in a room that feels sealed by time: roses climb the bedposts, dust seems almost visible in the air, and the stillness is not peace so much as arrest. This is fairy tale as problem picture - a late Pre-Raphaelite mood piece that asks what it costs to wait forever for a rescue that may never feel like waking. John Collier, The Sleeping Beauty , 1921. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Quick facts Artist: The Hon. John Collier (1850-1934) Date: 1921 Medium: Oil on canvas (44 x 56 in / 111.7 x 142.2 cm) Collection: Private collection Notable fact: Shown at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, in 1921; sold at Christie's, London, in 2008 for pounds 433,250 Not Disney's Castle Perrault and the Brothers Grimm already mixed wonder with threat. Collier keeps the threat and drains the cartoon brightness. The sleeping fig...

John Collier could paint a cabinet minister as a picture of power at rest, and then stage a myth that felt like a moral trap. A naked woman on a white horse riding through an empty street; a serpent wound around a pale body; a chemist’s shop where a jealous lover buys poison. Collier (1850–1934) was one of the most successful portrait painters of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and one of its most unsettling storytellers. His paintings look calm and polished. What they show rarely is. John Collier, Lady Godiva, c. 1897. Oil on canvas. Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get Lady Godiva as a print → Quick facts Artist: The Hon. John Collier (1850–1934) Born: 27 January 1850, London Training: Slade School of Fine Art; Paris with Jean-Paul Laurens; Munich Academy Known for: society portraits, mythological and historical scenes, “problem pictures” Famous works: Lilith (1887), The Death of...

She does not look at you. She looks at the snake. A pale nude figure stands against a dark green thicket, her long golden hair falling over her shoulders, while a huge serpent coils around her body from ankle to throat and rests its head on her shoulder. John Collier's Lilith (1889) turns the first woman of Jewish legend, Adam's rebellious first wife, into one of the most memorable images of late Victorian painting. It hangs today in the Atkinson Art Gallery in Southport, on the north-west coast of England. John Collier, Lilith, 1889. Oil on canvas. The Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → Quick facts Artist: John Collier (1850–1934) Date: 1889 Medium: Oil on canvas Size: 194 × 104 cm Collection: The Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport (transferred from Bootle Art Gallery in the 1970s) Notable fact: Collier's Lilith embraces the serpent of Eden, merging two figures that legend had long link...