Study for 'Eve Triumphant'

George Frederic Watts RA (1817 - 1904)

RA Collection: Art

A black chalk study of a full-length female nude for 'Eve Triumphant' also known as 'The Creation of Eve' and 'She Shall be Called Woman'. Watts worked on various versions of the Eve theme from the 1860s to the 1890s and a finished trilogy, showing the creation, temptation and repentance of Eve, is at Tate Britain. This drawing relates most closely to the version (now in a private collection) in which Eve's body is clearly visible. The version in the Tate Gallery is based on the same figure but is much less distinct and wreathed in clouds. The composition was intended to show the first woman immediately after her creation, rising upward 'in the glory of her innocence'.

Watts frequently employed a method of partial abstraction, progressing from detailed drawings of an individual to a generalised painting of a universal figure. This process was furthered on the canvas as Watts habitually reworked the same canvases over a period of decades in his efforts to portray what he called 'the general truth of nature'.

Further reading:

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/watts-she-shall-be-called-woman-n01642

Andrew Wilton and Robert Upstone eds., The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones & Watts - Symbolism in Britain 1860-1910, exhib. cat., London, 2000, cat no. 124, pp. 256-267