ANNA LEA MERRITT | LUNA

Galina Gorokhoff (ed.), Love Locked out - The Memoires of Anna Lea Merritt with a Checklist of her Works, n.d., p.246

This painting is probably identifiable as Luna, a fanciful portrait of the artist's friend and neighbour Juliet Morse in the guise of the Roman Goddess of the Moon. Her husband Sydney Morse was a wealthy solicitor and collector of modern art for their home 14 Airlie Gardens in Campden Hill - their chalk portrait of John Everett Millais by William Holman Hunt is now at the National Portrait Gallery. Luna was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1889 with Merritt's most famous picture Love Locked Out (Tate). Both pictures are examples of Merritt's Symbolist work, similar in style to that of George Frederick Watts.