John Collier 1850-1934 was a famed portrait painter and figurative artist of the
Pre-Raphaelite school known for its attention to detail and complex composition. He is noted for his use of light and color. A humanist, skeptic and friend of the Huxley family, (he married two of Thomas Huxley's daughters,) Collier was known in his day as a fashionable portrait painter and is mostly remembered today for his mythological works, including Lady Godiva
below, Tannhäser
above, and Lilith
here.
Ayn Rand, famous for her depiction of strong heroines, held that hero worship is the essence of femininity. But Collier's portraits of women tend rather to make them the object of adoration. I am not presenting here a criticism of Rand's theory but upon first seeing Tannhäuser, with the knight-poet kneeling before Venus, I spontaneously uttered "the essence of femininity."
