Herbert James Draper

• 1. Introduction

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  Herbert James Draper was born in 1863 in Covent Garden, London, the seventh child and only son of a fruit merchant. His father, John James Draper, and his mother, Emma, raised him in a household far removed from the mythological seas and ancient shores that would come to define his art. What drove a merchant's son from Covent Garden to paint sirens, water spirits, and the dying son of Icarus? And why, after winning gold medals across Europe, did his name fade so completely that a museum would one day sell his work at auction just to keep the lights on?

• 2. From Covent Garden to Rome

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  Bruce Castle School in Tottenham gave Draper his early education, before he moved on to study at the Royal Academy. His talent drew notice quickly. In 1889, he won the Royal Academy Gold Medal and Travelling Studentship, which funded a series of educational trips to Rome and Paris between 1888 and 1892. Those years abroad shaped the visual vocabulary he would carry for the rest of his life: classical sculpture, Renaissance figure painting, the way southern light falls across bare skin. By the early 1890s he was working as an illustrator, a common path for artists trying to build an income while developing a personal practice. In 1891, he married Ida, born Ida Williams, with whom he would have a daughter named Yvonne. He eventually settled back in London, where his most productive years still lay ahead.

• 3. The Mythology of Flesh and Fate

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  Draper's most productive period began in 1894, focused almost entirely on mythological themes drawn from ancient Greece. The Lament for Icarus, completed in 1898, became his most celebrated work. Two years after it was finished, it won the gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. The Chantrey Trustees purchased it for the Tate Gallery, placing it among the most prominent collections in Britain. His draftsmanship was considered excellent, particularly in his sensuous portrayals of both male and female nudes. Several paintings in particular foregrounded a proud and, in some cases, predatory female sexuality: The Gates of Dawn from 1899, The Water Nixie from 1908, Ulysses and the Sirens from 1909, and The Kelpie from 1913. These were not passive allegorical figures. They were active presences, testing the boundaries of what the Neoclassical mode could hold. He also took on a large architectural commission, decorating the ceiling of the Drapers' Hall in the City of London, a project that required a very different set of skills from easel painting.

• 4. Portraits and the Passing of Taste

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  As public appetite for mythological scenes cooled in his later years, Draper turned increasingly to portraiture. His sitters included the army officer Sir William Edmund Franklyn, the physician Philip Pye-Smith in a commission placed by Guy's Hospital, and the actress June Tripp, whom he painted twice. He also painted Lucius O'Brien, the 15th Baron Inchiquin, along with the Baron's wife and eldest son Donough as a young boy. His own wife, Ida, sat for him as well, and may also have served as the model for his painting Autumn. At a Red Cross charity auction in 1918, near the end of the First World War, his offer to paint a child's portrait drew a bid of 250 pounds, a sign that his reputation still carried weight in certain circles. He had participated in the Royal Academy's annual expositions from 1890 onward, and was proposed for membership four separate times, in 1898, 1903, 1905, and 1920, but was never elected.

• 5. Fading Fame and Later Revival

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  Draper died of arteriosclerosis at the age of 56, at his home on Abbey Road. The illness that took him was one of the body's slow constrictions, fitting perhaps for a career that had narrowed steadily as the art world moved away from the mythological mode he had mastered. In his final years his popularity had faded considerably. The story did not end there, though. A revival of interest in his work eventually emerged on the art market. In 2010, the Royal Cornwall Museum auctioned his painting The Sea Maiden alongside Ernest Normand's Bondage in an effort to stabilize its finances. The decision provoked debate about whether cultural institutions should sell artworks to solve budget problems. That his paintings could still generate that kind of argument, nearly a century after his death, points to something that outlasted the fashions that had once passed him by.