Lot 2561 Dα

John Collier was born in London as the son of a respected judge and lawyer who was raised to nobility to become Lord Monkswell. Collier was educated at Eton and at first considered a career as a diplomat before deciding to work as an artist. He was trained at the Slade School of Art under Sir Edward Poynter, in Paris under Jean-Paul Laurens, and in Munich. His supporters also included Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Sir John Everett Millais. The latter greatly encouraged Collier in his career, and his influence can be observed in many of the younger artist's works. Collier painted over 1,000 paintings throughout his career and exhibited 160 pieces at the Royal Academy.
Collier was a talented portraitist and depicted many of the most important personalities of his era, including Charles Darwin, George Bernard Shaw, and Lord Kitchener. Although portrait painting was a very lucrative line of business for him and Collier became one of the 24 founding members and later vice president of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, he was primarily known for large-format narrative pieces such as the present canvas. The work depicts Circe, the seductive enchantress from Homer's Odyssey.
The back of the stretcher bears a label of the Royal Commission for the Chicago Exhibition of 1893 as well as several shipping labels.