Lot 45: Study for Antigone

Description: Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (1829-1904)
Study for Antigone
signed and inscribed 'Study for/Antigone/F. Sandys.' (centre left)
pencil, black, red and white chalk
19¾ x 15 3/8 in. (50.2 x 39.1 cm.)

Notes: In a letter dated 10 July 1880 Sandys wrote to his agent Charles Augustus Howell about two unfinished drawings that he was working on of Faustine and Antigone saying that 'they are the two best drawings I have ever done...' (MS letter, John Rylands University Library, Manchester).

Antigone was the daughter of the incestuous marriage between King Oedipus of Thebes and his mother Jocasta and was imprisoned in a tower by her uncle King Creon, but liberated by her cousin Haemon. Her tragic story was dramatised by the ancient dramatists Sophocles and Euripides.

Provenance: Theodore Rossi, 1883.
Lt. Col. Edward S. Trafford, Wroxham Hall, 1905.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 13 December 2005, lot 16.

Artist or Maker: Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (1829-1904)

Exhibited: Norwich, Fine Art Exhibition in aid of the new Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, 20-25 August 1883, E. 16, as 'Head of Antigone', lent by Theodore Rossi.
Norwich, Norwich Art Circle, 45th Exhibition, including some work by the late F. A. Sandys, May 1905, no. 72, as 'Head of Antigone', lent by E. S. Trafford.

Literature: B. Elzea, Frederick Sandys, 1829-1904: A Catalogue Raisonné, Suffolk, 2001, p. 260, cat. 4.3., as untraced.