Bondage, by Ernest Normand (1890)

Though perhaps not the ideal picture to hang over your breakfast nook, I must confess that I have a sneaking admiration for the artist’s bravura sensuality and over-the-top sensibility.

Not much is known about artist Ernest Normand (1857 - 1923).   He was born in London, educated in Germany and returned to England in 1876.  Like many artists, he had some trouble finding his own way in the world – he started by working in his father’s office; but art was his true calling and Normand attended evening classes in art at St. Martin's and spent his spare time drawing antiques in the British Museum.

Normand entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1880 when he was 23, studying there for three years.  He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1881, where he continued to exhibit till 1904.  In 1884 he married the painter Henrietta Rae (1859-1928).  Rae is perhaps better remembered now, largely a result of our consuming post-feminist search for significant women painters. 

Ernest and Henrietta traveled to Paris in 1890 to study at the Académie Julian with Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant. The couple would later live in Holland Park, where they became something like the darlings of the older artistic community (Leighton and Millais, for example), who visited them frequently. 

Normand was clearly influenced by the Orientalism that swept the 19th Century – a focus on the remote and exotic fostered by adventurer-artists who traveled the world in search of the foreign, the picturesque and the beautiful.  Though not nearly as adventurous (or as tasteful) as other Orientalists, Normand does have a certain Cecil B. DeMille sensibility that is a great deal of fun.

Bondage, painted in 1890, is so wonderfully prurient that I find it irresistible.  An enthroned and rather bored looking potentate consults with one of his many slaves, as the slave trader literally unwraps his new sale item.  The undraped slave stands not only proud in her nudity, but brazen.  A seated slave with a dulcimer looks on, and, to the far left, other slaves and court lackeys gaze with approval or interest.  All of the slaves are of a darkish hue except for the two on the lower right-hand corner, which are the real focus of the picture.  The blonde female slave shares none of the new slave’s carnality, and strives to conceal and protect her body.  Her daughter is beside her, hiding in her mother’s back and hair.  Despair is written upon their faces, and their sense of peril is palpable.

Of course, Normand creates a storybook sense of the Orient.  Buildings reminiscent of the Ancient World are palely depicted in the background, as are exotic trees.  The scene-of-action is wonderfully ‘foreign,’ complete with fountain, tiger rug, carved thrones and elaborately draped Oriental clothes, all taking place under a golden canopy.  Most wonderful of all is the magnificent carved lion, something of a Normand signature piece which we will see in another picture.

The subtext here is not all the sub – in fact, the message is clear: various barbarians of the East are worst than decadent, and they want our women.

More Normand tomorrow!