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Drawing by R.H. Ives Gammell: [Venus Rising], Study for The Hound of the Heavens, Panel XI, represented by Childs Gallery

R.H. Ives Gammell

American (1893-1981)

[Venus Rising], Study for The Hound of the Heavens, Panel XI “Would Clash It To”, c. 1940
Graphite and white chalk
29×19IN.CM

In fine condition aside from tape along upper and lower sheet corners.

Provenance: R.H.Ives Gammell; to Thomas Dunlay; to Childs Gallery.

Elizabeth Ives Hunter, Executive Director of the Cape Cod Museum of Art, identified the drawing as a study from a model which reappears in panel XI of Gammell’s sequence based on Frances Thompson’s poem “The Hound of Heaven”. She appears in the upper right part of the painting – a Venus rising from the sea foam and is a symbolic representation of the Jungian concept of anima or the female opposite of the male individual who can be both the loving and nurturing mother or the vicious, destructive, manipulative villain.

Panels X and XI of the sequence are linked together-based on the same line of poetry but with X keyed to the first half of the line “The gust of His approach……” and XI being keyed to the second half “would clash it to.”

In panel X the protagonist is reaching for a beautiful woman carried through the sky on a series of vales – he is paying so much attention to her that he has dropped the key that he was carrying and is oblivious to the fates cutting the thread of life and the angry crowd forming below him. By panel XI the protagonist has slipped under the sea and is being dragged downwards while the lovely woman rises from the foam above him.

Signature: unsigned
$5,000