Though she was thoroughly modern herself, her style was anything but, reflecting the more conservative movement in England that hearkened back to the allegorical styles of Italian Renaissance painting. [http://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/merritt-anna-lea-1844-1930] Anna Lea Merritt: Art locked out. Some artists are known for just one or two of their works which happen to have been added to public collections. Anna Massey Lea Merritt is a good example of a prolific woman painter who is known for a single painting, in the Tate in London, most of whose other paintings seem to have vanished without trace. Love Locked Out is the painting which brought her greatest fame. When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1890, it was so well received that it was purchased for the British national collection, which soon became the National Gallery of British Art, then the Tate Gallery, where it has remained ever since. It was the first painting by a woman artist to be acquired for the collection through the funding of the Chantrey Bequest. Merritt intended this as a memorial to her husband, and hoped one day that she would be able to afford to have its figure cast in bronze as a monument to him. In her later autobiography, she explained that her Love was waiting for the door of death to open and reunite the couple. However, it was more generally interpreted as a symbol of forbidden love. Another reading is that the figure represents Cupid, god of love, who is trying to open the door of a mausoleum, and for love to conquer death.... [https://eclecticlight.co/2016/10/28/anna-lea-merritt-art-locked-out/comment-page-1/] Cupid, the god of love, is shown here trying to force open the door of a mausoleum. Merritt made the picture in memory of her husband, who died within three months of their marriage. Both Merritt and Cupid face the task of conquering death, which they are bound to fail. The depiction of the male nude by a female artist was a contentious issue in the late 19th-century art world. Merritt escaped censure by choosing to paint a child, rather than an adult. Children, she believed, were less conscious of nudity and had ‘no sense of shame before artists’. Gallery label, July 2004 [http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/merritt-love-locked-out-n01578] Merritt avoided the horror of traumatized Victorian prudes with Love Locked Out. Although Queen Victoria herself was a fan of nude artworks, gifting personal favorites to her husband, Merritt’s London audience was not ready to accept this birthday suit. By now well aware of her viewers’ delicate sensibilities, Merritt painted a naked child instead of an adult. Her previous work, Eve Overcome with Remorse, had received criticism: the painting had entirely too much nude torso for 1885. Sure, she’s pictured in the Garden of Eden, but couldn't Eve have scrounged up a turtleneck and hoop skirt? Merritt’s piece is a memorial honoring her husband Henry, who died three months into their marriage. Cupid stands outside a mausoleum, hoping for a reunion with someone he’s lost on the other side. Merritt put her heart into the piece, and her efforts paid off: Love Locked Out was bought by the Tate Gallery, their first acquisition from a female artist. Perhaps they’d realized artists use their brushes to paint, not their genitalia. Merritt’s influence spread— unsurprising, considering she studied in Philadelphia, Dresden, and London. There’s even a probable reference to Love Locked Out in Peter Rabbit, an image of the poor bunny stretched against the door to Mr. McGregor’s farm. There’s nothing like a nod from Beatrix Potter to prove you’ve made your mark! The 1890 Daily Telegraph was less than impressed by this representation of Cupid, labeling the youth a “disrobed urchin” and “truant from a board school.” The harsh critics were particularly incensed by his apparently hideous head of hair. A female artist put down for a hairdo— how very Victorian. One can only imagine the uproar had Merritt painted an undone braid or an oily scalp. Who’s to say that Cupid himself never had a case of dandruff or came home with lice? [https://www.sartle.com/artwork/love-locked-out-anna-lea-merritt] Her painting Eve Overcome with Remorse, is a devastating depiction of the first woman with a half-eaten apple on the ground, her head in her hands, her red hair flowing over her shoulders. It won a medal when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy that same year, but attracted censure because, guess why: Eve was nude, meaning Anna had used a nude model, meaning her delicate femininity had been jeopardised during the painting of such a stunning, iconographic artwork. Not one to be deterred, Anna began work on Love Locked Out in memoriam her love, Henry. This time she escaped censure by painting a child model. Children, she believed, were less conscious of nudity and had “no sense of shame before artists”, meaning the powers that be would see it as the moral choice. Oh, the good old days when painting a naked child was more appropriate than a consenting nude peer. Anna “feared people liked it as a symbol of forbidden love” but the intended interpretation of the work is a contemplation of the insurmountable nature of death. “My love was waiting for the door of death to open,” she wrote, “and [reunite] the lonely pair.” I’ll give you a minute to pick the pieces of your heart up off the floor. While the delicate evocation of the child gives the work its innocent “forbidden love” quality, it also adds to its heartbreaking nature. We see the eternal ache for someone left behind in another world, the endless yearning for that door to open and reveal our loved one. Even the toppled pot at the foot of the stairs and the way he places his hand on the door seems to be a desperate attempt to reach through to someone on the other side. The nude engages the human condition more directly and powerfully than any other subject; it’s a conductor for meditations on mortality, vulnerability and resilience, so if the figure had been a big, muscly male, it would have had an entirely different effect. We might’ve just thought he was a babe, sighed that he existed 100 years before we did, and moved on (we’re are allowed to reduce a man to the state of his body just this once. After all, you need to interpret a work within the context of the era in which was created). The nude child depicts the innocent and raw emotions we feel at the loss of a loved one; a waiting child breaks our hearts. Reading the placard about a wretched, widowed artist painting for her departed husband tears us apart. Learning that she resisted the oppression of her era to paint such an evocative work fills us with pride. [http://theladiesnetwork.com.au/theres-more-to-a-nude-than-meets-the-eye-by-alexandra-english/]