| "Company of Thieves" 48" x 64" Oil on Canvas Synopsis: Lowe’s inspiration for this work, the subject of Fuseli's The Thieves Punishment, c.1772, and William Blake’s The Punishment of the Thieves, c. 1824-27, illustrate a scene from Dante’s Inferno in which thieves are eternally consumed and transformed by serpents. Lowe’s stylized free copy combines the original works in a harmonious splice |
| between their overlapping compositions. The central figurative form of all white unblemished attire, from George Romney’s A Boy, Called William Pitt, c.1778, meant for a costume of 'innocence' a quality never again to be adorned by these misshapen marploters. This juxtaposition intensifies the essence of its referenced parts in a dramatic contrast of painting styles between Romantic portrait painting and the anthropomorphic forms of Mannerist drawings. |
