Arthur Frank Mathews, (1860-1945)

Sea Centaur and Mermaid 22 x 26in framed 31 x 35in

Sea Centaur and Mermaid
unsigned
oil on canvas
22 x 26in
framed 31 x 35in

Provenance
Arthur and Lucia Mathews, San Francisco, California.
Harold Joseph Wagner (executor of the Arthur Mathews estate), San Francisco, California.
The Estate of Michael di Cosola, San Francisco, California.
Private collection, San Francisco, California, by descent from the above.

According to scholar Harvey L. Jones, Arthur F. Mathews' most inventive compositions involve the sea. Indeed, Sea Centaur and Mermaid combines two of his most prized motifs: a stunning, coastal seascape and mythological allegory.

His nascent interest in allegory most likely formed through exposure to Symbolist art during his studies in Paris in the 1880s. He discovered the art of the French Symbolist painter and muralist Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898) and Swiss Symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901), both of whom cast a lasting influence on Mathews' work.

Mathews' mythologies were primarily imaginary, with the specific event or tale remaining vague or unknown. Sea Centaur and Mermaid depicts a sea-centaur, also called a Triton in Greek mythology, who bears the torso of a man, the body of a bull, and the tail of a fish. While Tritons are usually depicted as gentle, the present work displays a triton exhibiting the virile, savage, and lascivious attributes of a centaur, embodying his role as a demigod of the sea.