As the wedding season gets under way, this week’s picture is a charmingly theatrical marriage portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Montgomery Sisters: Three Ladies Adorning a Term of Hymen. Under a canopy of foliage, somewhere in the grounds of a verdant country estate, three young ladies are decorating an unusual piece of garden statuary. The stone figure or “term” which they are decking so lavishly with garlands is a representation of Hymen, god of fertility and wedlock. He holds a blazing torch, to signify the igniting of amorous passion. Hymen’s other principal distinguishing characteristic, an erect male member, has been decorously veiled by flowers.
The daring idea of depicting three impeccably well bred sisters enacting a Priapean ritual appears to have been thought up by the artist in collaboration with his patrons. In May 1773 the Right Honourable Luke Gardiner commissioned the painting in a letter, which was handed to Reynolds in person by Gardiner’s fiance:
“Dear Sir Joshua,
This letter will be delivered to you by Miss Elizabeth Montgomery, who intends to sit to you with her two sisters, to compose a picture, of which I am to have the honour of being the possessor. I wish to have their portraits together at full length, representing some emblematical or historical subject; the idea of which, and the attitudes which will best suit their forms, cannot be so well imagined as by one who has so eminently distinguished himself by his genius and poetic invention… you will, I hope, find that these young ladies, from their high opinion of your powers, will not spare their time, in order to render this picture in every particular a most superior production. I shall add the honour you will acquire in conveying to posterity the resemblances of three...
