Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra, painted in 1914 and held at the Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum, depicts the queen of Greek tragedy who murdered her husband Agamemnon upon his return from Troy. Clytemnestra was motivated by both personal vengeance — Agamemnon had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia — and political ambition in partnership with her lover Aegisthus. The subject engaged Victorian and Edwardian painters who were drawn to strong female figures from classical mythology, particularly those who challenged patriarchal authority through violence or transgression. Collier's treatment of 1914 was preceded by other notable Victorian treatments: Frederick Leighton, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, and others had explored the Oresteia cycle for its dramatic potential. The timing — painted in the year the First World War began — gives the subject of a returning warrior's betrayal at home an unintended contemporary resonance. The Worcester City Art Gallery's academic realist collection provided a natural institutional home for Collier's classical subject painting.

Oil paint applied with Collier's academic realist technique to historical and classical subject matter. The composition likely draws on the theatrical tradition of representing the queen with an expression of determined resolve or triumph in the moment following or preceding the act.