The Penitent Magdalene

The Penitent Magdalene was one of the few religious subjects Hayter undertook, the English portrait painter being far more at home with political and aristocratic sitters. Painted around 1832 and now at Weston Park in Shropshire, the work shows Hayter engaging with a Continental devotional tradition that stretched back through Titian and Correggio. The Bridgeman family at Weston Park assembled a significant art collection during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Hayter applies his portrait painter’s skill to the Magdalene’s face, rendering penitent emotion with convincing naturalism. The flesh tones are warmer and more sensuous than his typically cooler palette for male subjects.