01 painting, The amorous game, Hugh Goldwin Riviere's Garden of Eden, with Footnotes #97

Hugh Goldwin Riviere (1869–1956)

The Garden of Eden, c. 1901

Oil on canvas

H 123 x W 94 cm

Guildhall Art Gallery

The Garden of Eden depicts a young couple walking through Kensington Gardens by Lancaster Gate on a rainy day.

It is a touching scene of two otherwise insignificant people made significant by the love they bear each other.

Their fixed gazes show the depth of their affection that converts, for them, the dreariness of the chilly city into paradise; a transformation underscored by the title’s biblical reference to the paradise of Eden.

The pair are isolated from the bustling realm of the city cabs by the park railings and from the natural world by the low-level boundary rail.

This isolation highlights that their respite from busy urban life is man-made and fleeting.

The pleasing grey and blue tones conveying the scene’s light and atmosphere help the viewer to understand how the otherwise wintry environment might seem beautiful to a couple so overcome with love.

The couple portrayed in The Garden of Eden is Beatrice Langdon-Davies, Rivière’s sister-in-law, and her fiancé Percy Silley, an architect.

The pair were closely chaperoned during the making of the work and were married not long after it was completed. More on this painting

Hugh Goldwin Rivière (1869–1956) was born in Bromley and was the son of the artist Briton Riviere. He was educated at St. Andrews University and then studied at the Royal Academy Schools.

He established a successful society portrait practice.

He exhibited 90 paintings at the Royal Academy,1 at the Royal Hibernian Academy, 24 at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and many others; he was elected to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1900.

Riviere worked and lived in Paris and London and later in Midhurst, Sussex.

His work can be seen in the National Portrait Gallery, London; in total there are 69 of his portraits in public collections. More on Hugh Goldwin Rivière

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