Ayrton was a polymath, a Renaissance man whose manifold talents and interests saw him function not only as a renowned and driven painter and sculptor loosely linked to the neo- romantic movement in this country but as an art critic, historian, novelist, broadcaster, theatrical designer and film director, the latter a role that saw him work in Greece for six months on Basil Wright’s The Immortal Land and on the award-winning film Greek Sculpture. The sumptuous picture Cumaean Sybil reinvigorated Ayrton’s interest in landscape painting after a spell working on acrobatic figures in bronze-cast sculpture. This distinctive composition merges the figure and landscape, the foreground of which is populated with goats and gauntly attired peasants recalling El Greco and early Picasso. The thrusting promontory and isthmus invites all manner of association creating metamorphic suggestions of bones or even a crucifix. The deep Mediterranean turquoises of the bay beneath azure Latin skies gives a classical timeless mood to this reposeful, if enigmatic, scene which was painted in his London studio a couple or so years later using large ink and wash drawings originally made on the spot.

The Cumaean Sybil, or Prophetess, appears in the writings of Virgil and Ovid and was widely considered in the Middle Ages to have prophecied the birth of Christ, thus was given prominence by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. In mid May 1956 the artist spent three days at Cumae near the Bay of Naples, where Ayrton was fascinated by the mythic overtones of a location that had been the earliest Greek colony in Italy. Peter Cannon Brookes has written how, “ the view down the isthmus connecting Cumae to the mainland fascinated Ayrton”.1 This memorable view motivated Ayrton who, as Cannon Brookes explains, “produced a mass of drawings of the Acropolis where for him Virgil, Berlioz and the myth of Daedalus came together in a crescendo.”2 Greek myth informed much of his work, particularly the sculpture, and the present picture portrays one of the most significant locations in his entire picture ‘oeuvre’, again provoking Cannon Brookes to declare that, “this ancient site remained from then the most seminal place as genius loci.”3 Ayrton’s overriding interest in the figure reflects both his broader cultural affiliations including the theatre and also represents an academic artistic commitment to the disciplines of the observed life figure. The pen and wash studies culminating in this superb oil painting revealed the artist’s graphic gift of the gab and if they betray a possibly over-easy virtuosity and natural facility then the oil, a worked-up masterpiece ranking among his finest easel pictures, is a complete composition linking a human and animal drama with the captivating landscape behind. P.D.

1. Michael Ayrton: An Illustrated Commentary, Cannon-Brookes, Peter, Pub National Museum of Wales, 1977 2. Ibid 2. Ibid
135 x 152 cms (53.06 x 59.74 in)
P.O.A.