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Head of the Queen of Egypt
Kenyon Cox (born Warren, OH 1856-died New York City 1919)
1888
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 18 1/8 x 15 in. (46.1 x 38.2 cm.)
- Culture
- Egyptians
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Allyn Cox
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was still new when Kenyon Cox went there to study art from around the world. Without having to travel abroad, American artists could learn from examples of ancient sculpture in the Met’s collection of plaster casts. Cox copied an Egyptian portrait and, following the fashion for trompe l’oeil, or “fool the eye” painting, he created the illusion of paper tacked onto the sculpture’s base. His poem reads, “O Queen of Egypt with the lovely brow---Taya---thou smiled and to me it seems/The earth has owned before such smile; ‘Twas thou/Visitest Lionardo in his dreams.”
