Diana stands behind the horses, against the great, golden moon--a
radiant halo. She has just unloosed an arrow from her bow. Her
draperies are of indefinite color, the rose and lilac and amber
of sunset. Her face, it will be noted, though she stands against
the moon, is lighted from in front. In that fact lies the secret
of the illumination. For this picture was supposedly painted at
that one Byronic hour of the year when
The sun was setting opposite the moon.
Turner, in a small water color, has worked out a similar problem,
with the cool copper of the harvest moonlight bathing one side of
an old stone tower, the warm rose of sunset the other. In Mr.
Elliott's great canvas the mutual lights kill all shadows, and
out toward the great yellow disk of the moon the invisible sun
floods its lilac and pink, kindling the waves, the draperies of
the goddess, the wet flanks of the horses, and suffusing the
whole painting with its delicate, bright warmth, which is yet
kept too cool for gaudiness by the twilight of the moon.
While this canvas was being unpacked in Washington last winter,
Mr. Elliott was exhibiting in Boston his portrait of his
mother-in-law, Mrs.
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