What Wreath for Lamia? What for Lycius? What for the Sage

Will Hicock Low · 1885/88

Medium

Black, gray and white gouache on cream card (discolored to tan)

Original size

10.5 × 37.6 cm (4 3/16 × 14 13/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Realism

Rendered in luminous grays and whites against a warm cream ground, this haunting composition draws its title directly from Keats's narrative poem *Lamia* — a question posed over three doomed figures whose fates intertwine in tragedy. Will Hicock Low was among the foremost American painters of his generation to carry the influence of French academic training back across the Atlantic. Educated in Paris under Jean-Léon Gérôme, he developed a facility for classical subject matter executed with precise, controlled draftsmanship. This gouache study, made during the mid-1880s, reflects his deep engagement with Romantic poetry at a time when he was producing illustrations for a deluxe edition of Keats's collected works — making this image part of a sustained, serious encounter with the poet rather than an incidental subject choice. Low was a close personal friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, who admired his work and dedicated *A Child's Garden of Verses* to him in 1885, the same period this painting was made. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates Low's restrained tonal language into the warmth and depth that only oil on canvas can sustain, preserving every deliberate mark while giving the image the presence it deserves on a wall.