The subject is one of the oldest in Western art. In the Greek myth, Zeus takes the form of a swan to come to Leda, queen of Sparta; among the children of that night are Helen of Troy and the twins Castor and Pollux. Painters from Leonardo and Michelangelo to Cézanne returned to it for centuries. Bruce reduces the whole story to line and gesture, the woman and the bird locked in a single flowing contour.
The image is an etching: the design is drawn into a metal plate, bitten with acid, then inked and printed. The tall, narrow format follows the entwined figures, and the nervous, expressive line is the same hand that runs through all of Bruce's work, from the Europa and the Bull plate to the Three Graces of Thalia, Aglaia and Euphrosyne.
The work sits within his wider body of mythological etchings. Original prints from the estate archive can be enquired about through the contact form.
