Lewes FC’s women’s team decided to recreate Rubens’ The Three Graces using its very own muses, left-back Grace Garrad, midfielder Grace Palmer, and right-back Grace Riglar, who have recently signed for the club.
Rubens’ painting depicts Zeus’s daughters Aglaia (elegance), Euphrosyne (mirth), and Thalia (youth and beauty) in a countryside idyll, naked, arms entwined and dreamily enjoying the shade of a tree as Eros watches on.
In the football club’s picture, taken on the Sussex Downs by local photographer Lily Bushnell, the young women are in their Lewes FC kit and have named their own values: Resilience, Freedom and Friendship.
“For me football is about Resilience’, said Grace Garrad, “So that’s what I’m representing.”
Teammate Grace Riglar said: “I feel freedom when I play football. I don’t have to think about anything else. I love that freedom. That’s what I want to represent.”
Grace Garrad, Grace Palmer and Grace Riglar as Lewes FC’s Three Graces (Image: Lewes FC)
Grace Palmer said: “To me football is my life and I play for the social aspect. I want to represent friendship.”
In July 2017 Lewes FC became the first professional or semi-professional club in the world to equally resource its men’s and women’s teams.
Club ambassador Karen Dobres said: “At Lewes FC we use football as a vehicle for social change, so to use our three Graces to change old-fashioned and restrictive ideas about what a woman should aspire to be seemed a no brainer.
“Our Graces are expressing their own values from their own perspectives, and they are outstanding footballers and role models.”
One of Lewes FC’s Sistership partners Women in Art, an art gallery based in Lewes’s Fisher Street that profiles women working in the art industry, will show the new portrait in their upcoming show The Dreaming.
Lewes FC has a network of Sistership organisations which empower girls and/or women in some way.
Gallery owner Sarah Norris said: “I’m delighted to have this reimagining of The Three Graces as part of the WIA Open show The Dreaming.
“It embodies women who are proud, strong and confident in their bodies, not side-lined as passive muses. In 2023 we’re still fighting for equality – this image asks the viewer to look at women through a different lens, literally.”
The Dreaming will run from December 1 to January 6.
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