Love Locked Out
{{Short description|Painting by Anna Lea Merritt}}
{{about|the painting by Anna Lea Merritt|the album by Chris Anderson|Love Locked Out (album)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox artwork
| title = Love Locked Out
| image_file = Anna Lea Merritt-Love locked out.jpg
| image_size = 250px
| artist = Anna Lea Merritt
| completion_date = 1890
| type = genre art
| material = oil paint
| height_metric=115.6
| width_metric=64.1
| metric_unit=cm
| subject = Cupid
| city=London
| museum=Tate Britain
| accession = N01578
| url = [http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/merritt-love-locked-out-n01578 TATE online]
}}
Love Locked Out is an oil painting by Anna Lea Merritt first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1890 and which became the first painting by a woman artist acquired for the British national collection through the Chantrey Bequest.
File:Merritt Anna Lea Eve 1885 Oil On Canvas-large.jpg
The painting of Cupid standing before a locked door was well received when it was shown. Merritt's first painting of a nude model, Eve Overcome with Remorse, had met with unfavourable reviews after winning a medal at the Royal Academy in 1885.{{cite ODNB |last=Clarke |first=Meaghan E. |year=2004 |title=Merritt, Anna Massey Lea (1844–1930) |id=63111 }} But this painting, which was created as a memorial to her husband, was received favourably, though it again featured a nude model - and this time the model was male, a controversial subject for women artists at that time. Merritt escaped censure by choosing a child to portray Cupid, rather than an adult, such as her Eve had been.[http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/merritt-love-locked-out-n01578 Love Locked Out] on the website of Tate Britain
As a notable work by an American painter, Love Locked Out was included in the 1905 book Women Painters of the World.[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/39000/39000-h/39000-h.htm Women painters of the world, from the time of Caterina Vigri, 1413–1463, to Rosa Bonheur and the present day], pp. 77 & 139, by Walter Shaw Sparrow, The Art and Life Library, Hodder & Stoughton, 27 Paternoster Row, London, 1905
The title also became the title for the compilation of Anna Lea Merritt's memoirs, published by Galina Gorokhoff in 1982."Love locked out: the memoirs of Anna Lea Merritt with a checklist of her works", edited by Galina Gorokhoff, Museum of Fine Arts of Boston, 1982
The piece was purchased in 1890 by the Chantry fund, London, for £250 (after inflation, would be equivalent to ~£26,300 in 2023). Clara Erskine Clement, an American author noted that ".. this honor has been accorded to few women, and of these I think Mrs. Merritt was first."Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D by Clara Erskine Clement (1904)