‘The Fight: St George Kills the Dragon VI’ by Edward Burne-Jones
Aesthetic Pre-Raphaelitism, armor, armour, art, artwork, chivalric tradition, chivalry, damsel, dragon, gallantry, George, knight, legend, Myles Birket Foster, myth, New South Wales, NSW, Pre-Raphaelite, Princess Sabra, St George, sword, The Hill, Witley.
This oil on canvas painting by well-known nineteenth-century artist Edward Burne-Jones was gifted to the Art Gallery of New South Wales by Arthur Moon. It is one of seven paintings from a ‘St George and the Dragon’ narrative cycle that Burne-Jones was commissioned to produce in 1864 for the dining room of Myles Birket Foster’s house, The Hill, in Witley, Surrey. Completed in 1866, this is the sixth painting in the series. It depicts an armoured St George slaying a reptilian looking dragon, while a female figure wearing a flowing white gown and a wreath of flowers - Princess Sabra from the legend - clasps her hands and watches tentatively from the sidelines. The deadly threat posed by the dragon, and by extension the valour of the knight in quashing it, is evident from the skull and broken lance lying in the foreground of the painting. Although the legend of St George slaying the dragon is Eastern in origin, it is thought to have been taken back to England by medieval crusaders, where it was incorporated into the chivalric tradition. As the patron saint of England, a champion of Christianity, and an exemplar of chivalric masculinity, St George was a popular subject for Pre-Raphaelite artists such as Burne-Jones, and for the Victorian medieval revival more generally.
Edward Burne-Jones
The Art Gallery of New South Wales
1866
The Art Gallery of New South Wales
Oil on Canvas, 105.4cm x 130.8cm
‘Chaucer at the Court of Edward III’, by Ford Madox Brown
Alice Perrers (1348-1400), anniversary, art, artwork, birthday, Black Prince (1330-1376), Court, Custance, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Edward III (1312-1377), English language, Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343-1400), history painting, jester, John of Gaunt (1340-1399), knight, ‘Legend of Custance’, Lute, palace of Sheen, poetry, Pre-Raphaelite, reading, royalty, troubadour.
This large oil on canvas history painting by Victorian artist Ford Madox Brown was purchased (directly from the artist) by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1876. Subtitled “Geoffrey Chaucer Reading the ‘Legend of Custance’ to Edward III and his Court, at the Palace of Sheen, on the Anniversary of the Black Prince’s Forty-Fifth Birthday”, the painting depicts Geoffrey Chaucer reading aloud to King Edward III and his Court. In addition to Chaucer and Edward III, other fourteenth-century figures featured in the painting include the King’s two sons, Edward the Black Prince and John of Gaunt, and his mistress Alice Perrers. The figure of Chaucer has been modelled on the famous Pre-Raphaelite and Brown’s close friend, Dante Gabriel Rosetti. However, scholars have noted the lengths to which Brown went to ensure historical accuracy in both costuming and facial resemblances, which included consulting and purchasing antiquarian volumes on medieval furniture and dress and also visiting tombs and effigies (see, for example, Angela Thirwell, Tim Barringer & Laura MacCulloch, <em>Ford Madox Brown: The Unofficial Pre-Raphaelite</em>, D. Giles, 2008). Chaucer was a common subject for Ford Madox Brown (and the nineteenth-century medieval revival more generally) on account of his prominent role in popularising the English language (over French and Latin) and his widely-held reputation as the ‘Father of English poetry’. This enabled the Victorians, Velma Bourgeois Richmond has argued, to revere him as a Protestant hero, because “the development of the English language was crucial to breaking the hold of the Catholic Church by the clergy and to the formation of national identity” (Velma Bourgeois Richmond, “Ford Madox Brown’s Protestant Medievalism: Chaucer and Wycliffe”, <em>Christianity and Literature</em>, Vol.54, Issue 3, Spring 2005, p.366). The image was originally designed as the central panel in a triptych entitled <em>The Seeds and Fruits of English Poetry</em>, and was to be flanked by portraits of famous poets such as Milton, Spenser, Shakespeare and Burns.
Ford Madox Brown
The Art Gallery of New South Wales
1847-1851
The Art Gallery of New South Wales
Oil on Canvas, 372cm x 296cm
The Flight of Jane Shore
Art, Edward IV (1442-1483), Elizabeth Shore (1445-1527), imprisonment, Jane Shore (1445-1527), Ludgate prison, mistress, Pre-Raphaelite, Richard III (1452-1485), royal mistress, Thomas Grey (c.1455-1501), VIC, Victoria, Wars of the Roses, William Hastings (c.1430-1483).
<span style="font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">This painting by Val Prinsep was gifted to the National Gallery of Victoria in 1934 by A L Prinsep. It depicts a woman, who the title identifies as Jane Shore, crouching under a bridge in an attempt to hide from a group of soldiers looking to arrest her. Shore, whose birth name was actually Elizabeth, is believed to have been Edward IV’s royal mistress from approximately 1476 until his death in 1483. Following Edward’s death, she was linked by contemporary sources to Thomas Grey, marquess of Dorset, and William, Lord Hastings. Some historians have claimed that she was involved in a Woodville-Hastings plot against Richard (while he was still the Duke of Gloucester and attempting to secure the throne), while others have suggested different, but similarly political, motives for his (mis)treatment of her. Shore was arrested on Richard’s command in 1483 and imprisoned, firstly in the tower of London and later in Ludgate prison. She was pardoned and released upon her marriage to the king’s solicitor, Thomas Lynom. For more on Jane Shore, see: </span><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Rosemary Horrox, ‘<span>Shore , Elizabeth [Jane]</span><span> (</span><em><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif';">d.</span></em><span> 1526/7?)</span>’, <em>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography</em>, Oxford University Press, 2004 [<a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/25451" target="_blank">http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/25451</a>, accessed 6 Feb 2012]</span>
Prinsep, Val
National Gallery of Victoria
National Gallery of Victoria
c. 1865
National Gallery of Victoria
Oil on Canvas, 155.3 x 92.4cm;
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Ancilla Domini; or, Handmaid or ‘maid servant’ of the Lord
Adam, angel, Annunciation, Art, colour, curtain, Eden, Eve, Gabriel, lilies, Mary, Pre-Raphaelite, religious art, Renaissance art, rose, Rupert Bunny (1864-1947), SA, South Australia, symbolism, vermillion, virgin
<span style="font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">This work by Australian artist Rupert Bunny was acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1996. It depicts the religious subject of the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel descended from heaven to tell Mary that she would conceive the son of God. An angel dressed in white stands with one arm outstretched before the kneeling figure of Mary. The angel holds white lilies, while Mary clutches a white rose and is surrounded by pink roses. The background is dominated by a bold vermillion red curtain and a wall hanging showing Adam and Eve being cast from the Garden of Eden by a sword-wielding angel. This work dates from the 1890s, a time when Bunny was preoccupied with biblical themes. He was influenced by the symbolists of the nineteenth century and also the Pre-Raphaelites, as is evidenced here by “</span><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">a return to the detailed, brightly coloured and symbolically rich art of the early Italian Renaissance” (See </span><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">the accompanying information pages on the Art Gallery of South Australia’s website at: <a href="http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/TLF/964p25/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0000ff;">http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/TLF/964p25/</span></a>). </span>
Bunny, Rupert
Art Gallery of South Australia
c. 1896
Art Gallery of South Australia
Oil on Canvas, 100.3 x 110.4cm;
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The Loving Cup
Art, Arthurian, Arthurian romance, chivalry, cup, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Gouache, ivy, knight, legend, medieval clothing, nostalgia, Pre-Raphaelite, replica, romance, SA, South Australia, Victorian, watercolour
<p>This work by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a renowned nineteenth-century painter and member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, depicts a young woman in a voluminous medieval-looking gown raising a golden cup decorated with a heart shaped design to her lips. In her other hand she clasps the lid of the cup to her breast. A lace cloth, ivy (the symbol of fidelity) and 4 brass plates (2 depicting deer, 1 depicting Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit and the other showing Hosea and Joshua with a bunch of grapes) are visible in the background. This painting is one of three watercolour replicas that Rossetti produced in 1867 of an oil painting that is currently held by the National Gallery of Western Art, Tokyo. The frame of the original painting is inscribed "Douce nuit et joyeux jour/ A chevalier de bel amour (Sweet night and pleasant day/to the beautifully loved knight)," which suggests that the woman is toasting her recently departed knight. The source of these words is uncertain, but it is thought that Rossetti, well-known for his poetry as well as his artwork, probably wrote it himself. (For more on the Tokyo painting, see <a href="http://collection.nmwa.go.jp/en/P.1984-0005.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0000ff;">http://collection.nmwa.go.jp/en/P.1984-0005.html</span></a>).</p>
The Arthurian theme and subject matter of the painting are typical of Rossetti’s work from the mid-1850s, and the work of the second phase of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood more generally. As Elizabeth Prettejohn suggests, these paintings convey a sense in which the “the world presented in the pictures is somehow distant or remote from the everyday”. They depict scenes of leave-taking, but the circumstances are left untold, and we do not learn the fortunes of the figures involved. This, she suggests, “contrasts abruptly with the narrative specificity of most Victorian painting, and of earlier Pre-Raphaelite pictures. The precise detail in the drawings gives us a medieval world that is apparently complete in itself, but to which we as spectators only have partial access” (Elizabeth Prettejohn, <em>The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites</em>, Tate Publishing, London, 2000, pp.106-7).
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel
Art Gallery of South Australia
c 1867
Art Gallery of South Australia
Gouache on paper, 52.6 x 35.9 cm