Queen Guenever as a nun

Queen Guenever as a nun

Abbess, Almesbury, art, Arthur, Arthurian, Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898), convent, death, Guenever, Guinevere, illustration, J.M. Dent & Sons, Le Morte d’Arthur, nun, nunnery, penance, queen, SA, South Australia, Thomas Malory

This work was gifted to the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1960 by Mrs R.A. Haste. It is a line-block reproduction on paper depicting a scene from Thomas Malory’s fifteenth-century canonical Arthurian text Le Morte d’Arthur. Upon hearing of Arthur’s death in the final book, his queen Guinevere goes with five ladies to a nunnery at Almesbury. Here she leads a virtuous and penitential life of fasting and prayers, dressed in white and black, until her own death years later. The work was created by Aubrey Beardsley for a nineteenth-century illustrated edition of Le Morte d’Arthur, which was issued in 12 parts between 1893 and 1984 by London publisher J.M. Dent & Sons.

Beardsley, Aubrey

Art Gallery of South Australia

c. 1893

Art Gallery of South Australia

line-block reproduction on paper, 20.8 x 16.0 cm;
Hyperlink

English

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