LOT DETAILS

Materials:

oil on canvas

Measurements:

71.93 in. (182.70 cm.) (height) by 53.78 in. (136.60 cm.) (width)

Markings:

indistinctly signed and dated 'FRANK DICKSEE/-1885-' (lower right)

Exhibited:

London, Royal Academy, 1885, no. 53. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Princeton, University Art Museum; Atlanta, The High Museum of Art; Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum; and Louisville, Kentucky, The Allen House, The Royal Academy (1837-1901) Revisited: Victorian Paintings from the Forbes Magazine Collection, 1975-6, no. 10. Wilmington, Delaware, The Pre-Raphaelite Era, 1848-1914, 1976, no. 4-33. New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, The Substance or The Shadow: Images of Victorian Womanhood, 1982, no. 27. Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, William Morris and the Middle Ages, 1984, no. 122. Tokyo, Isetan Museum; Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art; Aichi Prefectural Art Gallery; Osaka, Daimaru Museum of Art; and Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art, The Pre-Raphaelites and their Times, 1985, no. 34. Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum, Frederick Layton and his World: A Centennial Celebration, 1988, no. 35. London, Barbican Art Gallery, The Last Romantics: The Romantic Tradition in British Art, Burne-Jones to Stanley Spencer, 1989, no. 116. Mexico, Museo Nacional de San Carlos, La Era Victoriana: un siglo de pintura Británica, 1997, no. 17. Utah, Brigham Young University Museum of Art, Masterworks of Victorian Art from the Collection of John H. Schaeffer, 2008. Utah, Springville Museum of Art, The John H. Schaeffer Collection of Victorian and European Art, 2009-10. Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Victorian Visions: Nineteenth-Century Art from the John Schaeffer Collection, 2010, no. 22, and on loan since.

Literature:

H. Blackburn (ed.), Academy Notes 1885, London, 1885, pp. 5, 22, illustrated. Times, 2 May 1885, p. 10. Illustrated London News, 9 May 1885, p.481, illustrated p.495. Graphic, 16 May 1885, p. 491. Athenaeum, no. 3044, 23 May 1885, p. 666. Art Journal, 1885, p. 258. S. Hodges, 'Mr. Frank Dicksee, ARA', Magazine of Art, vol. X, 1887, p. 219. J.F. Boyes, 'The Private Art Collections of London: Mr John Aird's, in Hyde Park Terrace', Art Journal, 1891, pp. 138-9, illustrated in situ. A.G. Temple, The Art of Painting in the Queen's Reign, London, 1897, p. 206. E. Rimbault Dibdin, 'The Art of Frank Dicksee, RA', Art Annual, Christmas 1905, pp. 9, 28, 32. Auction, February 1971, illustrated p. 19. C. Wood, The Pre-Raphaelites, London, 1981, pp. 138-40, illustrated p. 138. A. Kavannagh, 'Frank Dicksee and Chivalry', Antique Collector, March 1987, Victorian Pictures Supplement, pp. 25-32, illustrated. J. Marsh, Pre-Raphaelite Women, London, 1987, p. 90, illustrated. J.A. Kestner, 'The Male Gaze in the Art of Frank Dicksee', Annals of Scholarship, vol. 7, no. 2, 1990, pp, 183, 188-9, 191, 199. D.Mancoff, The Return of King Arthur: The Legend through Victorian Eyes, New York, 1995, illus. p. 73. A. Smith, The Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality and Art, Manchester, 1996, p. 234, pl. 78.

Provenance:

Commissioned by Sir John Aird, 1885 (+); Christie's, London, 3 May 1935, lot 52 (90 gns to Boot). Anonymous sale; Parke-Bernet, New York, 24 February 1971, lot 18. The Forbes Collection; Christie's, London, 19 February 2003, lot 35, where purchased by the present owner.