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Lot Essay
Fair Rosamund was a subject that transfixed the Pre-Raphaelites. It was treated, either in poetry or paint, by Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Swinburne and Sandys, along with many others. The story descended by sung verse in ballad form until it was collected by the Romantic poets of the early 19th Century who popularized it in a contemporary idiom. This led to a revival of interest in the original ballad by the Pre-Raphaelites who liked to sing it, and other medieval tales, as entertainment at their gatherings. Georgiana Burne-Jones (1840-1920) was a celebrated practitioner, and her husband treated the subject five times. One version was hung by Ruskin in his drawing room at Brantwood.
Fair Rosamund was the mistress of King Henry II. He built a `bower’ for her at Woodstock, and surrounded it by a maze which only she and the king could penetrate. Nevertheless, Henry’s jealous wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, found her way to the tower by means of a thread. There, according to most accounts, she poisoned her rival. Cowper however, has upped the tension and placed a dagger at her belt. Painted in 1920, when cinema was nascent, there is a touch of melodrama about the scene.
Although the moving image had been pioneered in 1895 in Paris, by 1920 it was still cumbersome and expensive to add colour. To compete with a new form of visual narrative, Cowper responded by making his pictures resplendent with colour and detail. His Renaissance inspired costumes are richly jewelled and embroidered and visually arresting and he maintained this crowd-pleasing formula until his death. As late as 1954 The Times reported that `Mr F Cadogan Cowper, who must be the last Academician to have achieved the supreme distinction of having a rail put round his pictures to keep crowds at bay, shows another Pre-Raphaelite work’ (The Four Queens find Lancelot Sleeping). It is testament to the extraordinary appeal of Pre-Raphaelitism that a full century after the foundation of the Brotherhood, pictures painted in that idiom proved the most popular.
Fair Rosamund was the mistress of King Henry II. He built a `bower’ for her at Woodstock, and surrounded it by a maze which only she and the king could penetrate. Nevertheless, Henry’s jealous wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, found her way to the tower by means of a thread. There, according to most accounts, she poisoned her rival. Cowper however, has upped the tension and placed a dagger at her belt. Painted in 1920, when cinema was nascent, there is a touch of melodrama about the scene.
Although the moving image had been pioneered in 1895 in Paris, by 1920 it was still cumbersome and expensive to add colour. To compete with a new form of visual narrative, Cowper responded by making his pictures resplendent with colour and detail. His Renaissance inspired costumes are richly jewelled and embroidered and visually arresting and he maintained this crowd-pleasing formula until his death. As late as 1954 The Times reported that `Mr F Cadogan Cowper, who must be the last Academician to have achieved the supreme distinction of having a rail put round his pictures to keep crowds at bay, shows another Pre-Raphaelite work’ (The Four Queens find Lancelot Sleeping). It is testament to the extraordinary appeal of Pre-Raphaelitism that a full century after the foundation of the Brotherhood, pictures painted in that idiom proved the most popular.