FordMadox Brown Painter (England 16 Apr
1821 – 06 Oct 1893)
Chaucer at the Court of Edward III by Ford Madox Brown, Start Date: 1847, Completion Date: 1851, Oil on Canvas, Art Gallery of New South Wales, The Domain, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
<--- According to
Arthur Hughes,
“I shall always remember my first sight of him some forty years ago, in
a vast studio he had, behind a house on the right-hand side of Newman Street, a
part of which Gabriel Rossetti was using. It was to see Rossetti that I was
taken by my friend, Alec Munro, the sculptor, and greatly impressed I was by
the mysterious studio all darkened by the great canvas Brown was at work upon
of Chaucer at the court of Edward III. (Gabriel Rossetti being the model for Chaucer), and which afterwards seemed to fill almost the whole side of the middle room of
the Royal Academy in Trafalgar Square, and which, to complete in time, Brown
worked upon continuously the last three days and nights. However, I was not
allowed to see its face on this occasion, but, from its depths, Brown emerged
with the impressive and rather severe face he seemed habitually to wear in
those days, and which gave place to so entirely different a one in later years.”
Alec (Alexander) Munro (sculptor) and wife, 7th October 1863
by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
William Michael Rossetti by Julia Margaret Cameron, albumen print, 19 July 1865, NPG
According to
Gabriel Rossetti’s brother, William Michael Rossetti, “however strenuous were Madox
Brown’s efforts to finish the Chaucer, it was only by working night and day for
some days before ‘sending-in day’ that he was able to accomplish his task in
time for the R.A. exhibition. The
complication of the subject was great. It is explained by Madox Brown:
Chaucer is
supposed to be reading these pathetic lines from the ‘Legend of Constance’:
Hire litel child lay weping on hire arm
And kneling pituosly to him she said
Pees, litel sone, I wol do thee no harm.
With that hire coverchief of hire hed she braid
And over his litel eyen she it laid,
And in hire arme she lulleth it ful fast,
And unto the heven hire eyen up she cast.
Edward III is now old, Philippa being dead;
the Black Prince is supposed to be in his last illness. John of Gaunt, who was Chaucer’s patron, is
represented in full armor, to indicate that active measures now devolve upon
him. Pages holding his shield, &c.,
wait for him, his horse, likewise, in the yard beneath. Edward the Black Prince, now in his fortieth
year, emaciated b sickness, leans on the lap of his wife Joanna, surnamed the
Fair Maid of Kent. There had been much
opposition to their union, but the Prince ultimately had his own way.
To the right of the old king is Alice
Perrers, a cause of scandal to the Court, such as, repeating itself at
intervals in history with remarkable similarity from David downwards, seems to
argue that the untimely death of a hero may not be altogether so deplorable an
event.
Seated beneath are various personages
suited to the time and place. A troubadour from the South of France,
half-jealous, half in awestruck admiration; a cardinal priest on good terms
with the ladies, a jester forgetting his part in rapt attention to the poet.
This character, I regret to say, is less medaeval than Shakespearian. Two
dilettante courtiers (are) learnedly criticizing, the one in the hood is meant
for Gower. Lastly, a youthful squire of the kind described by Chaucer as never
sleeping at night, ‘more than doth the nightingale,’ so much is he always in
love.
Sitting on the ground being common in
these days, rushes used to be strewn to prevent the gentlemen from spoiling
their fine clothes.
This picture is the first in which I
endeavoured to carry out the notion, long before conceived, of treating the light
and shade absolutely as it exists at any one moment instead of approximately or
in generalized style. Sunlight, not too bright, such as is pleasant to sit in
out-of-doors, is here depicted. The figures in the spandrils of the arch symbolize
the overthrow through Chaucer of the Saxon bard and the Norman troubadour. (Excerpted from the catalogue of the
Piccadilly Exhibition, 1865, Ford Madox Brown’s own words at the time).
It
may be interesting to mention that, besides that of Rossetti, the work contained
portraits of several of the painter’s circle:
the page was Walter Deverell, the ‘beloved’ young P.R.B.; the
troubadour, W.M. Rossetti; and the jester, John Marshall, the surgeon.
%2B-%2BThe%2BMinstrel%27s%2Blady.jpeg)
