The Three Ravens [The Dead Knight] (1868) by Robert Bateman (1842–1922). Watercolour and gouache on paper; 11 x 15½ inches (28 x 39 cm). Private collection.
This watercolour was exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1868, no. 177. It was formerly known under the title The Dead Knight, so-called because of the lifeless figure of a knight lying supine in a meadow amid cow-parsley growing close to a spring. His faithful dog guards his corpse. The scene is twilight with a grey white sky barely glimpsed through dense forest. Christian described this white sky as characteristic of Bateman’s work although derived from similar skies in the work of Edward Burne-Jones (84).
Three black birds amongst the trees are the clues to the original title of the picture under which it was first exhibited, The Three Ravens. The title is derived from a seventeenth-century English folk poem of the same name, first recorded in Thomas Ravenscroft’s Melismata published in 1611, and later reprinted in Joseph Ritson’s Ancient Songs in 1790. Bateman likely encountered it after Francis James Child included “The Three Ravens” in his English and Scottish Ballads, published in 1861. The poem reads:
“There were three ravens sat on a tree,
They were as blacke as they might be,
With a downe, derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe.
Downe in yonder greene field,
There lies a knight slain under his shield.
His hounds they lie downe at his feete,
So well they their master keepe.
‘His haukes they flie so eagerly,
There’s no fowle dare him com nie.’
Down comes a fallow doe
As great with young as she might goe
She lift up his bloody head
And kissed his wounds that were so red
She got him up upon her back
And carried him to earthen lake
She buried him before the prime
She was dead herself ere euen-song tide.
God send eury gentleman
Such hawkes, such hounds and such a Leman.
The use of the word Leman, meaning illicit or secret lover, makes it clear that the doe is intended to be a metaphor for the knight’s loyal mistress who takes action to save his body from being scavenged by ravens by taking it to a lake and burying it. Bateman quite obviously had a fondness for tragic love stories in his paintings, including such works as Isabella, a Story from Boccaccio, Paolo and Francesca, and Heloise and Abelard, perhaps because of his own tragic romantic relationships, first with Rose Preston, and then with his great love Caroline Howard.
None of Bateman’s five submissions to the Dudley Gallery in 1868 generated much enthusiasm from the reviewer of The Art Journal: “Robert Bateman contributes five works little likely to make a reputation; save, possibly, a figure of studied grace…touched with some sentiment of mediaeval romance, used as an escape from naturalism” (45). This haunting watercolour of The Three Ravens, however, has become one of Bateman’s most famous works, and it has a distinguished exhibition history.
Its landscape background is very reminiscent of Burne-Jones’ watercolours of the 1860s particularly Green Summer. Bateman’s picture recalls the reminiscences of his friend Walter Crane when he encountered Burne-Jones' work for the first time at the Old Water-Colour Society exhibition of 1865:
The curtain had been lifted, and we had a glimpse into a magic world of romance and pictured poetry, peopled with ghosts of 'ladies dead and lovely knights,' - a twilight world of dark mysterious woodlands, haunted streams, meads of deep green starred with burning flowers, veiled in a dim and mystic light, and stained with low-toned crimson and gold, as if indeed one had gazed through the glass of 'Magic casements opening on the foam / Of perilous seas in faerylands forlorn'. It was, perhaps, not to be wondered at that, fired with such visions, certain young students should desire to explore further for themselves. [84]
Edward Frederick Brewtnall later painted this subject in 1885. Walter Crane used this subject as a Design for a Song Book included in Pan Pipes: a book of old songs published in 1900 by Routledge and Sons.
Bibliography
“The Fourth General Exhibition of Water-Colour Drawings. Dudley Gallery.” The Art Journal New Series VII (1868): 45-46.
Christian, John: The Last Romantics, London: Lund Humphries, 1989, cat. 25, 84.
Crane, Walter. An Artist’s Reminiscences. London: Methuen & Co., 1907.
Newall, Christopher. “The Dead Knight.” In Wilton, Andrew and Robert Upstone Eds. The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones & Watts. Symbolism in Britain 1860-1910. London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1997, cat. 19, 122.
Last modified 17 February 2023