The Wounded Cavalier, by William Shakespeare Burton (1824-1916). Oil on canvas. 35 x 41 inches (88.9 x 104 cm). Collection of the Guildhall Art Gallery, London, accession no. 927. Image credit: City of London Corporation. Kindly made available via Art UK on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC).
The Wounded Cavalier is Burton's most important painting and one of the masterpieces of the first phase of Pre-Raphaelitism. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856, no. 413. The painting was hung "on the line" in the Middle Room, next to William Holman Hunt's The Scapegoat, and in the same room as John Everett Millais's Autumn Leaves. John Purcell has explained the unusual situation as to how the picture came to be hung in the first place. It had initially been excluded from consideration by the Selection Committee because the Academy porters had left it in a remote room because the young artist had refused to pay a bribe or "tip" to help it being chosen: "The name of the artist did not appear in the catalogue, and it was only by accident, as was afterwards shown, that the picture was seen by the committee. Mr. Cope, R.A., wandering about the galleries, found in a remote room a picture with its face turned to the wall. He looked at it, and was greatly impressed, so much so that he called together his fellow Academicians and asked for an explanation. None of them has seen it, but all said that it deserved to be hung. But where? Every suitable place was filled. Mr. Cope, however, solved the difficulty by generously withdrawing one of his own pictures and putting The Wounded Cavalier in its place" (244-45). Because The Wounded Cavalier had lost its identifying label, it was therefore listed in the first edition of the Royal Academy catalogue merely by number and "Subject and painter not yet named." The painting's title and the artist's name did appear in later editions, however.
E. Rimbault Dibdin has described the nature of the scene portrayed because it had often been interpreted incorrectly:
The incident imagined by the painter, having often been misunderstood, it may be well to describe it. The cavalier, while faithfully discharging some such duty as the carrying of letters or despatches, has been set upon in a lonely wood, and after a brave defence, desperately wounded, robbed, and then left to die; the assailants escaping by the suggestive breach in the wall. The puritans on their way to meeting have found him. The man stands aloof, full of sectarian hatred, and glares angrily at the gorgeous apparel and the scattered playing cards of the victim. The girl's simpler, more humane nature blinds her to everything but the crying need for help. Compassion rises superior to party and prejudice. [291]
Dibdin also discussed the long and unremitting labour the painter went through to get the painting's surroundings correct:
Begun late in the summer of 1855 it kept Mr. Burton very hard at work till late in the winter. It is worth recording as an illustration of the passionately conscientious method of early Pre-Raphaelite days that the painter was careful to select his landscape setting in the grounds surrounding an old cavalier mansion near Guildford, occupied at the period of the picture by Sir Thomas More. In order to get a true view of the scene and to study the fern, bramble, and other growths, Mr. Burton had a deep hole dug for the accommodation of himself and his easel, and there he sat day by day, to the vast astonishment, doubtless, of all who passed by. [291-92]
The location is presumably Losely Park which was built by More's kinsman Sir William More (see Parris 136).
This work is painted with the intensity and attention to detail, aided by being painted on a white ground, that is associated with the first phase of Pre-Raphaelitism. Burton has chosen an imaginary scene from the English Civil War where the Puritan forces of Oliver Cromwell (Roundheads) clashed with the Royalist forces of Charles I (Cavaliers). Burton has accurately portrayed the pale features of the mortally wounded Cavalier courier who lies close to death from hemorrhagic shock as a result of blood loss from the wounds he has sustained. The raiment of the cavalier and the Puritans, as well as the vegetation in the foreground, the trees, and the stone wall in the midground are all meticulously painted. The serious nature of the male Puritan with his stern disapproving look and his large Bible is contrasted with that of the cavalier whose more frivolous and wordly nature is shown by the playing cards strewn at his feet. It is unclear as to what is the exact relationship is between the Puritan couple. Most art critics have considered them to be a couple. The woman is not wearing a wedding ring, however, so is the young man her suitor or is he her brother who is accompanying her to a religious meeting? As Elizabeth Hawksley points out in her blog, which is well worth reading in it entirety for her insights into the picture, "no respectable woman of the period would walk unchaperoned in a wood with a man to whom she was not either married or related" making it more likely he is her younger brother. It is certainly unclear as to how the Cavalier's broken sword has come to be lodged in the tree in the centre of the composition. Leslie Parris has pointed out: "A spider has spun a web between his sword, the tree in which it has lodged and the brambles below, suggesting that some time has elapsed before his discovery by the Puritan and his lady" (136). Hawksley has also pointed out that the position of the sword is one of the most bewildering aspects of this picture: "I've saved the real puzzle for last. I can't understand how a sword blade could slice through the oak tree from the right side – opposite the fallen Cavalier, and somehow leave the broken hilt of the sword lying on the ground on the left side of the oak, next to the fallen Cavalier's right hand. And, surely, the blade's point is far too low to pierce the Cavalier's shoulder." Another interesting feature is that the sword hilt resembles a skull with a blade through the eye-socket. The red admiral butterfly perched on the sword may have been included for symbolic purposes. F.G. Stephens, for example, considered it a symbol of the Cavalier's departing soul (343) while Hawksley felt it "symbolizes the ephemeral nature of life and suggests, perhaps, that the Royalist's fortunes are fading."
Hawksley also makes other interesting suggestions about this painting not normally raised by other scholars, primarily based on the attire worn both by the Cavalier and the Puritans. Not surprisingly that worn by the Cavalier suggests an upper-class background. In terms of the Puritan young woman: "Her modest head scarf, her white double collar and her deep cuffs are well made. The browny-grey dress material looks warm. She and her brother clearly come from a respectable family. In fact, it's possible that she knows who the wounded Cavalier is. There were many families during the Civil War where neighbours found themselves on opposite sides." That may be the reason she is showing mercy and tenderly cradling the dying cavalier in her arms — possibly the two were friends in their youth.
When this painting was shown at the Royal Academy in 1856 it created a sensation. It was widely reviewed, almost exclusively favourably, exept for the reviewer for The Standard who dismissed "the nameless canvas of the nameless gentleman" as "a poor device to excite curiosity" (1). The critic for The Art Journal praised the work, although he found the story somewhat unintelligible:
"No. 413 The Wounded Cavalier, – Burton. To this number in the catalogue there is neither title nor name of the painter, the artist's letter having been mislaid during the printing of the catalogue. The story as proposed is of a duel having taken place between two gentlemen of the time of Charles I, and one is left on the ground desperately wounded. In striking a blow at his adversary he has cut deep into a tree, when his sword was broken, and it is yet sticking there. This blow has been struck from the right of the tree, but we find him lying on the left. He is discovered by two persons – a puritan and his wife or sister (either will do for the story) – the former of whom stand indifferently looking on, caring nothing whether the unfortunate man lives or dies; but the woman supports him, and endeavours to staunch the blood from his hurt. There is perhaps some difficulty about the interpretation of the circumstances, because the cavalier lies on the side of the tree opposite of that from which he struck the blow, as indicated by the sword point being towards him. The scene is the skirt of dense and dark wood, the trees of which, with a boundary wall, and the foreground herbage and stones, are all realized with singular care. We may regret that the story is somewhat unintelligible: that the artist is introduced a cobweb and a butterfly upon the broken blade – where the one was not likely to be seen, and the other could not have been. But the picture is a production of great power and originality. The painter has been hitherto unknown, but this picture at once establishes his reputation; he is secure of fame hereafter. [170]
Details: in the foreground lies the Cavalier's broken sword-hilt, and around are weeds, the mossy tree-trunk, ivy and spiny twigs, some bracken. By the tree-trunk is his wide-brimmed cavalier's hat, with its pinned plume.
A reviewer for The Athenaeum felt this painting was a step forward for Pre-Raphaelitism:
The Cavalier and Puritan (413), by Mr. Burton is the most remarkable Pre-Raphaelite picture in this year's Exhibition, – the most admirable and truthful in its details, and the most laborious, and yet broad in its execution. The scene is a wood, where, in the fern, pale and bleeding to death, lies a dying Cavalier supported in the arms of a Puritan lady,– pale, in her black hood and grey gown. He is watched by one of those limp, tall, ludicrous Puritans whom painters will caricature as "Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith Jackson," or "Backsliding Thompson." He has the face of Smike, and is much the worse for fast and penitence, – a broad black band runs across his shoulders, and under his arms is a pocket-companion, in the shape of a huge folio – probably, Crumbs of Comfort for Chickens of the Covenant. He looks at the dying man with a reproachful and ascetic gaze. In a young beech-tree that intersects the picture is stuck the broken blade of the cavalier's sword, the hilt of which lies beside the gambler's hand; – a pack of cards, hearts trump, that tells the tale, lies among the grass whitened by the night rain. A cobweb netting the sword to the tree shows the gambler has been lying there perhaps since moonlight. Though this is an imaginative picture, we cannot say that it is remarkable for expression. The Puritan is simply imbecile, and the lady looks wildly out of the picture as if for help. The best point is the effort that the fallen duellist makes to see her face through his half-shut eyes, already dim with death. As for execution nothing can be more admirable – preserving true distance and breadth – than the lichened and mossy trunk of the beech, the mottled and shaken wall, the green darkness of the wood, the broom switches, the firs hung and jagged with moss, – or for dress, the texture of the lady's grey gown. The faces are rather monotonous in colour, and flat; and the gentleman's buff boots seem cut out of wainscot. This is distinctly a step forward with Pre-Raphaelitism, because it is a combination of Dutch detail and Italian breadth, in a modern poetical subject of the painter's own invention and one of universal passion and interest. [590]
The Illustrated News recognized the obvious merits of this picture despite knowing nothing about the artist:
Indeed, Pre-Raphaelitism seems to have no other thick-and-thin throughout follower than the nameless painter of a picture also without a name. We refer to a picture in the Middle Room (No. 413,) a mediaeval duel (if we understand it rightly) painted by, we are told, Mr. Burton. With all its excess of Pre-Raphaelitism, this is the work of no common hand. The story requires a little unriddling, but the accessories are numerous and full of meaning. The cobweb and the butterfly are happy introductions. [513-14]
John Ruskin even reviewed it briefly in his Academy Notes for 1856: "413. Subject and painter not yet named in the catalogue. The former, not very intelligible; the latter is reported to be a younger member of the new school – Mr. Burton. His work is masterly at all events, and he seems capable of the greatest things" (66).
W. M. Rossetti, somewhat surprisingly, gave this picture a mixed, but largely unkind review, saying it was the work of an artist who depended for effect on elaborate detail and truthful imitiation of natural objects while largely avoiding emotional intensity and expression. His comment on Burton's future potential was the direct opposite of Ruskin's:
No. 413, which, from its having neither title nor author's name down in the catalogue, came to be spoken as "the great unknown," is now universally understood to be by Mr. Burton; and those who recollect one or two minor works previously exhibited by this artist might recognize it even by the style. There is a clearly-told story in the work, but little of what in a romance we call "plot." A Cavalier has had a quarrel about cards with another man in a forest – not the likeliest spot for card-playing. They have fought; his sword has broken, and he is wounded – probably to death. He has lain all night on the damp ground; where, next day, he is discovered by a Puritan gentleman and lady – either husband and wife or minister and devotee – who appear to have come up merely by chance. The lady acts the good Samaritan; the man looks on with a scowl bred of the hard self-righteousness of the Levite. The picture is painted with extreme cleverness, surehandledness, and diligence; the forest-background especially, with his spruce-firs and leafless bushes, being worthy of all praise for accurate, making-out and representation; and in these qualities we see no limit to what the artist may perform. It will be held the acme of Praeraphaelitism by persons who consider Praeraphaelitism to consist in definite details and plenty of them; not by those who lay chief stress after earnestness of conception, upon the feeling, the intensity, and the natural variety with which things are painted. Here – not to speak of expression-painting – there is no flesh-painting, drapery-painting, nor even grass-painting, up to the mark in quality of colour or texture: every inch of the picture is paint. The work gives no pledge of progress; for it is about as clever as it can possibly be in what the artist has proposed to himself. The worst of it is that we see the end of it and of him at a glance; so that, unless he sets about greatly enlarging the scope of his efforts, his future pictures are sure indeed to astonish, but never to touch heart or brain, never to tell new truths, or deeper harmonies and refinement of old truths. For some years, no comparatively unknown painter has done anything more excellently efficient, or less hopeful" (570).
In 1886 this picture was in the private collection of a Mr. Albert Salisbury Wood, whose collection F. G. Stephens reviewed for The Athenaeum. Wood was a chain and anchor manufacturer who retired to Conway in Wales in 1871. He owned an excellent collection of Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Movement paintings. Stephens gave one of the best interpretations of Burton's enigmatic painting to try to explain its meaning:
The scene is a thicket close to a wood which has shadows as black as night, and is enclosed by a low dry-stone wall half covered with green mould and partly screened by ferns and tangled brambles, whose spiny arms thrust themselves menacingly in all directions. At the foot of a slender oak trunk, which unequally divides the picture near the foreground, lies a Cavalier, whose pallid face, sinking features, and nerveless arms and hands announce the coming of death. Hours ago he was desperately wounded in an affray with Roundhead soldiers who sought to take from him certain despatches that he bore. Defending himself, his sword was broken by a false blow striking the oak, where, diagonally across the picture, its blade still lodges, too deep in the trunk for his feeble hand to withdraw it. He reeled among the ferns, tripped, and fell; his pockets were rifled of letters, and a pack of cards found there was strewn as his feet. His adversaries departed careless of his fate, so that he remained helpless and slowly bleeding till a Puritan lady and her grim, hard-featured lover, going to or coming from the meeting-house they affected, strolled in the woodland path, and she, with more tenderness than her handsome, but stern and set features promised, knelt at his side, propped his shoulders with her knee, laid his head against her breast, and, with anxious eyes and heedful action, strove to staunch the blood still slowly flowing from his wound over his collar of rich lace, and already rusting the corset which the night dews have dimmed while the man lay abandoned to his fate. Her lips are slightly parted, and her black eyes eagerly, yet with something less than sympathy, watch his face. The tragedy is intense; nothing could be better than the faces; but the sentiment of the stern design culminates at the much higher pitch of the Puritan lover's austere, close-shaven visage, as wan and sour as it can be, yet not without a touch of pity. Otherwise it is like a face of pallid marble belonging to a figure carved in stone. Partly hidden by the oak, the white figure seems paler by contrast with the black shadows of the pine wood in the rear, and it becomes ghastly in the shade of the steeple hat which crowns the still, stiff, erect, and darkly clad form of the man, who, with the Bible in one hand, neglects to move the other hand to help the enemy whose death he watches with a stony stare, set lips, and indrawn nostrils. The reader sees the original conception of this very remarkable design was confused, so that the painter, having broken the sword – a very conspicuous element of the work – in one direction, and painted the owner dying in the opposite direction, had actually prevented us from grasping his meaning; while intending to inform us that the victim had lain unnoticed a long while, he could hit on no better means than that which Hogarth employed more justly, i.e., he delineated a spider's web between the oak trunk and the shattered blade. So hide-bound was his invention in one direction that he employed a butterfly departing from the weapon's edge to signify the flight of the owner's soul. Trivial as these defects are, they jar our sense of the passionate tragedy, the awful coldness of the Puritan, and the merely dutiful manner of the helpful lady. On the other hand, all the faces before us are probably unsurpassed in the justice and intensity of the passion they display with the greater vigour because there is nothing demonstrative or melodramatic in any of their features. Burton worked out every detail of his subject with amazing tenacity, his grip of its motives never slackened, and even the defects we have mentioned attest the strenuousness of his mind. [343]
Percy Bate, in his pioneering book The English Pre-Raphaelite Painters, considered this one of the finest works ever painted under the influence of Pre-Raphaelitism:
This remarkable work, which hung on the line, next to Holman Hunt's Scapegoat, may be taken as crystallizing the artist's practice and principles at that time, principles that he has consistently adhered to. The subject is a Cavalier whose despatches have been stolen from him as he journeyed through a wood, while he, sorely wounded, has been left to die, until later a Puritan and his lady passed by, and the latter stops to tend the wounded man, while her jealous lover looks sourly on. The desperate plight of the Cavalier is shown in his death-like countenance, while the pitiful face of the Puritan maiden, which is full of charm, strong, yet tender and replete with compassion, may be compared with the face of the lady in The Proscribed Royalist – the anxious glance of eyes that have wept, depicted by Millais in such masterly fashion. Altogether this is a superb picture, full of dramatic vigour and fine in colour, and both strong and refined in drawing, while the technique is marvelous, and the master's hand is seen in the way in which all hardness is avoided, although the lichen on the tree trunks, the spider's web, the broken sword, the bracken, and other details generally, are painted with most minute fidelity and precision. [78]
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Detail of Two Figures from The Wounded Cavalier. Gouache on board; 16½ x 12 inches (41.9 x 30.5 cm). Collection of Tate Britain, reference no. NO3389. Image kindly made available via Art UK on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND).
A small gouache version is at Tate Britain, featuring details from the earlier version, but painted much later in 1871. It is similar to the oil painting but differs in significant details. As Hawksley writes: "Here the young man's colour is less pale and his eyes are half-open. He is conscious. He is wearing a dark blue cloak with a white, possibly velvet lining and a white embroidered collar. It's an intimate picture and, again, I can't help wondering if they know each other." The colour of the cavalier's sash is less flamboyant and the colour of the maiden's dress is a paler grey colour rather than the blue-grey portrayed in the oil. The foreground differs considerably.
The major influence on the painting is obviously the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, particularly pictures by Millias such as The Woodsman's Daughter of 1850-51 and especially The Proscribed Royalist, 1651 of 1852-53. Burton would have known these works from when they were shown at the Royal Academy. The pose of the Cavalier and the Puritan maiden was obviously based on an Italian Old Master pietà (see Parris 137). A likely source could have been The Pietà by Francesco Francia of c.1510-12 that had been acquired by the National Gallery in London in 1841 (inventory no. NG180).
Bibliography
Bate, Percy. The English Pre-Raphaelite Painters, Their Associates and Successors. London: George Bell and Sons, 1901.
Cowling, Mary. "William Shakespeare Burton (1824–1916)." British Art Journal XV No. 2 (Winter 2014/15): 78.
Detail of Two Figures from The Wounded Cavalier. Tate. Web. 16 June 2024.
Dibdin, E. Rimbault. "William Shakespeare Burton." The Magazine of Art XXIII (1900): 289-95.
"Fine Arts. Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 1489 (10 May 1856): 589-91.
Hawksley, Elizabth. "Every Picture Tells a Story: The Wounded Cavalier by W. S. Burton." (23 February 2020). http://elizabethhawksley.com/every-picture-tells-a-story-the-wounded-cavalier-by-w-s-burton/
Parris, Leslie. The Pre-Raphaelites. London: Tate Gallery Publications/Penguin Books, 1984, cat. 71. 136-37.
Rossetti, William Michael. "Fine Arts. The Royal Academy Exhbition." The Spectator Supplement XXIX (24 May 1856): 570-71.
Ruskin, John. "Academy Notes." In Cook, E. T. and Alexander Wedderburn, Eds. The Works of John Ruskin XIV London: George Allen, 1904. 66.
Stephens, Frederic George. "The Private Collections of England. No. LXXXIV. – Mr. Albert Wood's, Conway." The Athenaeum No. 3072 (11 September 1886): 342-44.
"The Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Illustrated London News XXVIII (10 May 1856): 512-14.
"The Royal Academy." The Art Journal New Series II (1 June 1856): 161-74.
"The Royal Academy." The Standard (12 May 1856): 1.
"The Royal Academy Exhibition." The Times (3 May 1856): 9.
The Wounded Cavalier. Art UK. Web. 16 June 2024.
Created 16 June 2024