The Parting of Cordelia and her Sisters, by Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893). Etching in black ink on off-white paper. Inscribed below image "Goneril: Regan: Lear: Fool: Cordelia: France:" 81 1/16 x 11 1/4 in. (22.1 x 28.2 cm – sheet size; 7 x 8 3/4 in. (17.8 x 22.2 cm) – image size. Private collection; image courtesy of the author.
Brown produced this etching for the frontispiece of the third issue of The Germ in March 1850 to accompany W.M. Rossetti's poem "Cordelia." According to Rossetti they had been at a loss for an etching for the third issue until Brown offered to provide one at D.G. Rossetti's request:
For the belated No. 3 of The Germ we were much at a loss for an illustration. Mr. Brown offered to accommodate us by etching this design, one of a series from King Lear which he had drawn in Paris in 1844. That series, though not very sightly to the eye, is of extraordinary value for dramatic insight and energy. We gladly accepted, and he produced this etching with very little self-satisfaction, so far as the technique of execution is concerned. Dante Rossetti was to have furnished some verses for the etching; but for this he did not find time, so I was put in as a stopgap, and I am not sure that any reader of The Germ has ever thanked me for my obedience to the call of duty. [23]
W.M. Rossetti wrote in the The P.R. B. Journal for 22 March 1850: "Gabriel having asked him [Brown] to do us an etching for the next or some early number, he proposed one of his designs from King Lear, which he would execute double the size of the other etchings, requiring a fold down the middle. The subject we stopped at was the Leave-taking of Cordelia and her sisters. Gabriel proposes to write an illustrative poem for it" (57).
As W. M. Rossetti mentions the etching was based on an earlier drawing Brown did in Paris in c.1843/1844. During his time there Brown had executed a series of sixteen pen-and-ink drawings, based on Shakespeare's King Lear, "as remarkable for their nervous, expressive line and inventiveness as any of the century and the first to announce Ford's distinctive quirky genius" (Newman and Watkinson 17). These designs were used later, at intervals, for paintings or large cartoons. One of them also formed the basis for the etching Cordelia Parting from her Sisters. The drawing on which the etching is based is in the collection of the Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester (accession no. D.1927.53). According to Gregory Suriano this etching is in Brown's Nazarene-historical style of his Chaucer at the Court of King Edward III of c.1845-51 (35). Brown planned a double page spread for his etching in order to conform to the shape and size of his original drawing.
The scene is taken from Act I, scene I, of King Lear and shows Lear's daughters Goneril and Regan on the left and Cordelia and the King of France on the right. This incident is after Lear has disinherited Cordelia and given her in marriage to the French king. Cordelia is portrayed saying farewell to her older sisters with her pointing finger seemingly expressing her feelings towards them as in "I know you what you are" (Treuherz 100). Although the principal figures are the same in the drawing and the etching, the background differs somewhat between the two and the etching also differs in minor decorative details. The principal variation is the placing of the Fool in the etching as a pivotal central figure by the empty throne in an attitude of misery between the two contending sides rather than his receding through the central archway accompanying Lear. Helen Borowitz felt: "The awkward body of the Fool in the center of the balanced composition is a typical Brown touch, a purposeful gauche" (326). In the etching the figures of King Lear and his attendants have a more defined outline against the light beyond the arch than in the drawing.
Brown was obviously concerned about getting his etching ready in time and found working in this medium difficult. As he had never done an etching previously, Brown first experimented with the medium by making a sketch of the head of D.G. Rossetti on copper. W.M. Rossetti recorded Brown's concerns in The P.R.B. Journal for 13 March 1850: "Brown expressed some apprehension that he might fail in getting his etching ready, and proposed that Gabriel, Woolner, and Hancock, should each set about one, and that whichever is finished in time should come into this number" (62). Brown mentions in his diary on 16 March that he "drew at the Cordelia for Etching" and that on 22 March he began etching (71). On 27 March the plate was bitten by Shenton, presumably the engraver Henry Chawner Shenton (1803-1866), and the following day was sent off together with the etching plate to the Tupper firm wich was to print the issue (Bennett 539-40). Despite finishing his print on time Brown regarded his etching as a failure. W.M. Rossetti recorded in The P.R.B. Journal on 28 March 1850 that: "Brown, not thinking very highly of his etching, stipulated at first that his name should not be published; but was finally persuaded to allow it, - every one else thinking the work excellent" (67). His barely decipherable monogram can be seen at the lower left corner of the etching. In the end Brown, however, was still displeased with his etching, which cost him 31s. 6d and which brought him in nothing in return. Paul Goldman gave this print only faint praise writing: "It is not a particularly distinguished effort though there is a genuine attempt to delineate the contrasting characters of Cordelia, Goneril and Regan" (9).
Rodney Engen, however, found this etching an apt illustration of W. M. Rossetti's poem:
Ford Madox Brown created a double-page etching based upon Cordelia in Shakespeare's King Lear, to accompany a poem by William Michael Rossetti. Brown chose the moment of Cordelia's departure from her father's court for his composition, placing his figures off-centre in an arched room with square floor (reminiscent of Raphael's stanza in Rome), and identifying each figure with a curious medieval lettering underneath, the whole plate adopted from a series of Lear-inspired drawings he had done in Paris six years earlier. Here we see Cordelia, according to Rossetti's verse:
Cordelia, unabashed and strong,
Her Voice's quite scarcely less
Than yester-eve, enduring wrong
And curses of her father's tongue,
Departs, a righteous-souled princess
[12-13].
Brown later completed an oil sketch of this subject in 1854 (Bennett, cat. A63, 178).
Bibliography
Bennett, Mary: Ford Madox Brown, A Catalogue Raisonné. Vol II of two volumes. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010, cat. D4. 539.
Borowitz, Helen O. "King Lear in the Art of Ford Madox Brown." Victorian Studies XXI (Spring 1978): 309-34.
Engen, Rodney. Pre-Raphaelite Prints. London: Lund Humphries, 1995. 11-13 & 118.
Goldman, Paul: Victorian Illustration. Aldershot, Hants.: Scolar Press, 1996. 9, 267, & 274.
Hueffer, Ford Madox: Ford Madox Brown: A Record of his Life and Work. London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1896. 98.
Newman, Teresa and Ray Watkinson. Ford Madox Brown and the Pre-Raphaelite Circle. London: Chatto & Windus, 1991.
Rossetti, William Michael: Introduction to The Germ: Thoughts Towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art. A Facsimile Reprint of the Literary Organ of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Published in 1850.. London: Elliott Stock, 1901. 23.
Rossetti, William Michael: The P.R. B. Journal. William Michael Rossetti's Diary of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood 1849-1853. William E. Fredeman Ed. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1975.
Suriano, Gregory R. The Pre-Raphaelite Illustrators. New Castle: Oak Knoll Press, 2000. 63 & 69.
Surtees, Virginia Ed. The Diary of Ford Madox Brown. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981. 71-72.
Treuherz, Julian: Ford Madox Brown Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer. London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2012. 100 & 218.
Created 17 April 2025
Last modified 23 April 2025