Queen Guenevere. None with her save a little Maid, a Novice by Jessie Marion King, 1875-1949

Queen Guenevere. None with her save a little Maid, a Novice

Jessie Marion King, 1875-1949

Signed with monogram and inscribed

Pen and ink and watercolour on vellum

7 1/4 x 6 inches, 18.5 x 15 centimetres

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Commentary by Sally Burgess and Peter Nahum

This drawing illustrates the opening lines of Tennyson's "Guenevere," the pentultimate book of the Idylls of the King:

Queen Guenevere had fled the court, and sat
There in the holy house of Almesbury
Weeping; none with her save a little maid,
A novice: one low light betwixt them burned
Blurred by the creeping mist, for all abroad,
Beneath a moon unseen albeit at full,
The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face,
Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still.

None with her save a little Maid dates from the early 1900s, being comparable to the artist's illustrations to editions of Sebastian Evans's High History the Holy Grail (1903) and William Morris's Defense of Guenevere (1904).

Provenance: The Artist, by descent to her daughter: Merle Taylor; her sale: Sotheby's Belgravia at the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society, Jessie M. King & E. A. Taylor, 21 June 1977, lot 17 1; The Fine Art Society, London; Private collection USA to 2000

Bibliogrpahy

Nahum, Peter, and Sally Burgess. Pre-Raphaelite-Symbolist-Visionary. London: Peter Nahum at Leicester Galleries.

Last modified 15 June 2024