The Mystery of the Dark Lady

I like finding out interesting stories to do with paintings and so was delighted to come across the subject of today's post.  As you will know, the long-suffering Mr Walker is curator at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, home to this painting...

The Fortune Teller, 'Beware of a Dark Lady'  (1940) Frank Cadogan Cowper

As you will know from my previous post on Cowper, the artist was a Pre-Raphaelite follower, whose career reached into the middle of the twentieth century, when he seemingly continued to use the same style.  If you asked people to date The Fortune Teller, more likely they would guess Victorian rather than Second World War.  It is a very odd picture for many reasons, but I find it rather compelling, not least because of the implied tension between the two women (even if blondie is unaware of it) and the overwhelming detail of that ivy hedge.  Anyway, I didn't think any more about it until Mr Walker asked me to read a letter...

Frank Cadogan Cowper (1932) Bassano Ltd

Cowper first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1899 at the tender age of 22, so by 1940, he'd been showing his paintings there for around two-thirds of his life.  The Royal Academy exhibition of 1940 is often referred to as 'the Blitz Exhibition', owing to the fact that it occurred during the bombardment of London in the Second World War.  According to the Yorkshire Post of the 4th May 1940, Cowper's 'Fortune Teller' was a highlight in the 'brighter' show and describes it thus: 'It shows two fashionably dressed young women, a blonde and a brunette, seated in a garden, and a gypsy is telling the fair one: "Beware of a dark lady". The look on the dark one's face suggests some ground for the warning.'  On Sunday 5th May, Andrew W. Arnold of Tunbridge Wells, a notable collector of art and friend of Cowper, was one of the 30 or 40 people who braved the bombs to see the exhibition. 

The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery rather liked the look of the painting and were about to ask for the loan of it but it had already been sold. Mr Arnold bought the painting, and a decade later offered it to the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery for their collection.  He was by this point in his 90s and possibly knew his time was limited so this might have been the reason to break up his collection.  Some of his paintings, 'modern pictures', seems to have been part of a Christie's sale in 1949 (catalogue reference 1949:22).  He did not place the Cowper picture in the sale, maybe because he was so attached to it.  The painting was offered first to Bristol Art Gallery, but they turned it down, so it was offered to Bournemouth, with some items of furniture, and it was that correspondence I ended up reading.

Mr Arnold gave a thousand guineas for the piece, which is around £40,000 in today's money, a fairly substantial amount for such a curious work of art, but Mr Arnold had a special reason for wanting the picture...

As Mr Arnold said in his letter 'Modern pictures are so awful that in recent years I have never gone [to the RA exhibition]  unless Mr Cadogan-Cowper tells me that he...had pictures in it.'  Well, there's a man after my own heart.  Not only that but he goes on: 'I shall be 92 next month and it is more than 60 years ago that I and the two girls in the picture had glorious fun at Brighton and Eastbourne.'  

Mr Arnold, NOW you have my attention...

 Mr Arnold is therefore describing people he met in the 1880s-90s, not some young, war-time girls that caught his eye.  He describes the dark haired woman as being 'very clever and had a beautiful contralto voice' (thank you Helen for being able to read this bit).  The blonde girl was nicknamed 'the golden butterfly', which is a wonderfully evocative name, and he had seen her again, after the First World War - 'She was a widow when I last saw her 30 years ago, her husband was a Colonel in the Royal Artillery.'  There is no hint as to when the husband had died, but given that the girls would have been around the age of Mr Arnold, therefore born in the 1860s, I'm guessing her husband could well have died outside conflict, being possibly too old to have died in the Great War.

Also in the file was a letter from Frank Cadogan Cowper, about the painting which offers a few other details. He reports that The Fortune Teller was declared 'painting of the year' and likened to the Pre-Raphaelites in the press, and that when the Academy closed its exhibition, it transferred down to Eastbourne Art Gallery to be part of their summer exhibition, in the town where Mr Arnold had 'glorious fun' with the models!

So, the puzzle I am left with is this - Mr Arnold was very attached to this painting and donated it to a gallery rather than sell it, even though it had cost him a fortune.  He obviously had fond memories of the models in the painting but here is the question: he remembers running around with them in 1890, before Cowper had really started to paint professionally, but the painting of them was not exhibited until 1940.  

When and how did Frank Cadogan Cowper paint that picture?

The Ugly Duckling (1950)

There is much to recommend it being a painting from 1940: firstly, you are not exactly allowed to drag any old picture out of your attic and shove it on display as your picture of the year, and that would also beg the question of why Cowper hadn't displayed it over the intervening 50 years.  Also, the dresses, although worn with bonnets, are quite modern and much like ones worn by the various young women whose portraits Cowper painted in later years. However, the women were of an age with Cowper, so had he met them when young?  Had he made sketches of them and brought out those sketches when considering this work, sixty years later?  It's even not out of the question that Mr Arnold had photographs of the women he obviously remembered with such fondness and as he was friends with Cowper, maybe the artist had used the photographs as inspiration.  I want to know more!

Sadly, unless anyone has information about the Golden Butterfly and her beautiful-voiced friend, it will remain something of a tantalizing mystery...

The Man in High Collars

There is a distinct difference between Mr Walker and myself in matters of musical taste and more specifically the way we load up an MP3.  Mr Walker is an album person who will download an entire album irrespective of whether or not he likes all of the tracks whereas I am more a single song sort of person who flits hither and thither between artists, putting on only songs I really like.  The reason for divulging this trivia is that I can be a bit like that with art too.  Whilst I obviously love Rossetti and his work, I have a lot of time for some of the lurid, insane beauty of the works of Frank Cadogan Cowper...

Saint Francis of Assisi and the Heavenly Melody

Often called 'the last Pre-Raphaelite', Cowper lived into the second half of the 20th century to the point that his art is still in UK copyright.  You will certainly be familiar with many of the images that I will be using in the post because his work is often featured in discussion about the Pre-Raphaelites which is incredible if you think he was still alive at the centenary of the formation of the Brotherhood. So who was Frank Cadogan Cowper?

Frank Cadogan Cowper (1932) Bassano Ltd

Frank Cadogan Cowper was born 16 October 1877 in Wicken, Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather, Edward Cadogan, was the rector. His father, Frank Cowper, was the author of sailing books, both fact and fiction, and seemed to be away from home a fair amount, possibly in a boat (yet still managed to have six children) and doesn't appear on many census records after getting married.  Recorded as the 'head' of the household in the 1891 census onwards was Edith Eliza Cowper, mother to Frank and a novelist in her own right...

Sailing Tours by Frank Cowper

Edith Eliza (E E) Cowper, author of gripping stories for girls!

In one account of her early life it was stated that Frank Cadogan Cowper was raised Plymouth Brethren but I have not been able to find anything to back this up unfortunately.  What is certain is that young Frank was born into a fairly affluent household, to which he was the eldest of the six children born over eleven years.  He was sent to Cranleigh school, before heading for London and St John's Wood Art School followed by the school of the Royal Academy.  He exhibited at the RA for the first time in 1899 but made it big in 1901 with this picture...

An Aristocrat Answering the Summons to Execution, Paris 1791 (1901)

Although I find Cowper's work fascinating generally, I think he does two things very well: pattern and dogs.  The little dog in this picture is beautifully captured, but I adore the striped lining to the doomed aristo's coat.  There is a certain amount of bloody-minded bravado in that fop's manner that could be applied to Cowper, and his insistence in not bending to fashion, as we will see.

St Agnes in Prison Receiving from Heaven the 'Shining White Garment' (1905)

By the time Cowper started exhibiting, all but one of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were dead and their style and subject were only carried on by a few followers.  Cowper chose to echo both Rossetti and Millais with his work, notably in St Agnes, which bares interesting comparisions with Rossetti's Ecce Ancilla Domini!, of which Cowper also produced a copy (left).

I also list Millais as an influence because of the dogs that appear in some of Cowper's paintings.  I wonder if Cowper was a fan of Millais' Isabella  because some of the smooth coated, elegant hounds that crop up in paintings such as Mariana in the South bring me straight back to Millais' dogs...

Mariana in the South (1906)

The 'Pre-Raphaelite score' of Mariana in the South is quite high as it features a fish-eye mirror, Tennyson, a possible nod to Kate Bunce's Melody or maybe Rossetti's musical muses, the richly patterned interior and fabrics of William Morris' La Belle Iseult which also has a sleeping hound, and so on and so on.  When I get five minutes I'll invent Pre-Raphaelite top trumps, I promise. Another influence on Cowper was the American painter and Pre-Raphaelite sympathizer, Edwin Austin Abbey, with whom Cowper spent 6 months in his Gloucestershire home, Morgan Hall in Fairford...

The Penance of Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester (1900) Edwin Austin Abbey

Abbey believed that black, white and red were the colours of truly great artists and it is interesting to speculate on whether that influenced Cowper's colour palate, but it is easy to see that whether or not Abbey played a great part in shaping Cowper's artistic vision, the two had a great deal in common with their subjects and style. However, even Abbey can't compete with the overblown bonkersness of something like Cowper's 1907 epic How the Devil, Disguised as a Vagrant Troupadour, Having been Entertained by some Charitable Nuns, Sang to them a Song of Love...

How the Devil... (1907)

The stained glass windows in the background are from Fairford church and the picture is a reworking of a  student picture of a Minstrel that Cowper showed at a St John's Wood Art School show.  An early sketch of the picture was so praised by the painter Onslow Ford that Cowper spent the next 15 years working it into a painting that demands even greater attention. Although he had been elected to Associateship of the Royal Water Colour Society in 1904, his election to ARA in 1907 was seen as a response to just how popular this picture was.  It was reported in the newspapers how crowds would stand before it in Gallery IV of the exhibition and it was very nearly the Chantry purchase of the year.  It was bought by Sir Joseph Beecham and sold on his death for 1,450 guineas (compared to The Beguiling of Merlin by Burne-Jones sold at the same sale for 2,600 guineas).

Lucretia Borgia Reigns in the Vatican in the Absence of Pope Alexander VI (1908-14)

 Cowper finally got his Chantry purchase in 1914, with a picture that was described in the press as an 'Academy Sensation'. He travelled to the Vatican to paint the room from life and copy the faces of the cardinals from portraits. The scene depicts a friar kissing Lucretia's shoe while two noblemen hold back her dress.  There's a monkey, some sort of pheasant and so much red that it makes your eyes hurt.

Erasmus and Thomas More Visit the Children of Henry VII at Greenwich (1910)

In 1910, Cowper took part in the mural scheme for the Houses of Parliament, along with other Pre-Raphaelite-ish Edwardians such as Byam Shaw. The little boy striking a manly pose in white tights is Henry VIII. The patterning of the clothing seems to be a repeated motif for Cowper and a rather easy way for the viewer to spot one of his works...

Four Queens Find Lancelot Sleeping (skirt!)

La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1926) (entire frock!)

Rapunzel (1900) (massive sleeve!)

Vanity (1919) (everything really!)

Also, he revisits subjects and titles, such as Vanity which he painted in both 1919 and in 1907...

Vanity (1907)

He also reused not only bold patterns, but memorable garments, such as this 'knotted' dress, possibly a reference to Burne-Jones' Sidonia Von Bork 1560 (and/or joint source material Portrait of a Woman (1531) by Giuilio Romano, possibly also used for the film Sleepy Hollow), which crops up again in Venetian Ladies Listening to the Serenade...

Venetian Ladies Listening to the Serenade

His adherence to Pre-Raphaelite sentiment and practices remained and can be seen in paintings such as Hamlet where he insisted on having a grave dug much to the alarm of his neighbours, in order to paint from nature.  In other paintings he seems to have lifted details from the Brotherhood and made them his own, such as the dove in Beata Beatrix becomes The Blue Bird and Millais' sheep from Christ in the House of his Parents peek over the hurdles behind Our Lady of the Fruits of the Earth.

Hamlet, the Churchyard Scene (1902)

The Blue Bird (1918)

Our Lady of the Fruits of the Earth (1917)

With the fall of fashion for Pre-Raphaelite pictures, Cowper became known as a portrait painter.  In his obituary in The Times they were judged as being 'confused' and the writer admitted 'it is difficult to speak with enthusiasm', even though his ability to paint was never in doubt.  Despite becoming an RA in 1934 on the death of George Spencer Watson he was reported as a portrait painter and not a fashionable one at that. The parade of debs in pink that filled a great part of his output from 1920 onwards are the stuff of greetings cards and are charming but certainly seem to lack the fire and colour palate of his previous works. In one rather harsh review of the RA exhibition in 1929 they were described as 'Cadogan Cowper's simpering ladies'...

Violet Miriam Clay, Lady Vernon (1920)

Elizabeth Witts (1954)

Occasionally he goes full-Rossetti and a massively patterned background takes over, which I think is why his obituary described his aims in these pictures as sometimes 'confused'...

Portrait of Lady Ledgard (1925)

Let's be honest, she just got in the way of him painting massive, stylised poppies.

Still, among these faintly awful portraits of posh flappers and post-war debs are still some canvases which defy explanation.  One of these, and possibly my husband's least favourite picture (because it gives him the creeps) is this gem from 1940...

The Fortune Teller, 'Beware of a Dark Lady' (1940)

 From the mutant ivy to the alarming fashion this is a giant 'what-were-you-thinking?' of a picture.  When it was given to the Russell-Cotes in 1950, the museum confidently proclaimed that it would likely 'prove one of the most popular in our permanent collection' and that it was proclaimed picture of the year at the RA in 1940.  Well, there was a war on.  For all it's faults, it is a humorous picture with our happy blonde heroine not noticing how shifty her friend is.  Again, note the use of bold fabric is brought in on the gypsy's skirt. I am campaigning at home to have this one back out on display as something as mad as this deserves to be seen again and I'll keep you informed of my progress...

Anyway, Cowper's twilight years were marked for me by one very special painting which had been a favourite of mine for a while before I realised it was by Cowper...

The Ugly Ducking (1950)

By 1950, Cowper had moved to live in the Cotswolds, possibly because of the time he had spent with Abbey almost half a century beforehand.  He spotted a beautiful young woman behind the make-up counter in Boots and asked to paint her.  The Ugly Duckling was the result and what lifts it for me is the cheery smile of the sitter and the humour of the title.  I was delighted to read that the sitter, Valerie Tarantolo, now in her seventies and still very glam, had been reunited with her portrait at Cheltenham Art Gallery, where it is a much-loved painting (you can read her story here).

Valerie (at 16) and Valerie (a few years later)

Cowper died 17 November 1958 at his home in Cirencester and is buried at the Chesterton Cemetery in the town. On his gravestone is carved 'Verily, Verily I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life' (from John 6:47).  He might not be the first painter you think of, and his out-of-time Pre-Raphaelite blasts are often overwhelming and a tad peculiar, but one thing is for sure, enough of his work is so memorable that he is unlikely to be forgotten.

Frank Cadogan Cowper's grave in section 24 of Chesterton Cemetery

Detail of stone

The reason this post is called 'The Man in High Collars' is from his obituary which read 'There was little of the traditional artist in Cowper's appearance, and he is said to have worn the highest collars than any other man in the country'. Well, there you go then....

Behind the Mask

A wise friend of mine once said that the internet acts as a mask; we can be whoever we want to be, project whatever image we wish and be a carefully constructed person who may or may not bear any relevance to the person we actually are. There is a freedom in such a barrier, the ability to think about every word you say, every opinion you give, even down to the pictures you post.  All that others see of you is exactly what you want them to see. All this got me thinking about Victorian imagery of  disguises...

Portia (1887) Henry Woods

Shakespeare is riddled with people in disguise.  Portia from The Merchant of Venice dresses as a chap to become an apprentice to a lawyer.  She adopts the disguise in order to be free to behave in a way she would not be able to as a woman, and roles reverse even more dramatically when Portia saves a man's life. She moves from passive to active, all because of her disguise.

Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus (1851) William Homan Hunt

Julia from Two Gentlemen of Verona doesn't fare so well.  She adopts the disguise of a page in order to keep an eye on  her feckless lover Proteus.  It is as a man she discovers what a waste of space he is as he attempts to rape Sylvia.  When Julia faints from the horror of it all, Proteus remembers that he actually loves her and they end up married.  What a catch. I think she was better off being a chap.

The Little Foot Page (1905) Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

Similarly, one of EFB's most famous paintings is of Burd Helen, disguising herself as a foot page to her rubbish lover.  What is wrong with girls? Here is our heroine hacking off her lovely hair as apparently that's how you can tell boys from girls.  That is exactly the answer my daughter gave me the other day when I asked her if she knew the difference between boys and girls.  She's nine so at least she has an excuse.

Alfred the Saxon King Disguised as a Minstrel... (1852) Daniel Maclise

This painting always makes me smile as it was in the book of plates I was given for my first university course featuring Pre-Raphaelite art.  I also think Alfred is disguised as a shiny round chocolate when I hear 'disguised as a minstrel'.  Possibly there is a difference in the reasons  why men and women disguise themselves.  Women disguise themselves to spy on their useless menfolk or save useless menfolk.  Alfred is on a covert mission which involves looking shifty with a harp, like a sinister busker.  His reasons for disguise are obviously far more important than checking up on his girlfriend.

How the Devil... (1907) Frank Cadogan Cowper

Bonkers title of the week goes to this gem, entitled (deep breath) How the Devil, Disguised as a Vagrant Troupadour, Having been Entertained by some Charitable Nuns, Sang to them a Song of Love. Well, that's a corker.  Standing on the refectory table, the devil has gained entry to the nunnery, playing on the charity of the women.  In return he sings a song that reminds them what they are missing.  Some nuns are happy, some are sad, some angry, jealous, wistful and so on.  Every emotion possible has flooded what was formerly a peaceful place.  He is temptation, a reminder of more fleshly concerns, reminding you of what you can't have. Through kindness the nuns have let in a seemingly benign thing which holds the secret to their unease, to the destruction of their peace of mind.

I particularly like this picture as it seems very current and relevant to my opening remarks.  I am reminded of an episode of a television programme called 'Catfish' where a girl had been welcomed into a group of online friends and had made it her fun to drive wedges between them by using fears and rumours. It seems a terrible shame when kindness extended to strangers can mean letting in someone whose purpose nefarious.  However looking at the nuns in the image above, not everyone is driven to painful distraction by the tempting song.  Some remember their strength, smile and move on.

Girl with a Mask Henry Nelson O'Neil

So much for full disguise. More common in Victorian art is the mask. Often shown with richly dressed young women off to balls, the black silk mask is seen as both a harmless accessory but also an alter ego.  This peachy-skinned beauty looks blameless but the mask gives a hint of something else.  What does she need it for?  What will it enable her to do?

Woman with a Mask (1908) Lovis Corinth

If my dress was as low cut as this I think I might wear a mask too. There is a hint of sexual freedom in the mask, the masquerade.  You can become a person not bound by society's rules, the mask almost making it compulsory to misbehave and be helped back into your frock with some serving spoons.

At the Masquerade Charles Hermans

Such masked events, no matter how posh, seem to be a cross between a circus and an orgy, taking on an almost nightmarish quality. People view and are viewed, everyone is anonymous and the addition of costumes lends an air of unreality to such gatherings.  You are able to get away with anything as none of this is real, none of it matters.  However badly you behave in this space it doesn't matter as you are not you and no-one else is real either.  Possibly that is how some people see the internet, one giant masquerade ball.

Masked Figures William Orpen

The problem with feeling comfortable behind your disguise is that you don't know how many others are in disguise.  In the confines of a masked ball it is quite obvious that you are all playing by the same rules, it's understood that you are all masked.  However here on line the person you are talking to may or may not be who you think they are and likewise, you may not be the person they think you are.  I have some very dear friends here on line who I have known for years without ever meeting.  It is a matter of trust between us that we are who we say we are.  I often joke that I am really a co-operative of gerbils, using our little paws to type the posts, although that is now proved untrue by the video of me online. How very unmysterious of me.  Sigh.

Cupid at the Masked Ball Franz Stuck

Like the devil in Cowper's picture, you can never know what or who is lurking behind the disguise.  Sometimes people hide themselves because they are the devil, but sometimes it might be because they are goodness, love.  There is no reason for Cupid to be disguised, but he is playing by our rules seeing as we insist on subterfuge.  In a play on 'love is blind', Cupid is waiting to create love between people who are not being themselves. Lord knows who you are falling in love with, but isn't that always the way?

Choosing a mask Charles Ricketts

It is inevitable that we all don masks on line to some extent or another because we all consciously or unconsciously project a persona that we think others will find interesting or attractive. Some of us put on a mask of mischief or argument in order to get attention that way. Some are flatterers, adorers, the most pleasant company imaginable.  All are aspects of who we are as people in real life.  How much the mask conceals or reflects us is something that others have to discover.

I know a Maiden Fair to see, Take Care Charles Perugini

Online, none of us appear to be wearing masks and that is the problem, like with Perugini's beautiful girl above.  This post was inspired by an incident on line recently of disguise and mischief, of certain people using the anonymity of the internet to bully privately while smiling publically.  As I am sure you are all thoroughly lovely people, here are some simple ways of protecting yourself against the ne'er-do-wells and trolls:

• Be sure of whom you are friending online.  Do they know your friends, does anyone know them in person, how complete is their Facebook page?  These things are very important if you have had any trouble in the past.
• Google search their profile picture - sounds crazy but can give you an immediate idea if they are being untruthful.  Right-click on their image, copy it and go to Google images.  There should be a little camera icon in the search bar.  Press that and paste in the image.  A search with that will show you if their picture is already being used on line by anyone else.
• Do not be afraid to tell others if you are being bullied and don't be afraid to block. Most social networks have that option, you just need to look.

I have been the recipient of some unpleasant online behaviour and so if you need advice or just want to talk to someone, my email is on the side bar. Stay safe out there and use your mask responsibly...

Rose of the World

When I was republishing Stunner a couple of years ago, I considered having this image of Fanny Cornforth as the front cover...

Fair Rosamund (1861) D G Rossetti

Painted in the year between his marriage and the untimely death of Elizabeth Siddal, Rossetti chose to paint one of history's most famous mistresses. If we believe that a main concession in the Rossetti marriage was that the artist would forgo his mistress models, then this is somewhat a slap in the face to the ailing Elizabeth.

Many people don't like this picture of Fanny due to her high colour.  It is a very strong interplay of red and green, like a rose and its foliage.  In fact roses cover the canvas, from the glass, the pin in the windowsill, the necklace, her dress and the actual bloom in her hair.  Even the bottle-bottom glass behind her echoes the round of the rose.  She is a woman in full bloom, she is a flower in a garden.  On the other end of the silken cord is the object of her desire, the king, as shown by the heart and crown motif.  However the queen also wears a crown, and the legend says that the mistress was doomed to be a cut flower, by the hand of her lover's wife.

Was that what Rossetti dreamed of: his bride rising up to kill his mistress? There are moments when you feel that Rossetti is unable to stop his innermost fears and desire from appearing on his canvas, and it isn't unusual for him to portray the women he loves in the act of dying, as in Beata Beatrix and Dante's Dream.  He wasn't the only person to find Rosamund and Queen Eleanor enticing subjects for a painting...

Fair Rosamund and Queen Eleanor Evelyn de Morgan

Fair Rosamund, or Rosamund Clifford was the daughter of Walter de Clifford, a lord from the boarder counties between England and Wales. The family changed their name from 'Fitz Richard' (son of Richard) to that of their home, Clifford Castle, on the River Wye (lovely part of the world, for those who have had the pleasure of visiting).  She was the mistress of Henry II, and as such her life became somewhat dappled by fantasy and romance.  In truth all that is vaguely known is that she was born around 1150AD and she died c.1176AD, possibly in Godstow Nunnery, after the end of the affair.  Well, that isn't very exciting now, is it?

As you can see from de Morgan's painting above, nothing spices a story up like witchcraft, a wronged woman, a poisoned chalice and a doomed, innocent, pretty heroine. Throw in a secret love-nest in the centre of a maze and a silken cord for the lover to follow and you have a corker of a story.  I love how the tiny winged babies of love are floundering around on the floor, fleeing the serpents of black magic.  Queen Eleanor's dress resembles scales, like a serpent, and she reaches towards the window which shows Adam and Eve embracing in the garden of Eden.  Hang on, is de Morgan saying that the King and his mistress are the innocent party and the wife is the serpent?  That the love between the King and Rosamund is more pure and sacred than the love between husband and wife?

Fair Rosamund (1905-17) J W Waterhouse

So the legend of Fair Rosamund goes that King Henry loved this beautiful girl and in order to hide her from the nasty Queen, he built a maze at his home at Woodstock and placed her little house in the centre.  Only he could find it, by use of a silken thread that led through the maze.  All Rosamund did all day was wait by the window, by her silken thread and await his kingly presence.  One day however it wasn't the king that followed the thread it was nasty Queen Eleanor of Aquataine.  The Queen confronted her rival and gave her the option of a dagger or a chalice.  Rosamund chose the chalice, drank the poison and died.

First of all, the cloistering of a lover in a remote place, leaving her to just wait and wait has echoes in other romantic stories, such as Elaine of Astolat.  For the Victorians too, there were overtones of Mariana in her moated grange waiting, waiting for a man to come.  Waiting is a very feminine act, that of inaction, passivity, obedience, possibly the very virtues you might want in your mistress.  Or spaniel. Stay!

Fair Rosamund Arthur Hughes

From the straight forward story of a young royal mistress who had a couple of illegitimate kids and died reasonably young, it was spun up into a fairy tale.  It is unlikely that Rosamund was the only mistress, although by all accounts she was a favourite for whom he allegedly wished to leave his wife.  This, coupled with Rosamund's early death, seems to have led to the stories that Eleanor (a capable woman in her own right) had murdered her rival, even though we now believe that the King and Queen had been leading seperate lives since the birth of their final child.  That's not such a good story though, is it?

Queen Eleanor (1858) Frederick Sandys

In most Victorian portrayals of the story, Queen Eleanor is a bit of a crone, lurking much like the wicked stepmother in Snow White, waiting to poison/stab the fairest in the land.  Sandys image of Eleanor as a troubled, beautiful woman, preparing to sort out her rival, is unusually sympathetic. She would have been in her late forties by the time of her husband's dalliance with Rosamund, yet in Sandys vision she is young and beautiful.  In a way, siding with the Queen against her husband's adultery seems a far more natural Victorian position, but he is definitely on his own.  Love the cloak, reflecting a Book of Kells aesthetic before the Celtic Revival had taken hold in British art.

Fair Rosamund (1905) Herbert Sidney

 A similar figure is Sidney's Rosamund, delicately unwinding the silken thread so her lover can find her and ultimately allow her murderer to reach her too.  She could not look more innocent (or white) with the muted palate of white and gold, and a frock that will fall off if she sneezes.  Again, possibly a winning attribute in a mistress...

Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamund Edward Burne-Jones

Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamund (1862) Edward Burne-Jones

Burne-Jones did two versions of the confrontation between mistress and murderous queen.  In both, the queen is dark, powerful and in control (and looks a bit like Jane Morris), whereas Rosamund is caught, cornered, doomed.  In the second image Rosamund is literally caught in the cord that would lead her lover to her.

Fair Rosamund and Queen Eleanor (1920) Frank Cadogan Cowper

Still going strong in the 20th century, Cowper gives us Eleanor, armed with a knife, reeling in the feckless Rosamund by her lover-cord. I love the contrast between the impractical, endless white of Rosamund's cloak and the rich damask of Eleanor's frock.  As in many of the images above, Eleanor seems quite practically dressed, her cloak and hood almost masculine in their functionality.  Rosamund seems hampered by her acres of cloak.  She's not escaping.

Fair Rosamund (Annie Rogers) and Queen Eleanor (Mary Jackson) (1863) Lewis Carroll

Possibly the most disturbing of the images has to be Lewis Carroll's photograph.  It's not sexual, a charge often levelled at Carroll, but just plan odd with little Mary holding a big knife with which to finish little Annie.  A curious subject to act out with little girls, especially ones wrapped in what appears to be curtains.  However I love the genuinely murderous pout on little Mary's face.  I wouldn't trust her with a sword....

Fair Rosamund William Bell Scott

It is interesting what minor characters of history get immortalised as romantic heroines.  Of all of Charles II mistresses, for example, Nell Gwynn has a mythology around her that surpasses even Barbara Villiers. These days we know far too much about the sexual exploits of the high and mighty so we don't need to conjure tales about them, or if we did they would be quickly dispelled by the avalanche of fact or publicity.  Almost a thousand years ago there were stories told word-of-mouth, people trying to make sense of the disparate facts and weaving them into a narrative.  The silken cloth used in Rosamund's burial became known as a silken cord, a trysting place in the complex garden at Woodstock became a maze with a love-nest in the centre, all building towards a fairy tale with a real twist.  For the Victorians it seems the romance of the legend was far more beguiling than the rather more mundane truth.

Fair Rosamund (sketch) (1861) D G Rossetti

And my goodness me, didn't it make better paintings?