George Herbert at Bemerton by William Dyce. 1860. Oil on canvas, Oil on canvas, 86 x 112 cm. Collection: Guildhall Art Gallery, London. Photographs by Jacqueline Banerjee. Reproduced courtesy of the City of London Corporation. Ronald Blythe explains that the painting
shows the poet in his rectory garden by the river Nadder, neatly dressed in his cassock and with a finger holding the place in his prayer-book. The spire of Salisbury Cathedral is in the background. Fishing-tackle by a tree reminds us that Izaak Walton, author of The Compleat Angler (1653), was Herbert's first biographer. [xv]
Above: The painting in its frame.
References
Barringer, Jeremy. Reading the Pre-Raphaelites. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.
Blythe, Ronald. A Priest to the Temple, or The Country Parson, with Selected Poems: George Herbert. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2003.
Wood, Christopher. The Pre-Raphaelites. London: Seven Dials, 1981.
Last modified 21 May 2018