The Knight Errant

Sir John Everett Millais, Bt (1829-1896)

1871

Oil on canvas

Oil on canvas, 184.1 x 135.3 mm (72 ½ x 53 ¼ inches).

Courtesy Tate Britain. Presented by Sir Henry Tate 1994

As Alison Smith explains in Exposed: The Victorian Nude (2001), the original version had the woman’s head turned towards the knight thereby establishing direct eye contact with her rescuer. Her bold look offended Victorian sensibilities by suggesting she might have been responsible for her own predicament. Poor reviews and the fact that the painting did not sell led Millais to cut out the head and torso from the painting and replace it with an image of the woman turned slightly to the right and looking away from the knight. “The extracted portion was subsequently sewn into another canvas and completed with the model clothed and with a more demure expression into what is now known as The Martyr of the Solway” (70). Exposed contains x-ray photographs of both paintings that show the area cut from The Knight Errant and moved to The Martyr of the Solway.