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Madeline Hewitson explains that Vivien is an Arthurian character, based on the version of her in the first set of Tennyson's Idylls of the King, published in 1859. "In the poem, the ‘wily Vivien seduces Merlin by ‘smiling saucily’" (64). This Vivien looks proud rather than saucy, but the apple in the foreground is enough to confirm that she is a temptress, and the peacock feathers fanned out behind her suggest that she has deliberately set out to allure. Worse, she holds a spray of poisonous Daphne. The colour, clarity, and Pre-Raphaelite precision here are indeed alluring, but she seems to come with a warning. As part of this figure's complexity, Hewitson points out, Sandys departs both from the poem and from nature by using the peacock to suggest female rather than male vanity. — Jacqueline Banerjee

Vivien. Art UK. Web. 18 October 2023.

Last modified 27 July 2020