The Wedding of Sir Gawain (The Knight’s Bridal)
James Smetham, 1821-89
1866
Oil on board
13 ½x 9 inches (34.3 x 22.8 cm)
Private collection.
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This work was inspired by the second phase of Pre-Raphaelitism and by D. G. Rossetti in particular. According to Helen Rossetti Angeli: “Smetham was drawn to Rossetti because he felt that his heroes of chivalry (in such drawings as The Wedding of St. George) were almost the only modern pictures of heroes that reach the Christian ideal” (172). Arthurian themes became popular with the Pre-Raphaelites in the late 1850s, early 1860s, with subjects derived largely from the legends retold by Sir Thomas Malory in his
The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell was a medieval romance adapted by Geoffrey Chaucer for his >“The Wife of Bath” in The Canterbury Tales.