La Belle Iseult by William Morris. 1858. Support: 718 × 502 mm; frame: 960 × 755 × 61 mm. Collection: Tate, bequeathed by May Morris in 1939. Reference N04999. As this is Morris's "only finished oil painting" (Banham 34), it is bound to be of tremendous interest. According to the Tate "Summary" about the painting, "It is a portrait in medieval dress of Jane Burden, whom Morris married in April 1859," and was "intended to represent Iseult mourning Tristram's exile from the court of King Mark.... She stands wistfully in her small chamber, her feelings for Tristram reinforced by the sprigs of rosemary, symbolising remembrance, in her crown, and the word 'DOLOURS' (grief) written down the side of her mirror." Probably Ayla Lepine is right to call it a "semi-portrait" rather than a portrait, because of course Morris's primary purpose was to make a study of Iseult, but it does, as Lepine also says, show Morris identifying "his own life intimately with the courtly passions of medieval literature" (500). The summary also draws attention to the little dog, a greyhound, that "lies curled up among the crumpled sheets," a detail taken from Malory's Morte d'Arthur.
Completing the work was uphill work for Morris: "The rich colours, the emphasis on pattern and details such as the illuminated missal reveal where Morris's true talents lay. He was less at home with figure painting than with illumination, embroidery and woodcarving, and he struggled for months on this picture.... The background panel is close in style to the heavy tapestries designed by Morris for Red Lion Square and the table cover is of the type taken as a model by Morris and Webb for the firm's church furnishings" ("Summary").
Details. Left: The hound curled up on the bed, and a bowl of oranges and an illuminated book at the bedside. Right: A painted panel at the foot of the four-poster, showing a young woman singing as she plays a stringed instrument.
Note. For a long time this painting was mistakenly identified as Guinevere, but it is now accepted as Iseult (see Banham and Harris 114-16).
Text by Jacqueline Banerjee, with the note and its reference added by Pameela Gerrish Nunn. Image kindly released by the Tate on the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported) licence. Click on all the images to enlarge them.
Bibliography
Banham, Joanna. "The Arthurian Legends in Pre-Raphaelite Art." The Legend of King Arthur: Pilgrimage, Place and the Pre-Raphaelites. Ed. Natalie Rigby. Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2022. 25-39 [Review of the book accompanying the exhibition.]
Banham, Joanna, and Jennifer Harris.
Lepine, Ayla. "The Pre-Rahaelites: Visual Culture." The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism. Edited by Joanne Parker and Corinna Wagner. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. 488-506. [Review]
"Summary." La Belle Iseult. Tate. Web. 3 December 2022.
Last modified 15 December 2014