The Last Parting of Helga and Gunnlaug, by Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919). c.1880-85. Oil on board. 11 1/2 × 26 1/8 in. (29.2 × 66.4 cm); frame: 18 1/2 × 33 in. (47 × 83.8 cm). Collection: Pre-Raphaelites on View, at the Delaware Art Museum. Credit Line: Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935. Object number 1935-17. Reproduced here by kind permission of the museum.
The Last Parting of Helga and Gunnlaug was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1887, no. 270. It is based on a translation of a tale from Three Northern Love Stories and other Tales that William Morris with Eirikr Magnusson had published in 1875 by the firm of Ellis & White. This Icelandic saga included "The Story of Gunnlaug the Worm-Tongue and Raven the Skald," and the painting illustrates the story of two hapless lovers. Despite Helga the Fair and Gunnlaug being betrothed, Helga's father sent Gunnlaug away to Norway on a pretext and married her to Raven the Skald. The saga tells of the bloody end of the rivalry between Gunnlaug and Raven for the love of Helga: "Now, one morning as the brothers Hermund and Gunnlaug went to Axe-water to wash, on the other side went many women towards the river, and in the company was Helga the Fair. Then said Hermund: 'Dost thou see thy friend Helga there on the other side of the river?' Surely I see her says Gunnlaug.… Therewith they crossed the river, and Helga and Gunnlaug spake awhile together, and as the brothers crossed the river eastward back again, Helga stood and gazed long after Gunnlaug."(qtd. Elliott, 2004, 164). The story ends in a bloody fight between Gunnlaug and Raven where the rivals both die of their wounds.
Study for the Last Parting of Helga and Gunnlaug. c.1880-85. Ink wash and gouache on paper. 13 x 26 inches (33 x 66 cm). Collection of the Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, object no. 1935-81. Image courtesy of Delaware Art Museum.
Murray began working on this subject as early as 1875 when he was living in Sienna, based on a drawing in a sketchbook that is now in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York [accession no. 1963.8]. The preparatory drawing in the Delaware Art Museum for the finished painting was apparently done some five years prior to the completion of the painting. Despite this extended length of gestation time there was very little alteration from the earlier compositional study to the finished painting. The watercolour study that sold at Sotheby's in 2015 is a much-simplified composition showing the ill-fated lovers Gunnlaug and Helga looking at each other longingly across a stream:
The Last Parting of Helga and Gunnlaug. c.1880-85. Watercolour and gouache. 6 ½ x 8 ½ inches (16 x 21 cm). Private collection, image courtesy of Sotheby’s, London.
David Elliot had these comments on the final composition: "The intimate, miniaturist scale, and the unusual dimensions of The Last Parting of Helga and Gunnlaug are characteristic of Murray's imaginative subject painting at this time which, rather than disclose itself immediately, draws the viewer into the detail of the scene. The preparatory study for Helga and Gunnlaug is typical of Murray's use of the technique of wash heightened in white gouache which he often employed both for architectural details and for preliminary drawings of classical figures, echoing Andrea Mantegna's fictive relief sculptures with their incisive line and flowing folded drapery" (Elliott, 2004, 164). Despite the story being an Icelandic subject Elliott points out that "typically the draped figures remained in the classical Venetian manner" (2004, 165n.4). Murray at one time apparently intended to do a series of companion subjects drawn from this same saga but this never materialized.
Related Material
Bibliography
Blackburn, Henry. Grosvenor Notes. London: Chatto & Windus (May 1887): cat. 270, 58.
Christian, John. The Last Romantics. The Romantic Tradition in British Art. London: Lund Humphries, 1989, cat. 43, 91.
Elliott, David B. Charles Fairfax Murray. The Unknown Pre-Raphaelite. Lewes, Sussex: The Book Guild Ltd., 2000. 115 & 228n.13.
Elliott, David B. Waking Dreams. The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites from the Delaware Art Museum. Stephan Wildman Ed. Alexandria, Virginia: Art Services International, 2004, cat. nos. 33 & 34, 162-65.
Elzea, Rowland Ed. The Correspondence between Samuel Bancroft Jr. and Charles Fairfax Murray 1892-1916. Delaware Art Museum Occasional Papers II. Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum (February 1980): 13-20, 22, 24, 27, 36, 224-26.
Elzea, Rowland. The Pre-Raphaelite Collections of the Delaware Art Museum. Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum, 1984. 88-91.
Elzea, Rowland and Betty Elzea. The Pre-Raphaelite Era 1848-1914. Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum, 1976, cat. nos. 4-20 & 4-21, 77-78.
Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite & British Impressionist Art. London: Sotheby's (15 July 2015): lot 13, 20.
Created 22 February 2026