Queen Eleanor by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys. 1858. Oil on canvas. 16 x 12 inches (41 x 31 cm). Courtesy of Amgueddfa Cymru Caerdydd [National Museum of Wales, Cardiff]. Accession Number: NMW A 185. Image courtesy Amguedda Cymru – National Museum Wales, reproduced for purposes of non-commercial academic research. Originally downloaded by George P. Landow. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Although painted in 1858 in Norfolk, this work was not exhibited until 1860 when it was shown at the at the annual Spring Exhibition of the British Institution, no. 537, one of the first two works that Sandys exhibited in London. It was likely purchased at that time by James Anderson Rose, who was to become Sandys's great patron, and was likely the first work by the artist to enter his collection. It is one of the earliest paintings by Sandys to reflect the influence of the second phase of Pre-Raphaelitism and also one of his first portrayals of a femme fatale, a beautiful but dangerous woman. Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine was the wife of King Henry II. She is reputed to have murdered Henry mistress, Rosamund de Clifford, known as the "Fair Rosamund," at her house on Henry's royal property, Woodstock Park in Oxfordshire, that was accessible only by a maze for Rosamund's protection. It was speculated that Eleanor poisoned her and in the painting she holds a chalice, probably containing poison, in her right hand. In her left hand she holds a dagger and a red cord which she used to navigate through the labyrinth to Rosamund's bower. The painting is a three-quarter length portrayal of the Queen wearing a gold chaplet as her crown and decorated with enamels in a Celtic design. She is clad in a mauve medieval-style gown lined with green, over which is a red cloak embroidered with further Celtic designs. The flowers and foliage in the foreground, midground, and background are all handled in a meticulous early Pre-Raphaelite fashion.
Study for Queen Eleanor. c.1858. Oil on board. 10 7/8 x 9 inches (27.6 x 22.8 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy of Christie's (not to be downloaded; right click disabled).
A small oval finished preliminary study for the painting was shown at the exhibition Fine Arts and Ornamental Arts held at the Royal Dublin Society in 1861, no. 198. It is close to the finished painting but is purely a head and shoulders study, lacks some of the Celtic motifs on the cloak, and there is no landscape background. It was offered for sale at Christie's, London, on 25 June 1998, lot 307 but was bought in.
The story of Fair Rosamund and Queen Eleanor was popular among artists of the Pre-Raphaelite circle and was also treated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Willam Bell Scott, Arthur Hughes, John William Waterhouse, and Evelyn De Morgan. Sandys, unlike the other artists, focuses his primary attention on Queen Eleanor rather than on the Fair Rosamund. Sandys would have been familiar with the version by Rossetti and likely also the version by Hughes (Staley 75).
Bibliography
Christie's Impressionist & Nineteenth Century Art. London: Christie's (25 June 1998): lot 307, 216.
Elzea, Betty. Frederick Sandys 1829-1904. A Catalogue Raisonné. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Antique Collectors' Club Ltd., 2001, cat. 1.A.159. 118-119.
Queen Eleanor. Art UK. Web. 12 July 2025.
Staley, Allen. The New Painting of the 1860s. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011. Chapter Three, "Frederick Sandys," 73-76.
Created 22 February 2012
Last modified (commentary amd Study added) 12 July 2025