Oriana by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys. 1861. Oil on wood panel. 9 7/8 x 7 1/2 inches (25.1 x 19 cm). Collection of Tate Britain. Accession no. T03904, purchased with the assistance of the Abbott Fund 1984. Image released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Sandys exhibited Oriana at the Royal Academy in 1861, no. 639. The subject is taken from Alfred Tennyson's poem "The Ballad of Oriana," originally published in 1830, but later republished in 1857 in the Moxon edition of his Poems, where it was illustrated by William Holman Hunt. The poem tells the story of Oriana standing on the wall of a castle and watching her betrothed, a knight, in a battle below. She is accidentally killed by a stray arrow meant for him. Unlike Hunt, Sandys make no attempt to illustrate the story but merely refers indirectly to one line of the poem, "She stood upon the castle wall." The painting has been influenced, not only by Pre-Raphaelitism, but by Flemish early Renaissance painting. As Robert Upstone points out: "The artist's interest in fifteenth-century Flemish painting, particularly that of Rogier Van der Weyden and Jan Van Eyck, is apparent in the minute observation of the sitter's skin, hair and clothing, and in the detailed background landscape. Sandys toured Belgium and Holland the year after painting Oriana" (114).
Betty Elzea has described the painting in this way: "Head and shoulders of a young girl seen in profile to the left against a deep blue sky. Her long curly hair is bound with a red fillet, and she wears a cape of rich gold brocade bound with gold-coloured satin. The medieval pattern of the brocade is the same as can be seen hanging in the backgrounds of Mary Magdalene, circa 1859…. She overlooks a distant landscape which is seen to the lower left with a bridge over a river, trees, a castle, and an estuary or sea-coast beyond. The bridge resembles Bishop Bridge, Norwich" (161). This is the same bridge featured in Autumn that Sandys was likely working on at the same time as Oriana. The model for Oriana is unknown but she appears to be the same young woman who modelled for King Pelles Daughter of 1861.
The first owner of this painting was William Houghton Clabburn. Sandys's other exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1861 was a Portrait of Mrs. W. H. Clabburn. The Clabburn family were internationally renowned shawl manufacturers who lived in Thorpe, near Norwich. The rich fabrics portrayed in Oriana would no doubt have appealed to Clabburn and may have prompted him to purchase the painting.
Bibliography
Elzea, Betty. Frederick Sandys 1829-1904. A Catalogue Raisonné. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Antique Collectors' Club Ltd., 2001, cat. 2.A.26, 161.
Oriana. Art UK. Web. 13 July 2025.
Riggs, Terry. Oriana: Collection Text. Tate Gallery. Web. 13 July 2025.
Staley, Allen. The New Painting of the 1860s. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011. Chapter Three: "Frederick Sandys," 72-73.
The Tate Gallery 1984-86: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions. London: Tate Gallery Publications, 1988, 80-81.
Upstone, Robert. The Pre-Raphaelite Dream. Paintings and Drawings from the Tate Collection. London: Tate Publishing, 2004, cat. 39, 114-15.
Wood, Christopher. Ye Ladye Bountifulle. Women and Children in Victorian Art. London: Christopher Wood Gallery (Autumn 1984): cat. 5, 6.
Created 13 July 2025