Elaine, c.1861. Oil sketch on panel, 7 x 14½ inches (17.7 x 36.5 cm). Private collection.
Elaine, more than any other of Wallis’s pictures, clearly shows him being influenced by the second phase of Pre-Raphaelitism and particularly by the Arthurian revival popular with members of the Rossetti circle in the late 1850s and the 1860s. Elaine, the daughter of King Pelles, had fallen in love with Sir Lancelot, but her love was unrequited for he loved only Queen Guinevere. In Mallory’s version of the story — but not Tennyson’s — at Case Castle Lancelot found Elaine, disguised by enchantment as Queen Guinevere, and they slept together and she conceived a child, Galahad. Sir Lancelot felt that he had betrayed the King and left the castle. Lady Elaine fell into a deep sorrow at the loss of Lancelot. In both Mallory's and Tennyson’s versions of the story, she dies from her unrequited love and is placed in a great barge that floats down to Camelot.
Wallis's picture shows the dead Elaine being placed in the barge. The following quotation from the poem “Lancelot and Elaine” in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King accompanied the painting when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1861:
In her right hand the lily, in her left
The letter - all her bright hair streaming down;
And all the coverlid was cloth of gold
Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white
All but her face, and that clear-featured face
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead,
But fast asleep, and lay as though she smiled."
Rossetti's “Froissartian” watercolours of the late 1850s, such as The Wedding of St George and Princess Sabra, Sir Galahad at the Ruined Chapel or The Blue Closet, obviously influenced Wallis’s work.
Left: The Wedding of St. George. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 1864. Watercolor, 13 l/2 x 11 in. Courtesy of the Fine Art Society. Right: The Blue Closet. Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) 1857. Watercolour on paper, 14 x 10 ¼ inches (35.4 x 26.0 cm). Collection of Tate Britain, accession no. N03057 [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Elaine displays richer and brighter colours than Wallis’s previous works, and the picture plane is flattened with little sense of recession, similar to that of Rossetti’s watercolours. The subject of Elaine was inspired by poetry of Tennyson, like many of the Pre-Raphaelites.
There are two known versions of this work, a larger principal version and a smaller sketch. Both at one time were in the collection of Thomas Plint and are now in private collections.
The Painting’s Reception
Critics at the time, in general, did not approve of this change in direction in Wallis’s art. William Michael Rossetti's review in The Spectator was very hostile to Elaine, attacking both its use of colour and what Rossetti perceived as its false sentiment: “Mr. Wallis has a gorgeous assemblage of colours, but little good colour in ‘Elaine’ (492). The faces are emotionless and commonly painted. The best figure is the ‘dumb old servitor,’ a Charon-like boatman. There is wondrous imitation of brocade and black satin, but the utter want of heart is painfully apparent” (556). This criticism contrasts with the favourable reviews Rossetti had previously given to Wallis’s earlier works. He clearly believed Wallis had taken a wrong turn in his art.
The critic for The Art Journal also did not like the excessive bright colouring in this work:
’Elaine’, No. 492, H. Wallis, is worth attention, from its excess of colour, and, to use a popular vulgarism, from its excessive ‘loudness.’ But it is not a picture so much as a crude imitation of the more recent style of stained glass, looking as if the artist had no higher aim than to imitate the brightest colours which the sun’s rays pouring through the stained medium could produce. That some black velvet and some silk stuffs are tolerably well imitated, is, no doubt, something in the eyes of devotees of Pre-Raphaelitism, and that a flowing profusion of yellow hair is made to appear as hard spun silk, is evidently considered a feat of some importance by the artist; but what all this blaze of inharmonious colour has to do with the smooth, flowing, and quiet descriptions of the poet, or with the elements of a good picture, it would be very hard indeed to determine. Still, the multitude of the ignorant are attracted, just as children are charmed, by the brightness of colours; but such vulgar brilliancies bear the same relationship to legitimate colour that the reds, blues, yellows, and greens, on a country girl’s dress, bear to the refined dressing of a well-bred lady. The one is all vulgarity and show, the other simplicity and elegance; and painting to the top of the palette is no more good colour than screaming at the top of the voice is good singing. Unfortunately, Mr. Wallis has increasingly become one of the ‘screaming’ colourists, and he is rewarded with a place on the line for his loudness. Whether this be teaching the people wisely requires no answer; but that so many of this class of pictures have secured positions on or near the line this season cannot be ascribed to accident; and it deeply concerns the public to know whether the hanging committee were agreed upon the merits of such works. [196]
The critic of The Times also considered this work a failure:
“’Elaine’ (492), by T. Wallis, [sic] though a picture of the upmost elaboration, and showing a fine feeling for colour in the abstract with great delicacy of execution, does not escape the general verdict of ‘not successful’ passed on the many pictures of the same subject which this year has given birth to. Mr. Wallis has chosen the moment when the corpse of ‘The lily-maid of Astolat’ is borne by her brothers to the barge which is to carry her down to Camelot. The solemn funereal sentiment of the subject is destroyed, to our mind, by the brilliancy of the positive colours in which Mr. Wallis has dressed the brothers. The fair Elaine, delicately rounded and wrought as her face is, suggests a wax figure. The golden hair is of the colour and texture of raw silk; the cloth of gold which wraps her body is not cloth of gold, but something between stage tinsel and yellow furniture-damask. The pall with its raised embroidery of blue and crimson obtrudes at once its texture and colour upon the eye. In a word, the gorgeous materials which the painter has here accumulated have swamped and swallowed up the sad and simple picture which the poet has painted with his pen. This is one among the many examples of the all but insurmountable difficulties in the way of the painter when he takes to embodying a poet’s conception. [6]
Links to Related Material
- Another discussion of Elaine by Mike Hickcox
- James R. Kincaid’s discussion of Tennyson’s “Lancelot and Elaine”
- The Lady in the Boat: Analogous paintings of Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”
Bibliography
“Exhibition of the Royal Academy.” The Art Journal New Series VII (July 1, 1861): 193-98.
Lessens, Ronald and Dennis T. Lanigan. Henry Wallis. From Pre-Raphaelite Painter to Collector/Connoisseur. Woodbridge: ACC Art Books, 2019, cat. 44, 109-11.
Rossetti, William Michael. “Fine Arts. Royal Academy.” The Spectator XXXIV (May 25, 1861): 556-557.
“The Royal Academy.” The Times (May 13, 1861): 6.
Last modified 18 October 2022