Lot Essay
GUENDOLEN:
But all my golden hair shall ever round you flow
Between the light and shade from Golden Guendolen
.
THE WITCH:
WOE THAT ANY MAN COULD DARE
TO CLIMB UP THE YELLOW STAIR,
GLORIOUS GWENDOLEN'S GOLDEN HAIR
William Morris, 1856, (first published as 'Hands' in the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, July, 1856, later included as Rapunzel in The Defence of Guenevere, published 1858).
'He and I have painted the back of a chair with figures and inscriptions (author's italics) in gules and vert and azure..' (Rossetti to Allingham December 1856). The chair which Rossetti describes in this letter must surely be the present chair despite the fading of much of original colour. Examination of the chair has revealed that although it was prepared with a coat of thin oil varnish, there was no preparatory ground applied to the back before painting, which may explain the weakness of the surviving image when compared with the previous lot. What is not immediately clear is why so little care should have been taken with the preparation of this first chair. It is possible that its painting was something of a fevered exercise, carried out in the first flush of excitement at its arrival from the cabinet maker. It is possible too that, despite Rossetti's exotic description, the illustration was always more sketch than painting, and that today's surviving image should therefore be seen partly as faded, and partly as a hurried, spontaneous exercise. (It was a similar, ill- prepared burst of spontaneity on an untried surface which led to the deterioration of the Oxford Union murals of the following year.) The somewhat simple composition with the figures in opposing corners divided by the diagonally placed letters bears this suggestion out, as do the distinct preparatory outlines still clearly visible. In short, the result of Rossetti's and Morris's first attempt was a chair with painted decoration; fired by promise of their labours, they quickly embarked upon Sir Galahad, the second, more considered piece, which was quite distinctly a painting on a decorated chair.
Rossetti's hand is immediately recognizable in the extraordinary sweetness and refinement of the face and hands of Gwendolen, the treatment of Gwendolen's wimple and the Prince's visor, and in the use of the artist's much favoured spiral motif on the inner headwear of the damsel. However, the lettering and the strange elongated leaf-forms which entwine the text can be attributed confidently to Morris' hand, when compared with Morris's manuscript work of approximately the same date (see: V&A, exh. cat. no. N.1, and Naylor, p. 94 - dated to circa 1870, but now generally accepted as dating from the late 1850s). Interestingly Rossetti himself, already an admirer of Morris's poetry and his promise as a painter, also praised his calligraphy, writing in December 1856 - just at the time that the Gwendolen chair was being painted - that Morris was 'unrivalled among moderns in all illumination and work of that time' (Mackail, p.114).
The distinct difference in mass between this and the Galahad chair is surprising, as is the reversal of the direction and pierced decoration of the diagonal stetchers from one chair to the other. Neither fact can be easily explained, especially when all contemporary accounts point to both chairs having been made at the same time. Again, one can only speculate; whatever the reason for their differences, or indeed the precise sequence of their execution, the quality of the craftsmanship is beyond dispute. The fineness of the champfering on the uprights, their sinuous tapering form, and the manner in which, through close pegging, the flat panels of the backs are made to follow these sensuous curves, remain a tribute to both their designer and their maker.
We are indebted to Jan Marsh and Clive Wainwright for their generous help and guidance in preparing this catalogue entry.