Painted only three years before Frampton's death, the picture illustrates the well-known opening lines of Tennyson's 'Lancelot and Elaine' from the Idylls of the King:

Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in a chamber up a tower to the east
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot.

In this sense it is backward-looking, for no subject from the Morte d'Arthur, or rather Tennyson's revamping of it, was more popular with Victorian artists; indeed Frampton himself had exhibited a version at the New Gallery in 1899 (no.338). On the other hand, in formal terms the picture shows a dramatic development from his early manner as exemplified by lot 82, being in the more linear, schematic and 'abstract' style that he adopted towards the end of his life. (For another example, dating from 1919, see The Last Romantics, exh. Barbican Art Gallery, 1989, no.66, repr. in cat.) The change in Frampton's style must reflect the advent of the modern movement; that our two pictures are separated by the Post-Impressionist exhibitions organised by Roger Fry at the Grafton Gallery in 1910 and 1912, cannot be accidental.

We are grateful to Mrs Rosemary Speirs for her help in preparing this entry.