Lot Essay
The picture is inspired by the second stanza of Browning's poem 'Misconceptions', first published in Men and Women in 1855:
This is a heart the Queen leant on,
Thrilled in a minute erratic,
Ere the true bosom she bent on,
Meet for love's regal dalmatic.
Oh, what a fancy ecstatic
Was the poor heart's, ere the wanderer went on -
Love to be saved for it, proffered to, spent on!
Byam Shaw's first major commission as a book illustrator had been to execute a set of sixty-seven black and white designs for a selection of Browning's poems edited by Richard Garnett and published by George Bell in 1897. 'Misconceptions' is included, and Shaw's headpiece (p. 370) clearly anticipates the painting, containing the composition in embryonic form.
Rex Vicat Cole, co-founder of the Byam Shaw and Vicat Cole Art School (1910) and the author of a postumous memoir of his friend, described the picture as 'painted smoothly, with elaboration. How well those grey empty steps, stretching across the picture, emphasise the forlornness of the figure who has no place in the gay-coloured procession under the arcade'. The collonade with roundels in the spandrills seems to be an echo of Brunelleschi's famous Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence, with medallions of swaddled infants added later by Andrea della Robbia, while the frescoes seen through the arches are suggestive of Uccello (far left) and other early Renaissance masters, and the sheild in relief on the wall to the right is adapted from the Medici coat-of-arms.
The model for the principal figure was Edward Tindal Atkinson, later Sir Edward Tindal Atkinson, KCB, CBE, Director of Public Prosecutions. His family were close friends of Byam Shaw, who often used them as models. Other friends and relations appear in the procession.
W.C. DeVane mentions the picture in his Browning Handbook (1955) as an example of the influence of this poem, which also inspired musical renderings by Georgina Schuyler and E.C. Gregory.
This is a heart the Queen leant on,
Thrilled in a minute erratic,
Ere the true bosom she bent on,
Meet for love's regal dalmatic.
Oh, what a fancy ecstatic
Was the poor heart's, ere the wanderer went on -
Love to be saved for it, proffered to, spent on!
Byam Shaw's first major commission as a book illustrator had been to execute a set of sixty-seven black and white designs for a selection of Browning's poems edited by Richard Garnett and published by George Bell in 1897. 'Misconceptions' is included, and Shaw's headpiece (p. 370) clearly anticipates the painting, containing the composition in embryonic form.
Rex Vicat Cole, co-founder of the Byam Shaw and Vicat Cole Art School (1910) and the author of a postumous memoir of his friend, described the picture as 'painted smoothly, with elaboration. How well those grey empty steps, stretching across the picture, emphasise the forlornness of the figure who has no place in the gay-coloured procession under the arcade'. The collonade with roundels in the spandrills seems to be an echo of Brunelleschi's famous Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence, with medallions of swaddled infants added later by Andrea della Robbia, while the frescoes seen through the arches are suggestive of Uccello (far left) and other early Renaissance masters, and the sheild in relief on the wall to the right is adapted from the Medici coat-of-arms.
The model for the principal figure was Edward Tindal Atkinson, later Sir Edward Tindal Atkinson, KCB, CBE, Director of Public Prosecutions. His family were close friends of Byam Shaw, who often used them as models. Other friends and relations appear in the procession.
W.C. DeVane mentions the picture in his Browning Handbook (1955) as an example of the influence of this poem, which also inspired musical renderings by Georgina Schuyler and E.C. Gregory.