The Passage of the Holy Grail to Sarras

To the second and third generation of Pre-Raphaelite artists, Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, served as a prime source of inspiration. The text was revered by William Morris and Burne-Jones, who poured over their copy while students at Oxford. It subsequently served as the foundation for much of their art. Frampton saw Burne-Jones’s memorial exhibition in 1898 as a young man, and the experience struck him 'with the force of a revelation’. Much of his later work shows a debt to Burne-Jones: this picture in particular echoes his San Graal tapestries, commissioned from Morris & Co. by William Knox D’Arcy for the dining room of Stanmore Hall, Essex.

In this substantial canvas, shown at the New Gallery in 1907, and subsequently at the Paris Salon of 1911, Frampton has chosen a subject from Arthurian myth. The Holy Grail was, according to legend, the chalice that Joseph of Arimathea held to Christ’s side on the cross, to catch his blood. In a vision, Sir Galahad, the purest of all the knights, and Sir Launcelot’s son by Elaine, was told that the Grail was in Britain, but Camelot, King Arthur’s seat, was unworthy to keep it. It was to be returned to Sarras (thought to be modern day Smyrna, just north of Ephesus, to where St Paul had directed his epistles). When he awoke from his dream and returned to his ship he found the Grail waiting for him guarded by two angels: alongside Sir Bors and Sir Perceval, he embarked. Once they reached Sarras a great light appeared in the sky and the Grail was lifted up into Heaven, forever out of reach of mortal men. All the knights were greatly affected by what they had seen. Sir Perceval chose to live the rest of his life as a hermit outside Sarras, and Sir Galahad died shortly thereafter so that he could remain pure. Only Sir Bors returned to Camelot to relay all that had passed, and ensure the legend lived on.

The Passage of the Holy Grail to Sarras is one of Frampton’s finest works, full of carefully modulated colour and touching detail. Violets, symbolic of innocence and spiritual passion, surround the grail casket while around the boat is a Latin inscription that roughly translates as 'If you are faithful … you will enter …’. Born the son of a stained-glass artist, Frampton was educated at Brighton Grammar School where he was an exact contemporary of Aubrey Beardsley. He then attended the Westminster School of Art (again like Beardsley) and after working with his father for seven years, spent lengthy periods studying in Italy and France. His highly formalised style owes much to his involvement with stained glass (which continued at least until 1918). He also acknowledged the influence of the early Italians, and Puvis de Chavannes. He showed regularly at the Royal Academy (1895-1923), the New Gallery, the Royal Society of British Artists, and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters. He also belonged to the Tempera Society and the Art Worker’s Guild. He was a keen sailor, with a love of the sea that inspired many of his major works: The Voyage of St Brandan (1908) is another example, in which the Irish monk encounters Judas Iscariot on an iceberg.

Aymer Vallance, the distinguished critic, and biographer of William Morris, noted in the Studio of 1918, p. 68, that Frampton’s work never failed to exhibit 'a restful and dignified serenity, no less satisfying than transcendental'. Richard Dorment, writing in the catalogue to the 2003 RA exhibition (op. cit., p. 25), put it thus 'Looking at these pictures reveals the deep sincerity of British art, its touching lack of cynicism, its batty belief that this island is a Never-Never Land peopled with saints and squires and damsels in need of rescue. Suddenly, Stanley Spencer no longer looks like a lone eccentric, but registers as part of a long-established tradition of visionary painters stretching back through Rossetti and Burne-Jones to Blake. It is the sheer madness and innocence of this art that catches the viewer by the throat’.