Daniel Maclise

Provenance:
Sold: Christie's, London, April 22, 1966, Lot 128 (titled The Tryst)
Lambton, acquired at the above sale

Literature:
Richard Ormond, Daniel Maclise, London, 1972, p. 102
Peter Murray (ed.), Daniel Maclise, Romancing the Past, Cork, 2008, p. 181

This fine painting is an example of Daniel Maclise's later style, from about the time that he embarked on his two great masterpieces, The Death of Nelson and The Meeting of Wellington and Blücher, in the House of Lords. It is one of a number of works representing pairs of lovers, which he painted in the 1850s and 1860s. Other examples include The Falconer, 1853 (Crawford Municipal Art Gallery); The Poet and His Lover, 1855 (Private Collection); Faust and Margaret (formerly called The Student), 1862 (Bury Art Gallery); and Othello and Desdemona, 1867 (Johannesburg Art Gallery). All are medieval or Renaissance in costume and setting, and they share certain motifs; for instance, the Romanesque arch framing the lovers recurs in the Bury Faust and Margaret, and the pose and type of the female figure in both pictures is similar, even though in Faust and Margaret the figures are half-lengths. As Richard Ormond has observed, this girl is "an idealised type often found in Maclise's work of this period," appearing again as Celia in the large Wrestling Scene in 'As You Like It' of 1855 (Forbes Magazine Collection).