Sir Galahad at the Ruined Chapel

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Date: 1859

Materials: Watercolour and bodycolour

Book design

This was the last of Rossetti's dozen or more medievalist watercolours, and derives from one of the five designs he made for the 'Moxon Tennyson' published in 1857. It illustrates Tennyson's poem 'Sir Galahad':

Between dank stems the forest glows,

I hear a noise of hymns:

Then by some secret shrine I ride;

I hear a voice, but none are there;

The stalls are void, the doors are wide,

The tapers burning fair.

Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth,

The silver vessels sparkle clean,

The shrill bell rings, the censer swings,

 And solemn chants resound between.

Tennyson's imagery

Rossetti remains faithful to Tennyson's imagery. The chapel's altar becomes a brilliant source of illumination, but contrary to the traditional use of the whiteness of the paper for this purpose, Rossetti uses bright pigments here, reserving the translucence of watercolour for the darker background.

This work was another purchase by James Leathart, who also owned Brown's 'The Pretty Baa-Lambs' and later bought Burne-Jones's major watercolour 'The Merciful Knight'.