"Geoffrey Chaucer reading the 'Legend of Custance' to Edward III and his court," by Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893)

Geoffrey Chaucer reading the "Legend of Custance" to Edward III and his court

Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893)

1858-68

Oil on canvas

123.2 x 99.1 cm.

Tate Gallery

Accession no. NO2063 (purchased 1906)

Source: Art UK

This is a replica of a much larger original exhibited in 1851, which now hangs in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. [Commentary continues below.]

Commentary and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee.

Available for re-use on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence. [Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]

Brown wrote quite extensively about the genesis of this important work, and the feelings behind it:

The sketch for this picture was painted, and the picture itself commenced, in the year 1845, at Rome. Circumstances, however, which required my immediate return home, caused me to abandon that first beginning. This present work was begun in London in 1847, and finished early in 1851. During this interval, however, the pictures of Wickliff, King Lear, the Infant's Repast, Shakespeare, Windermere, and other works not here exhibited, were painted. As the sketch shows, the picture was originally designed as a triptych, figures of other great English poets occupying the wings. But this idea was conceived abroad at a time when I had little opportunity of knowing the march of literary events at home. On my coming to England, I soon found that the illustrious in poetry were not all among the dead, and to avoid what must either have remained incomplete, or have appeared pretentious criticism, I gave up the idea indicated in the side compartments. The picture as it now stands might be termed the First, or, First Fruits, of English Poetry. Chaucer, along with Dante, is one of the only two supremely great mediaeval poets who have come down to us, at least by name. But Chaucer is at the same time as much a perfect English poet I am almost tempted to say a modern English poet as any of the present day. Spelling, and a few of the minor proprieties apart, after a lapse of five hundred years, his delicate sense of naturalistic beauty and his practical turn of thought, quite at variance with the iron grasp of realism, the deep-toned passionate mysticism, and super-sensual grace of the great Italian, comes home to us as naturally as the last volume we hail with delight from the press. [qtd. in Ford 42]

Julian Treuherz tells us that two studio assistants were involved in the painting: Thomas Seddon at the beginning, and perhaps Albert Goodwin later on. Brown made a few slight changes to it, compared with the original, "but the general composition is the same" (130). To the right of Chaucer (modelled by Rossetti) is John of Gaunt, and seated nearby under a canopy is Edward III, with the King's mistress between them. The little boy at the King's and Chaucer's feet is the future Richard II. Among other important people featured here, Froissart is in the right foreground taking notes, while conversing with a very animated Gower! Treuherz concludes his helpful description, which is based on Brown's own account as reported by Ford Madox Ford (71-72), with a comment on the scene's "intense realism" (132).

Besides its historical detail, another important aspect of the painting is the play of light in this open air scene. According to the Tate Gallery label, "It was significant for its portrayal of natural sunlight and was his first attempt ‘to carry out the notion ... of treating the light and shade absolutely, as it exists at any one moment, instead of approximately or in generalized style.’"

Bibliography

Display Caption. Tate. Web. 22 July 2017.

Ford, Ford Madox. Ford Madox Brown: A Record of His Life and Work. London: Longmans, 1896. Internet Archive. Contributed by the Getty Research Institute. Web. 22 July 2017.

Treuherz, Julian, with contributions by Kenneth Bendiner and Angela Thirlwell. Ford Madox Brown: Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer. London: Philip Wilson, 2011.

Created 22 July 2017