ford madox brown - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

The sale catalogue of Brown's household contents and letters from Rossetti dated
1861 reveal that Brown also owned at least one volume of Knight's Pictorial History
of England, first published in four volumes between 1837 and 1841. 143 On 1
December Rossetti wrote 'Dear Brown, I'm doing the Parable of the Vineyard for the
shop glass. I think you have a number of Pictorial History of England with a Saxon
winepress in it. Would you kindly send it me by book post?' 144 Two days later he
sent another note saying: 'Dear Brown, Many thanks for the Pict. Hist.' 145 Although
Rossetti was writing in 1861 it is likely that his friend was using this popular
sourcebook as early as the 1840s as a number of figures from Chaucer appear to be
based on its illustrations. As Surtees pointed out the headdress of matron on the far
right of the composition may be based on the illustration of Queen Philippa's effigy
(Fig. 109). 146 Her effigy is in Westminster Abbey, a fact that Knight included under
the illustration making it a doubly useful source for artists, like Brown, who would
want to visit the original sculptures. 147 It seems highly likely that Brown was using
The Pictorial History of England when he was in Rome because the earliest
compositional studies for the painting, made in Rome in 1845, show a bishop on the
right of the composition. However, in the same year he replaces the bishop with a
Cardinal who wears the hat discussed and illustrated in The Pictorial History of
England (Fig. 110). It is possible that Brown also used the book as a source whilst
working on Wycliffe. The illustration Male Costume, Time of Edward III (Fig. 111)
appears to have been the source of the clothes for both Edward the Black Prince in
143
Lot no. 351 (Op. cit. at note 139, p. 18).
144
Oswald Doughty and John Robert Wahl, Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. 2, Oxford, 1965, p.
426.
145
Ibid., p. 427.
146
Op. cit. at note 66, p. 12. Surtees notes that Brown also used The Pictorial History of England for
the armour of one of the warriors in Lear and Cordelia (Fig. 37) which was painting whilst he worked
on Chaucer (Ibid., p. 58).
147
Op. cit. at note 34, p. 751. As mentioned above (pp. 113-114) Brown's diaries records visits to
Westminster Abbey and Southwark Cathedral to see tomb effigies.
122