ford madox brown - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

Edward III. is now old, Phillippa being dead; the Black Prince is supposed to
be in his last illness. John of Gaunt, who was Chaucer’s patron, is
represented in full armour, to indicate that active measures now devolve upon
him. Pages holding his shield, etc., wait for him: his horse likewise in the
yard beneath. Edward the Black Prince, now in his fortieth year, emaciated
by sickness, leans on the lap of his wife Joanna, surnamed the Fair Maid of
Kent. There had been much opposition to their union, but
the Prince
ultimately had his way. To the right of the old King is Alice Perrers, a cause
of scandal to the Court, such as, repeating itself at intervals in history with
remarkable similarity from David onwards, seems to argue that the untimely
death of a hero may not be altogether so deplorable an event. Seated beneath
are various personages suited to the
time and place. A troubadour from the
South of France, half jealous, half in
half-struck admiration; a cardinal priest
on good terms with the ladies; a jester forgetting his part in rapt attention
of
the poet. This character, I regret to say, is less medieval than Shakespearian.
Two dilettante courtiers
learnedly criticising; the one in the hood is meant for
the poet Gower. Lastly, a youthful squire of the kind described by Chaucer as
never sleeping nights, “more than doeth
the nightingale,” so much he is
24
always in love.
Work on the large painting was slow and several other paintings including Wycliffe, Lear
and Cordelia and the Infant’s Repast were completed before Chaucer at the Court of
Edward III. Brown eventually finished it for the 1851 Royal Academy Exhibition. In
order to get the painting in on time he recalled that he had 'to labour very hard & at the
last worked three whole nights in one week, only lying down with my cloaths [sic] on for
a couple of hours.'
future sale. The painting failed to sell at an unspecified auction and was bought by the
dealer David Thomas White for £50 but remained unsold and in 1863, on hearing White
25 The painting was exhibited under the title Geoffrey Chaucer
reading the “Legend of Custance” to Edward III and his court, at the palace of Sheen, on
the anniversary of the Black Prince's forty-fifth birthday and received mixed criticism. 26
Brown felt he had been 'pretty well martyrised' as the painting was hung without its frame
in a way that made it 'shine all over.' 27 After the exhibition the painting was bought by
Robert Dickinson for £20 and with the understanding that he would keep 85% of any
was threatening to cut it up, Brown retrieved it in exchange for six other paintings.
Nevertheless, Chaucer at the Court of Edward III did bring Brown some of the adulation
for which he had hoped. In 1855 it was exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle and
in 1858 it won the Liverpool Academy £50 prize. 28 It was also the first of Brown’s
24
Op. cit. at note 20, p. 4.
25
Op. cit. at note 2, pp. 73-4.
26
The painting was cat. no. 380.
27
Op. cit. at note 3, letter to Lowes Dickinson dated May 14, 1851, pp. 72-3. In this letter Brown also
reveals that he had sent his portrait of Shakespeare (see cat. nos. 130 and 131, pp. 275-276) to the same
exhibition but it had been rejected. Op. cit. at note 2, pp. 73-74.
28
The painting was cat.
no. 140 at the Liverpool Academy.
208