ford madox brown - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

Will you lie down and rest upon the cushions?
Lear: I’ll see their trial first. Bring in their evidence.
[to Edgar] Thou robed man of justice, take thy place.
[to the Fool] And thou, his yoke-fellow of equity,
Bench by his side. [to Kent] You are o’commission;
Sit you too. 114
The Whitworth Art Gallery holds a loosely drawn
sketch for this scene in which the
seated figures of Edgar and the fool are on the right and the two figures of Lear and Kent
on the left. However, there is no known finished
drawing for this scene and it may be
that
Brown eliminated it from his selection after making some initial sketches of it.
The lower half of the paper is a study for Lear in the storm. 115 Lear stands with his arms
above his head and his clothes billowing out behind him. To the left is a faint pencil
sketch of the fool. Both these figures are more fully developed in the final version at the
Whitworth which also has another study for the scene on the verso.
On the back of this sheet of drawings are studies for Alfred the Great and the wings of
The Seeds and Fruits of English
Poetry (later to become Chaucer at the Court of
Edwared
III). Like the other side of the paper, the reverse has been divided into two.
The top half depicts a pencil sketch of the same composition as cat. no. 82 with the seated
figure of King Alfred the Great surrounded by figures. Above this are further sketches of
figures, taken from the group surrounding King Alfred, of a man with an axe bending
over and, a man and a woman standing close together and looking down. On the lower
half of the paper are two pencil sketches of a seated figure and two sketches of a seated
couple. In these drawings the figures are more detailed and several have been given
individual costumes suggesting that it is the later of the two compositional studies.
Brown has signed this sheet of studies ‘Alfred the Great / FMB’ more firmly identifying
the figure who appears on two other of the works on paper in the BMAG collection as
King Alfred (cat. nos.1 and 82).
Also on this sheet of studies
are two putti for The Seeds and Fruits of English Poetry both
in chalk. One of the putti is more detailed than the other; the draped sash, wreath of
leaves and facial expression are clearly drawn. The other appears to be an impression
from another chalk drawing as it is very faint and
has left no pressure marks on the page.
As can be seen from the oil study and the pen and ink study of the right hand
side of The
Seeds and Fruits (Figs. 1 and 116), the putti were paired up at the bottom of the
composition and held medallions with the names and symbols of a further four English
poets. It appears that Brown was experimenting with the poses of the putti in these
studies. It is difficult to date the studies of the putti but they must have been drawn
between 1845, when The Seeds and Fruits was conceived, and 1849, when it seems
Brown abandoned the side wings.
114 King Lear, Act III, sc. vi, lines 33-39.
115 Ibid. Act III, sc. ii, 1-24.
248