Fair Rosamund and Queen Eleanor

Fair Rosamund and Queen Eleanor, painted in 1861 and now in the Yale Center for British Art, draws on a popular medieval English legend that had attracted poets and dramatists for centuries before Burne-Jones turned to it. Rosamund Clifford, said to have been the beloved mistress of King Henry II, was according to tradition poisoned or murdered by the jealous Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine — though the historical record is far thinner than the legend. Burne-Jones was twenty-eight when he completed this oil, still in the shadow of his mentor Rossetti and working through the tight compositional habits he had absorbed from medieval manuscripts and early Italian panel painting. The confrontation between the two women offered him the essential Pre-Raphaelite ingredients: psychological tension encoded in posture and glance rather than overt action, sumptuous medieval dress, and a compressed, frieze-like space. Yale's holding places the work in a strong context of British art study and collecting that has long taken Pre-Raphaelite painting seriously as a historical phenomenon.

Oil on canvas with a smooth, dry surface finish typical of early Burne-Jones. Figures are positioned in shallow relief against a minimal background, emphasising the confrontational geometry of the composition. The palette is sombre and jewel-like, with deep reds and greens offsetting the pallor of the figures' faces.