Oh, swallow, swallow

Oh, Swallow, Swallow, completed in 1894 and at Sudley House, takes its title from Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem The Princess, in which a lovesick speaker addresses the swallow as a messenger to a distant beloved. Tennyson was the most widely quoted source of pictorial subjects in late Victorian British painting, and Strudwick — deeply influenced by Burne-Jones's habit of combining medieval atmosphere with Tennysonian or Arthurian themes — was well suited to this melancholy subject of longing and separation. The painting would have shown a female figure in a medievalizing interior or garden, her pose expressive of yearning, surrounded by the decorative detail that characterized Strudwick's mature work. Sudley House, home of the Holt shipping family's collection, houses important Victorian paintings acquired in the nineteenth century.

Strudwick worked with a refined, enamel-like surface on panel or canvas, applying tempera or oils in the manner learned from Burne-Jones. His palette for such melancholy subjects was typically composed of cool blues, pale greens, and muted golds, creating an atmosphere of twilight or interior shadow appropriate to Tennyson's mood.