The Lady of Shalott

Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem The Lady of Shalott (1832, revised 1842) was among the most frequently illustrated subjects in Victorian art, depicting a cursed lady who could only see the world through a mirror and met her doom when she looked directly at Sir Lancelot. Grimshaw's 1875 treatment, now at Yale, is distinctive in his oeuvre — a literary and figurative subject rather than a landscape or nocturne. Yet he approaches the scene with the same atmospheric sensibility: the lady is typically shown floating down the river toward Camelot, surrounded by the reflected world she had only known at second hand. Grimshaw was capable of figure painting and literary subjects, though he is less remembered for these than for his nocturnal townscapes. The Pre-Raphaelite influence is evident in the choice of subject, which was a staple of that movement, and in the attention to reflective water surfaces.

Oil on canvas with a figurative and landscape composition centred on the fatal voyage down the river. Grimshaw uses the water's surface as a reflective plane in his characteristic manner, here serving the narrative of a woman moving between the world of mirrors and direct experience. The atmospheric handling of twilight or overcast light suits both the mood and his technical strengths.