1943.209: Sir Galahad

Identification and Creation

Object Number

1943.209

People

George Frederic Watts, British (London, England 1817 - 1904 Limnerslease, Compton, England)

Title

Sir Galahad

Classification

Paintings

Work Type

painting

Date

1860-1862

Culture

British

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/230160

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

191.8 x 107 cm (75 1/2 x 42 1/8 in.)
framed: 217.2 x 127 x 8.3 cm (85 1/2 x 50 x 3 1/4 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History

Eustace Smith, 1873, sold; to Alexander Henderson, 1st Baron Faringdon, 1887, sold; through Sotheby's, London, June 13, 1934, lot 133]; to [Fine Art Society, PLC, London], sold; [through Martin Birnbaum and Frost and Reed]; to Grenville Lindall Winthrop, New York, 1934, bequest; to Fogg Art Museum, 1943

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop

Accession Year

1943

Object Number

1943.209

Division

European and American Art

Contact

am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu

Permissions

THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT BY THE TERMS OF ITS ACQUISITION TO THE HARVARD ART MUSEUMS.

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Publication History

• Frederic George Stephens, "Fine Arts: The Royal Academy", Athenaeum (May 3 1862), p. 602, p. 602
• Tom Taylor, "Royal Academy Exhibition", The London Times (May 3 1862), p. 14, p. 14
• William M. Rossetti, [Unidentified review], Fraser's Magazine (July 1862), p. 71, p. 71
• Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, William P. Nimmo (Edinburgh, Scotland, 1868), p. 3
• Marion Harry Spielmann, The Works of G. F. Watts, with a Complete Catalogue of His Pictures, Fourteen Drawings Contributed by Himself, and Other Illustrations (London, 1886), p. 30
• A. G. Temple, The Art of Painting in the Queen's Reign (London, England, 1897), p. 170
• Hugh Macmillan, The Life-work of George Frederick Watts, R. A., J. M. Dent & Co./E. P. Dutton & Co. (London, England and New York, NY, 1903), p. 173-175
• L. L. Ewing, George Frederick Watts, Sandro Botticelli, Matthew Arnold (New York, NY, 1904), p. 16
• Mary S. Watts, Catalogue of the Works of G. F. Watts Compiled by His Widow, Watts Gallery (Compton, Surrey, England, c. 1910), vol. II, p. 61
• Mary S. Watts, George Frederic Watts: the Annals of an Artist's Life, The Macmillan Company (London, England, 1912), vol. I, pp. 158, 188, 228, 328; vol. II, pp. 262-264
• H. W. Shrewsbury, The Visions of an Artist (London, England, 1918), p. 56, repr.
• A. B. Ramsay, ed., The Letters of H. E. Luxmoore (Cambridge, England, 1929), p. 55
• Ellen Terry, Memoirs, ed. Edith Craig (London, England, 1933), pp. 42-52
• Catalogue of the...Collections of Paintings...the Late Rt. Hon. Lord Faringdon, auct. cat., Sotheby's (London, England, June 13, 1934), repr., no. 133
• "Pre-Raphaelites", Bulletin of the Fogg Art Museum, Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, November 1943), vol. X, pp. 62-63, repr. in b/w, p. 63
• Chinese Sculpture, Bronzes, Jades, Paintings and Drawings, Egyptian and Persian sculpture, Pre-Columbian art; selected from the collection of Grenville Lindall Winthrop, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1943), p. 6
• [Untitled article], Harvard Alumni Bulletin, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, January 8, 1944), vol. XLVI, repr.
• Margaret R. Scherer, About the Round Table (New York, NY, 1945), p. 74, repr.
• Ronald Chapman, The Laurel and the Thorn: a Study of G. F. Watts (London, England, 1945), p. 47
• Paintings and Drawings of the Pre-Raphaelites and their Circle, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1946), no. 95
• Madge Sinker, "Sir Galahad", The Lady (May 17, 1962), repr.
• David Loshak, "G. F. Watts and Ellen Terry", The Burlington Magazine (November 1963), 105, pp. 476-485, p. 484
• Carol le Brun Danikian, "Early French Symbolists", Boston Herald American (January 28 1973)
• Lee Sheridan, "'French Symbolist Art' Timely Museum Exhibit", Springfield Daily News (February 1973)
• Denys Sutton, "The Pursuit of Beauty", Apollo (June 1978), vol. CVII, no. 196, pp. 446-452, p. 448, fig. 5
• David Robertson, Sir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art World, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ, 1978), repr. in b/w fig. 194, p. 410; text p. 411
• Allen Staley, Victorian High Renaissance, exh. cat., Minneapolis Institute of Arts (Minneapolis, MN, 1978), p. 67
• Mark Girouard, The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (New Haven, 1981), p. 150 and passim
• Edgar Peters Bowron, European Paintings Before 1900 in the Fogg Art Museum: A Summary Catalogue including Paintings in the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 133, repr. as no. 82
• Francesca Mitchell, "Technical Study of the Paintings by George Frederic Watts in the Collection at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University" (thesis (certificate in conservation), Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, July 1990), Unpublished, pp. 1-22 passim
• Debra N. Mancoff, The Arthurian Revival in Victorian Art, Garland Publishers, Inc. (New York, NY and London, England, 1990), repr. in b/w no. 72
• Marilynn Lincoln Board, "Art's Moral Mission: Reading G. F. Watts' 'Sir Galahad'", The Arthurian Revival: Essays on Form, Tradition, and Transformation, ed. Debra N. Mancoff, Garland Publishers, Inc. (New York, NY and London, England, 1992), pp. 132-153, pl. 15
• Joseph A. Kestner, "The Representation of Armour and the Construction of Masculinity in Victorian Painting", Nineteenth Century Studies (1993), vol. VII, repr. fig. 14, p. 22, b/w
• Joseph A. Kestner, Masculinities in Victorian Painting, Scolar Press (Hants, England, 1995), p. 135
• Christopher Newall, The Grosvenor Gallery Exhibitions: Change and Continuity in the Victorian Art World, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 1995), p. 133
• Christine Poulson, The Quest for the Grail: Arthurian Legend in British Art, 1840-1920, Manchester University Press/St. Martin's Press (Manchester, England and New York, NY, 1999), pp. 110-122, 140, 242, pl. 111
• Chikashi Kitazaki and Mina Oya, ed., Between Reality and Dreams: Nineteenth Century British and French Art from the Winthrop Collection of the Fogg Art Museum, exh. cat., National Museum of Western Art (Ueno, 2002), pp. 90-91, cat. #12, color repr.
• Stephan Wolohojian, ed., A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press (U.S.) (New York, 2003), no. 194, pp. 431-434, repr. in color
• Stephan Wolohojian, Ingres, Burne-Jones, Whistler, Renoir... La Collection Grenville L. Winthrop, exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and Réunion des Musées Nationaux (Paris, France, 2003), no. 194, pp. 444-446, repr. in color
• The Forbes Collection of Victorian Pictures and Works of Art, auct. cat., Christie's, London (London, England, February 19, 2003 - February 20, 2003), vol. I, p. 237
• Masaie Matsumura, Japan and Victorian England: Interactions, Osaka Kyoiku Tosho (Osaka, Japan, 2012), repr. p. 94
• Patricia C. Pongracz, ed., Louis C. Tiffany and the Art of Devotion, exh. cat., D. Giles and Museum of Biblical Art (London and New York, 2012), p. 120, 122, reproduced p. 120, fig. 36
• John Swannell, Sir Portrait, Frances Lincoln Limited (London, 2015), repr. on p.93
• Elizabeth Prettejohn, Modern Painters, Old Masters: The Art of Imitation from the Pre-Raphaelites to the First World War, Yale University Press (New Haven, 2017), pp. 229-230, figs. 135 (detail), 150
• Clare Simmons, "Chivalric Medievalism", ed. Robert W. Jones and Peter Coss, The Boydell Press (Woodbridge, Suffolk/Rochester, New York, 2019), p. 306, repr. p. 305
• Jeff Rosen, Julia Margaret Cameron: The Colonial Shadows of Victorian Photography, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and Yale University Press (New Haven and London, 2024), pp. 105-107, repr. p. 106 as fig. 41

Exhibition History

• Annual Exhibition, 1862, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 01/01/1862 - 12/31/1862
• International Exhibition, [Unknown venue, London], London, 05/01/1873 - 12/31/1873
• Summer Exhibition, Grosvenor Gallery, London, 05/01/1878 - 08/05/1878
• Winter Exhibition: Collection of the Works of G. F. Watts, R. A., Grosvenor Gallery, London, 11/01/1881 - 04/01/1882
• Unidentified Exhibition, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1887, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 01/01/1887 - 12/31/1887
• Winter Exhibition: The Works of G. F. Watts, New Gallery, London, 01/01/1896 - 12/31/1897
• Winter Exhibition: Works by the Late George Frederick Watts, R.A., O.M. and the Late Frederick Sandys, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 10/01/1905 - 12/31/1905
• Catalogue of Works of G. F. Watts, R. A., New Gallery, London, 01/01/1906 - 12/31/1907
• Chinese sculpture, bronzes, jades, paintings and drawings, Egyptian and Persian sculpture, Pre-Columbian art : selected from the collection of Grenville Lindall Winthrop, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 10/01/1943 - 02/28/1944
• Paintings and Drawings of the Pre-Raphaelites and their Circle, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 04/08/1946 - 06/01/1946
• Pre-Raphaelite and Early French Symbolist Art in the Fogg Collections, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 01/16/1973 - 02/25/1973
• The Pre-Raphaelites: Selections from the Permanent Collection, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 06/04/1980 - 07/15/1980
• Between Reality and Dreams: Nineteenth Century British and French Art from the Winthrop Collection of the Fogg Art Museum, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 09/14/2002 - 12/08/2002
• A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, Lyon, 03/15/2003 - 05/26/2003; National Gallery, London, 06/25/2003 - 09/14/2003; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10/23/2003 - 01/25/2004
• For Students of Art and Lovers of Beauty: Highlights from the Collection of Grenville L. Winthrop, Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 04/16/2004

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