WILLIAM POWELL FRITH, R.A. | The Lover's Seat

J. Leger & Sons, London, where bought by Sir David Scott in 1947 for £47.5.0.

Art Journal, 1855, p.172;

Graham Reynolds, Painters of the Victorian Scene, London, 1953, p.59, illustrated as plate 21;

Graham Reynolds, Victorian Painting, London, 1966, illustrated p.48, pl.23;

Jeremy Maas, Victorian Painters, London, 1969, illustrated p.114;

Sotheby's, Pictures from the Collection of Sir David and Lady Scott, 2008, p.162, illustrated p.163

This painting shows the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Godwin, writer of Frankenstein, at the time of their love affair in 1814. Frith, who announced himself 'a worshipper of Shelley, and [one who had] read everything respecting him that came in my way', described how in preparation for the present painting he visited the house of Shelley's son at Boscombe in Dorset, where he studied portraits of the poet and of Mary, and upon which he based their likenesses.