JAMES ARCHER | SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE

Sale: Christie's, London, December 14, 2016, lot 31, illustrated

Acquired at the above sale

(Possibly) Art Journal, 1871, p. 99.

Christine Poulson, The Quest for the Grail: Arthurian Legend in British Art 1840-1920, Manchester and New York, 1999, p. 57, illustrated p. 58

The epic stories of Arthurian legend were a favored subject for James Archer, his contemporary British artists, and their patrons. While the present lot may relate to a larger composition of the same title that Archer exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1864, The Meeting of Launcelot and Guinevere (oil on canvas), he is perhaps best known for a series of four major works based on the legend of King Arthur, painted between 1861 and 1868:

La Morte d'Arthur (fig. 1; 1861, Manchester City Art Gallery); 

King Arthur obtains the mystic sword Excalibur (1862, Private Collection);

The Sancgreall, King Arthur healed of his grievous wound (1863, Private Collection):

The Funeral of Queen Guinevere (1868, Private Collection).