Morgan le Fay

Frederick Sandys

Date: 1864

Materials: Oil on wood panel

The sorceress 

In Arthurian legend, Morgan le Fay was the half-sister of King Arthur. Increasingly jealous of his high esteem and strong moral character, she made several attempts to disrupt his life and reign, and revealed the adultery of magic fire over a cloak (woven on the loom behind her) intended to consume the King's body. Guenevere with Lancelot. Here, she has turned to sorcery, and passes a lamp of magic fire over a cloak (woven on the loom behind her) intended to consume the King's body.

Ghost from a grave 

Arthurian subjects were popular but F. G. Stephens thought that a narrative picture such as Morgan le Fay "ought not to have been presented without explanation to a public hardly enough versed in the Arthurian cycle of legends to recognise its theme at sight". He went on, however, to acknowledge its "strange force of expression and poetic suggestiveness ... the painting is powerful".

In contrast, the critic of the 'Art Journal' saw in Morgan's dramatic figure only "a petrified spasm, sensational as a ghost from a grave, and severe as a block cut from stone or wood". 

Gypsy model

It has been suggested that the model for Morgan may have been Keomi, the gypsy girl also used by Rossetti in his painting 'The Beloved' (1863-1866) and who was for a time the mistress of Sandys.

Stephens commented that "all the accessories have been studied with care". The designs on the sorceress's cloak are genuine Pictish symbols, the artist's source probably having been the first volume of 'Sculptured Stones of Scotland' by John Stuart, published in Aberdeen in 1856.