La Belle Dame Sans Merci

A red-haired woman in a rose-pink gown leans down from the saddle to take a knight’s face in her hands, her hair falling across his steel shoulder. Frank Dicksee painted it from Keats’s poem: the bay horse dips its head under a red bridle studded with gold, wild roses grow at the knight’s feet, and the valley behind runs back to a river and a low sunset.

The armour and the pink gown come together quickly; the dark horse and the deep green woodland either side are where the hours go. Finished size 68.6 x 50.8cm.