Chaucer at the court of Edward III 1851
by Ford Madox Brown
Title
Chaucer at the court of Edward III 1851
Artist
Ford Madox Brown
Medium
Painting - Oil On Canvas
Description
This painting, a celebration of the English language, was created by a British painter Ford Madox Brown in 1847-1851. Chaucer, the ‘father of English literature’, is reading lines from The Canterbury Tales to King Edward III, who first championed the English language over the French. The patriotic medieval subject was inspired by recent commissions for mural paintings in the British Houses of Parliament. As Ford Madox Brown worked on the painting, he became closely involved with the group of young artists who in 1848 founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His essential aim was to depict a significant historical event just as it might have appeared, and to honor the Pre-Raphaelite’s concern for truth to nature. Brown also used his friends rather than professionals for models, appropriately asking the poet-painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti to sit for the figure of Chaucer, while others of his circle appear as supernumeraries. Though never officially a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – a group which loved the Middle Ages and its tales of heroism, chivalry, and romance – Brown was, by inclination and practice, sympathetic to the realist ambitions of the movement.
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April 17th, 2023
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