Mr Brown of Selkirk bought the painting from Walter Crane, before it was moved to Sotheby's, its current location, on 18 June 1985, in lot 24. It was also displayed in the Christopher Wood Gallery in London and the private collection of an unknown location.
Walter Crane’s painting “La belle Dame Sans Merci” is one of many depictions of John Keats’s 1820 ballad of the same name about a knight’s self-destructive love for a “beautiful lady without mercy.”
The poem begins with an anonymous speaker asking a “haggard and so woe-begone” knight the cause of his despair. The knight describes a “lady in the meads” whom he describes as “full beautiful, a faery’s child,” with long hair, “light” feet and “wild” eyes. The “merciless beautiful lady” sang a “faery’s song” to the knight, who gave her a garland and bracelets in exchange. The faery tells the knight “I love thee true,” takes him to her “elfin grot,” before luring him to sleep. Kings, princes and warriors, all as pale as the knight when the anonymous speaker finds him, warns the knight that “La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall.”
Crane’s painting, as well as other portrayals of Keats’s poem, commonly depicts the knight looking up at the “merciless beautiful lady.” Specifically, in Crane’s painting, the faery is on a white horse and gazes down at the knight, whose face is not visible, to allow viewers to look up at the faery, like the knight and the other “pale” men.
It is a piece that contrasts the lady and knight in a rather unique way, where the lady alone has motion and power to her posture whereas the knight is static and more inclined to grace.
