Once my Fell Foe (w/c & bodycolour on paper)

The inscription on the back of this little painting suggests that the scene is from the story of the French King Francis I, who was imprisoned by the Spanish King Charles V after the Battle of Pavia in 1525, and this could be the view out of his prison window. Small, rectangular and done in dry bodycolour with the brush dragged across a rough surface, the picture fits into a group of works that Burne-Jones and Fairfax Murray were painting in collaboration with William Morris in 1869-70. A poem by Morris (MS Fitzwilliam) that begins 'Once my fell foe...' about a Knight imprisoned after a battle seems to describe the scene exactly: ‘There I lay in prison strong. . .There was a window small to see. . .with two bars was it made full fast’. From his prison window he witnesses processions of knights in armour with horns proceeding to a castle gate.