Preparatory drawing of 'Britomart and her Nurse Before the Magic Mirror', 1850s?

George Frederic Watts RA (1817 - 1904)

RA Collection: Art

On the recto of this sheet is a preparatory drawing for 'Britomart and her Nurse Before the Magic Mirror' (1872, Birmingham Art Gallery and Museum, and an earlier version in Falmouth Art Gallery). The subject is from Spenser's Faerie Queen, in which Britomart, daughter of King Ryence, looks into a magic mirror and sees not her own reflection but that of her future husband, Sir Artegall (Arthur). After seeing this vision, Britomart sets out on a journey to find the knight.

This drawing is very close to the composition of the finished painting in which Watts deviated from the text to portray Britomart's nurse looking into the mirror and describing the scene to her charge. The main differences are details of Britomart's appearance and the surroundings. In the painting, Britomart's hair is loose and she wears a large cloak. In front of her is a lily in a pot, there are pillars to either side and she holds an open book on her knee rather than to the side as shown here.

On the verso of this sheet is a faint outline drawing for the same subject but showing a very different composition. It is probably an early idea for the painting and shows the heroine standing on the left in profile with her nurse asleep in a chair on the right with the mirror in front of her.

Watts wrote about this composition in a letter: 'Britomart emblem of maidenly purity, falls in love with the figure of a Knight she sees in an enchanted mirror. She and her nurse put on armour and go out into the world to seek the bodily substance of the Phantom. So far Spenser. In my picture Britomart and her nurse...are before it [the mirror] - Britomart does not dare to look into it...and gets her nurse to describe the appearances. I have taken advantage of this to represent the dramatis personae of the poem...This is the simple outline of my poem which can hardly be called an illustration of Spenser's' (see Catalogue of Paintings, City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, 1960, inventory no. 527'29, p. 151).