Sir Launcelot and Elouise the Fair, for "The Story of the Champions of the Round Table"

Howard Pyle

1905 · Pen and ink · Drawings and Prints

Elouise the Fair greets Sir Launcelot in an abbey courtyard in Pyle's image, drawn to illustrate "The Story of the Champions of the Round Table" (1905). The artist also wrote the related text which tells how Elouise, seated in an apartment overlooking a courtyard, heard "a sudden sound of a great horse coming on the stone pavement of the court below...arose hastily...saw how he was that came...and ran down to the court...several of her maidens with her." Pyle was aware of the work of European contemporaries and skillfully adapted his style to suit particular subjects. A great lover of the middle ages, he here echoes Edward Burne-Jones's designs for William Morris's Kelmscott Press and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's seminal images for Moxon's 1857 edition of Tennyson.

Artist

Howard Pyle

Date

1905

Medium

Pen and ink

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of Jacqueline Loewe Fowler, 2020