Fair Rosamund is one of Waterhouse's last paintings, from 1917, the year he died. It shows Rosamund, the mistress of King Henry II of England, kneeling in prayer in a room lit by a tall window while she waits for him. Tradition says Henry kept the affair secret for years and acknowledged her openly only after he imprisoned his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, as a punishment for encouraging their sons in the rebellion of 1173 to 1174.
The queen behind the curtain
Look at the top right of the canvas. A veiled figure in a purple hood leans out from behind the red curtain, watching Rosamund. In the legend that Waterhouse follows, this is Queen Eleanor, who has come to poison her rival. That poison story belongs to later tradition rather than documented history, but it is the story every Victorian viewer would have known, and it gives the quiet room its tension.
A world of men, but only on cloth
Men appear in this painting only as images. Knights ride across the embroidery on the frame beside Rosamund and across the red hangings on the wall, and through the window a castle and a bridge stand in the distance. A spinning wheel waits at the right and a vase of pink roses sits at the left. The composition, a waiting woman in a richly furnished room, recalls Millais's Mariana, which is also based on Tennyson.
Little-known facts
- Waterhouse painted a sketch in preparation for a larger work exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1917, and a study for the painting is in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff.
- The checkerboard floor and the long train of the blue gown pull the eye diagonally from the window to the hidden queen.
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