George Frederic Watts, O.M., R.A.

Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida

The present work is one of three known versions Watts completed in the late 1860s.  The composition is inspired by a tale from Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene in which the beautiful Una and the valiant Red Cross Knight join to defeat a terrible dragon.  On their journey the pair are overcome by a rain storm and attempt to take refuge in a dense wood where they are met by temptations which test their virtue.  The models for the work are Miss Mary Jackson (Mrs. Herbert Fisher) for the figure of Una and Mr. Arthur Prinsep for the knight.  According to Mary Watt’s manuscript catalogue, our version, best considered a sketch for the realized work, may have been exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1879, wrongly titled Enid and Geraint.