William Powell Frith, R.A.

J. Leger & Sons, London, where bought by Sir David Scott in 1947  for £47.5.0.

Harrogate Corporation Art Gallery, William Powell Frith, R.A., 1951, no. 46;
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Frith, 1951, no. 42;
Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, Sunshine and Shadow - The David Scott Collection of Victorian Paintings, 1991, no. 29.

Art Journal, 1855, p. 172;
Graham Reynolds, Painters of the Victorian Scene, London, 1953, p. 59, illustrated as pl. 21;
Graham Reynolds, Victorian Painting, London, 1966, illustrated p. 48, pl. 23;
Jeremy Maas, Victorian Painters, London, 1969, illustrated p. 114;
Sotheby's, Pictures from the Collection of Sir David and Lady Scott, 2008, pp. 162-163.

STRUCTURE Original canvas in good stable condition. PAINT SURFACE Scattered craquelure throughout although the paint surface is stable. There is a faint stretcher mark running across the upper border. Otherwise in good original condition. ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT UV light reveals no visible retouching under a fairly opaque varnish. FRAME Held in an ornate plaster gilt frame in good condition. A backboard has been attached to the reverse to protect the canvas.
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'Frith called himself a "worshipper" of the poet Shelley, and in his authobiography he says that he made "a slight sketch of one of the love scenes that took place between the poet and Mary Godwin in the old St. Pancras churchyard. I found a tombstone that might have been the one on which so many passionate words were spoken; and on it I placed my figures". This picture may well be the one referred to. I seem to remember a portrait of Shelley with just such a flowing collar. I particularly like the painting of the hands and the girl's lilac shawl.' Sir David Scott

Although this painting has the mood of a Victorian genre painting, it in fact shows the writers Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Godwin at the time of their love affair in 1814. Frith, who announced himself 'a worshipper of Shelley, and [one who had] read everything respecting him that came in my way', described how in preparation for the present painting he visited the house of Shelley's son at Boscombe in Dorset, where he studied portraits of the poet and of Mary, and upon which he based their likenesses.

An earlier version of this painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy, but under the discreetly abbreviated title of The Lovers' Seat in 1876, the identity of the two figures concealed presumably because as a representation of an adulterous love affair it would have been regarded as exceptionable to contemporary moral codes. Frith may have not been entirely satisfied with the treatment that he had given to the two figures, as he suggested in his autobiography, and perhaps worked on it further the following year, dating it accordingly.

Shelley had previously married Harriet Westbrook, with whom he had eloped to Edinburgh in 1811, but relations between them broke down after the birth of their two children. Shelley then met and fell in love with Mary Godwin, with whom, together with Mary's fifteen-year-old stepsister Jane, known as 'Claire', Clairmont, he left the country, to commence a triangular love affair which would last for eight years. In 1816, Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine, and shortly afterwards Shelley and Mary Godwin were married. In the same year she commenced her novel Frankenstein which was published in 1818.

The frame was made by a Mr Pond and was awarded a prize when displayed at the Alexandra Park International Exhibition in 1885.