Sir Galahad

Maud Tindal Atkinson was a watercolourist who studied under Byam Shaw, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1907. Sir Galahad was a favourite subject of artists working in the wake of the Arthurian revival. Sir Joseph Noel Paton, Arthur Hughes and G.F.Watts all focused on this part of the legend, when Sir Galahad, as one of those chosen for the quest for the Holy Grail, is favoured by a guiding vision. Tennyson's poem Sir Galahad strengthened Malory's original characterisation of Lancelot's son as the most blessed knight, whose "strength [was] as the strength of ten" and whose purity of spirit allowed him to pass the many tests incurred on the sacred mission. However Atkinson depicts one angel, whose formal solemnity contrasts with Tennyson's description of three on the wing "With folded feet, in stoles of white". The angel's verticle form echoes those of the trees, and so accentuates the sense of a woodland alive with spiritual presence.