02 Paintings, Irish deities, Henry Meynell Rheam's La Belle Dame sans Merci (Banshee), with footnotes # 43

Henry Meynell Rheam (1859-1920)

La Belle Dame sans Merci/ The beautiful lady without mercy (Banshee), c. 1901

Pencil, watercolour and bodycolour on paper laid on board

103⁄8 x 23 in. (26.4 x 58.5 cm.)

Private collection

Sold for GBP 3,780 in Jul 2022

John Keats's 1819 ballad La Belle Dame sans Merci provided inspiration for several Pre-Raphaelite artists, including John William Waterhouse, Arthur Hughes, Walter Crane and Frank Dicksee. Its subject is a fairy who seduces a knight with her eyes and singing voice, before lulling him to sleep and abandoning him on an empty hillside. The present watercolour depicts the moment when the fading knight dreams of the fairy he saw across the meadow, and his own initial approach to her on horseback. Meynell Rheam also made a much larger upright watercolour of the subject in 1901 (see below), in which the fairy stands over the dying knight in a misty clearing. More on this painting

Henry Meynell Rheam (1859-1920)

La Belle Dame sans Merci/ The beautiful lady without mercy (Banshee), c. 1897

Another version of La Belle Dame sans Merci

Watercolour on paper

24 × 57 cm

Unknown location

Henry Meynell Rheam (1859-1920), The eldest surviving son of a large Quaker family, with Yorkshire roots on both sides, he was born in Birkenhead on Merseyside. His father "became a successful hide and leather merchant" (Cartmell), and he went to boarding school in Weston-super-Mare. He was in Germany at some point, but in 1884 he went to Heatherly's school in London in 1884, and on from there in 1886 to the popular Académie Julian in Paris. Like so many young artists of that time, on his return to England he was attracted to the fishing villages and artists' colonies in Cornwall, moving first to Polperro and then to Newlyn.

Mainly a watercolourist, Rheam became part of the inner circle of the Newlyn School as Honorary Secretary of the Newlyn Society of Artists. He also made a name for himself in the wider art circle. The Cornish Masters website also tells us that "Rheam exhibited at the Royal Academy, was elected to the R.B.A. (Royal Society of British Artists) in 1889, and R.I. (Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours) in 1892 and exhibited regularly in all 3 institutions." Later on, he became more interested in fantasy and He was ony 61 when he died in nearby Penzance. — Jacqueline Banerjee

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