Live Auction 5879Victorian & Traditionalist Art
Archibald Wakley (1873-1906)
Lot 921

Archibald Wakley (1873-1906)

A Royal Princess

Closed25 February 2009

Price Realised

GBP 3,000

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Archibald Wakley (1873-1906)
A Royal Princess
signed and dated 'ARCHIBALD/WAKLEY/1903' (lower right) and inscribed 'A Royal Princess/"But a vain shadow/If one considereth;/Vanity of Vanities/As the Preacher saith"/C.Rossetti./Archibald Wakley/76A Monmouth Road/Bayswater/W.' (on the reverse of the frame)
watercolour and bodycolour heightened with white and gold
21½ x 26¼ in. (54.5 x 66.5 cm.)

Specialist note

The inscription on the label to the reverse comes from Christina Rossetti's poem Mother Country, composed on the 7 February 1866. Archibald Wakley was a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy and worked in both oils and watercolour. The present lot exhibits his allegiance to a Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic akin to Burne-Jones and De Morgan. Considered a prodigious talent, his promising career was cut short when he was brutally murdered in his Bayswater home in 1906.