Le Morte Darthur: The Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table
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Thomas Malory. Le Morte Darthur: The Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table. Ill. Russell Flint. London: Philip Lee Warner, 1910-11. 4 vols. (500 copies printed on handmade Riccardi paper and bound in vellum, of which the copy represented here is No. 81, plus 12 copies printed on vellum.)
Flint executed forty-eight watercolors for Malory's Le Morte Darthur. These proved to be a major achievement for the artist and a highpoint of illustrations of Malory's text. The illustrations were originally published in a four-volume limited edition that appeared in 1910-11. Five hundred copies, with vellum covers and cloth ribbons, were printed on fine Riccardi paper; twelve copies (ten of which were for sale) were produced on vellum. Each of the watercolors in the volume was reproduced as a plate, then attached to the appropriate page in the text and covered with a translucent leaf with the relevant quotation from Malory. A two-volume edition that included thirty-six plates was published in 1920; and a single volume, containing only twenty-four of the plates, followed in 1927. The illustrations were also exhibited in 1913 at the Paris Salon, where they were awarded the Silver Medal.
In his choice of subject for the Morte illustrations, Flint remained fairly faithful to Malory's text. His forty-eight full-page watercolors, which he painted in exquisite colors and with elaborate detailing, depicted most of the major events in the narrative, from Uther's promise to deliver the baby Arthur to Merlin in exchange for a night with Igraine to Arthur's receipt of the sword from the Lady of the Lake, from Nimue's enchantment of Merlin and the drinking of the love potion by Tristram and Isode to the deaths of Arthur and Guenever. (Notably missing, however, were any images of Elaine of Astolat, the Lily Maid, typically a favorite subject of late Victorian and early twentieth-century illustrators.)
Sometimes Flint depicts scenes not often represented in illustrations of Malory. Such is the case with 'When she saw he would not abide' (Book III, Chapter xii), in which King Pellinore, armed and 'eager' in his quest, ignores the cries of a young damosel who tends an injured knight. Without his help, 'the knight there died that was wounded, wherefore the lady for pure sorrow slew herself with his sword.' Later, Pellinore finds the corpses of the knight and the lady 'eaten with lions or wild beasts.' His grief becomes all the more intense when he discovers that the lady was his 'own daughter begotten on the lady of the Rule.' Pellinore's failure to abide and help her, however, has a positive outcome: it serves as one of the events that define the code of chivalry and the vows to which all of the knights of the Round Table must swear each year on the high feast of Pentecost: 'by no means to be cruel, but to give mercy upon him that asketh mercy, upon pain of forfeiture of their worship and lordship of King Arthur for evermore; and always to do ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen succour, upon pain of death.'