Arthur and His Knights
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Chaundler, Christine. Arthur and His Knights. Ill. [Thomas Blakely] Mackenzie. London: Nisbet and Co., n.d. [1920].
Thomas Blakely Mackenzie (1887-1944), who studied at the Bradford College of Art and the Slade School in London, was commissioned early in his career by the publisher James Nisbet to illustrate an edition of King Arthur and His Knights by Christine Chaundler, a children's editor at Nisbet's company. Mackenzie's eight watercolor illustrations have a fairy-tale quality. In 'Lancelot Lay Sleeping Under the Apple Tree,' for example, Lancelot, sleeping peacefully in a beautiful setting, is unaware of the danger he faces as the four queens who will imprison him and ask him to choose one of them as his paramour, approach unknown to him and almost to the observer of the image since the figures are miniscule and blend with the colorful landscape. A path winds invitingly up to the castle where the queens will confine him.
