In Time of Peril
Edmund Blair Leighton, 1897
In Time of Peril, painted by Edmund Blair Leighton, shows a richly dressed mother who has reached the water gate of a medieval monastery with her children, seeking sanctuary. One of the boys glances back in fear, while the youngest is held in his mother's arms, all of them huddled beneath furs. Two armed men in chainmail accompany them, one of whom is a knight, identified by the coat of arms he bears, and a small store of treasure hints at the urgency of their flight.
Leighton presented the scene as a meditation on the shelter that monasteries offered to those fleeing violence, a theme he described in a letter as set in the fourteenth century. The picture was shown at the Royal Academy in 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, and the Auckland Art Gallery notes that the subject shrewdly touches on dynastic worries that surround an aging monarch. Its narrative tone and dense detail make it a good example of late nineteenth-century English history painting.
- Painter
- Edmund Blair Leighton
- Date
- 1897
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 124 × 169 cm
- Museum
- Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland Region
- Genre
- genre art
