The Meeting on the Turret Stairs (1864)

It’s a celebrated work by Frederic William Burton (1816-1900) and its romantic depiction of parting lovers has become a modern icon.
The artist meanwhile fallen into obscurity, although he was an accomplished watercolour painter and for twenty years Director of the National Gallery, London.
The theme comes from a medieval Danish ballad. A translation by Burton’s friend, Whitley Stokes, was published in Fraser’s Magazine in January 1855. It is a tragic story where Hellelil falls in love with one her twelve personal guards, Hildebrand, Prince of Engelland. Her father orders his seven sons to kill him. But he kills her father and six brothers before she intercedes to save the youngest dying in front of her. Even she was to fall down dead in front of her mother. Burton did not choose a violent episode and instead freely interpreted the story, placing their farewell on the turret stairs and leaving the reason for it to the imagination. His invention of the kiss on her languid outstretched arm and the lack of eye contact adds to the poignancy. She has thin ghostly hands and moves elengantly in a close-fitting dress of medieval type, lined with fur. His chain mail contrats with the decoration of fantastic beats patterned of his surcoat, running scroll on the sword scabbard (derived from Celtic examples) and jeweled monster on the helmet noseguard.
“A Knight in mailed amour and surcoat has met the fair tall lady he secretly loves, on a turret stair. By an uncontrollable movement he has seized her arm and is kissing it. She amazed has dropped the flowers she held in her other hand. The subject might have been made the most vulgar thing in the world – the artist has raised it to the highest pitch of refine emotion. The kiss is on the fur lined sleeve that covers the arm, and the face of knight is the face of a man to whom the kiss is a sacrament” (George Eliot)
After being in several private collections, the original picture was bequeathed to National Gallery of Ireland. Burton asked that it retained in its original mount and framed to both avoid damage and affecting the colouring.
(Extract. Text by Adrian Le Harivel)
Attention: If you want to see this picture, you have to ask for it before.