Guinevere

Guinevere's Maying
John Collier
1900

Here's an old painting by the Victorian artist John Collier (1850-1934.) I started thinking about Guinevere while we were watching Vanessa Redgrave in the movie Letters to Juliet. It wasn't a bad movie really, just sort of unrealistic. The puppy characters had time and money to travel around Italy doing silly things. Except for Vanessa Redgrave of course, who was born in 1937 and played the grandma. She is still a lovely actress, but I kept remembering her and Richard Harris starring in the musical Camelot. She was 30 when she played Guinevere in that movie. And I was 16. (What happened?)

You forget Guinevere is a myth like Merlin and King Arthur, because she appears in so many stories, novels and poems. Guinevere has been portrayed as weak adulteress, a brave noblewoman and everything in between. In the 1967 Camelot movie, there was a hint of flower child and free love about Redgrave's Guinevere, and Harris played the indulgent husband who was easily fooled by his wife and friend Lancelot.

John Collier liked to paint women of legend and myth in a dramatic style. He was a good painter of horses, too. This Lady Godiva was risqué (even pornographic) in 1897, but since then she's been reproduced on thousands of cards and posters, so has lost most of the shock value. Now we just see a beautiful girl on a beautiful horse.

Lady Godiva
John Collier
1897