signed and dated 'MCMXI W. RUSSELL/FLINT.' (lower left within a cartouche), and inscribed 'No. 12/Queen Guinevere rescued from the Stake by Sir/Lancelot/Le Morte D'Arthur/Book XX Chap VIII/'How Sir Lancelot and his kinsmen rescued the/queen from the fire Vol IV' (on the reverse)
pencil and watercolour heightened with white on buff paper
11½ x 8½ in.
Between 1910 and 1911, when Flint had established himself as a successful book illustrator, he executed twenty-four watercolours for a four volume publication by the Medici Society of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. In the present watercolour we see the moment after King Arthur has decreed that Queen Guinevere must face judgement at the stake, but she is saved by Sir Lancelot.
Flint said 'To depict story-tellers' characters vividly required a fair degree of imagination and insight. Draughtsmanship and technique were essential. The toil involved in producing even a half-page with a group of figures in movement was greater, far greater, than in many paintings hung in the Royal Academy'.
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