The King's Daughters, by Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919). c.1875. Oil on panel; 10 1/8 x 14 3/8 inches (25.8 x 36.5 cm). Collection of the Dulwich Art Gallery, Dulwich, accession no. DPG612. Image courtesy of the Dulwich Art Gallery under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence (CC BY-NC-SA).
Study of a reclining draped female figure for The King's Daughters. c. 1875. Pencil on paper; 4 1/16 x 7 1/4 inches (10.4 x 18.4 cm). Private collection, image courtesy of the author.
This painting, one of Murray's most beautiful works, is based on a poem by D.G. Rossetti, "My Father's Close," which had been published initially in 1870 in Poems. It was one of two pieces that Rossetti had translated from the old French.
Inside my father's close,
(Fly away, O my heart, away!)
Sweet apple-blossom blows
So sweet.
Three kings' daughters fair,
(Fly away, O my heart, away!)
They lie below it there
So sweet.
"Ah," says the eldest one,
(Fly away, O my heart, away!)
"I think the day's begun
So sweet."
"Ah," says the second one,
(Fly away, O my heart away!)
"Far off I hear the drum
So sweet."
"Ah," says the youngest one,
(Fly away, O my heart, away!)
"It's my true love, my own.
So sweet.
<"Oh, if he fight and win,
(Fly away, O my heart, away!)
"I keep my love for him.
So sweet:
Oh, let him lose or win,
He hath it still complete."
The painting features the three kings' daughters lying in a meadow in front of a well-head. The princess's gowns are of a vibrant saffron, red, and blue colours. The girl in blue has been reading an illuminated manuscript. A dense forest forms the background. This idyllic painting's Giorgionesque composition reflects Murray's interest in Venetian Renaissance painting, in which had been influenced both by John Ruskin and Edward Burne-Jones. John Christian points out that "in fact Venetian painting remained a constant influence on Murray's style, not only suggesting motifs but determining his characteristic oil technique of glazing colour over a low-keyed underpainting" (Christian, 1989, 91).
In mood this painting is reminiscent of that of Burne-Jones's early watercolour Green Summer of 1864. Burne-Jones himself had previously made two pen-and-ink drawings on this theme of The Kings Daughters in the late 1850s, as well as another pen-and-ink drawing of this subject that was included in his Little Holland House Album of drawings of 1859 that he had presented to Sophia Dalrymple. About this particular drawing John Christian says, "The music is unidentified, but could have been written by several members of the circle. It is the type of song that Burne-Jones's fiancée Georgiana Macdonald was fond of singing" (Christian, 1981, 36).
The pencil drawing for the princess figure to the far right in Murray's The Kings' Daughters is in a private Canadian collection.
Bibliography
Christian, John. The Little Holland House Album by Edward Burne-Jones. North Berwick: The Dalrymple Press, 1981, no.2, 36.
Christian, John. The Last Romantics. The Romantic Tradition in British Art. London: Lund Humphries, 1989, cat. 42, 91.
Lanigan, Dennis and Douglas Schoenherr. A Dream of the Past. Toronto: University of Toronto Art Centre, 2000, cat. 54, 156.
Created 14 February 2026