Letter 2:- To Thomas Woolner, Saturday [23 January 1865]

Windsor Lodge

...I wish to borrow from you the Shallot Sketch... I want to copy the Shallot and give the copy to Tennyson. It would be an immense pleasure knowing he likes it, and there is no putting into words or paint how much I feel in his debt.

Arthur Hughes was born in London on 27th January 1832. He was a few years younger than the painters of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He studied at the School of Design at Somerset House under Alfred Stevens and afterwards at the Royal Academy Schools. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1849 and came under the Pre-Raphaelite influence after reading a copy of their journal, The Germ, 1850. Of it he wrote 'I am not conscious of any literature that has had such an effect upon...me'.

In 1850 he met Rossetti, Madox Brown and then in 1852, Millais. It was Millais who was to have a profound effect on his work and Millais' themes of lovers may have influenced his own subsequent choice of subjects which were usually of romantic love, often overlaid with grief.

Not only did he frequent Pre-Raphaelite social gatherings but also shared in the major activities of the Pre-Raphaelites in the 1850's: he illustrated Allingham's Music Master (1855) to which Millais and Rossetti also contributed; his mural The Death of Arthur enhanced the Oxford Union frescoes; at the so-called Pre-Raphaelite exhibition in Russell Place, Fitzroy Square in 1857 he was represented by six pictures, including Ophelia, Fair Rosemund and April Love and in the American Exhibition of British Art he showed five works.

Of him William M Rossetti, in his biographical notes, commented “[Hughes] ranks very high among the Pre-Raphaelites”. Hughes himself was very proud of his Pre-Raphaelite connections. He was quoted as saying, “.... that noble round table of our time - to which I only looked up, from a distance: but to have done so is my chief glory and satisfaction.”

Hughes remained in the background of the circle and his position was like that of Keats among the Romantic poets. The tremulous lyricism of pictures like `The Lady of Shallot'painted as it is in soft glowing colours, with a sensitivity and sweetness, which makes his paintings pictorial equivalents of the Odes.

In this picture, Hughes captures the fearful, hopeful qualities that one can easily imagine in connection with a young Victorian ladies first tryst. The weeping willow behind her forms a natural bower out of which she leans to look down at Camelot. The impressionistic rendering of light reflecting on the river, the leaves of the willow and the Lady's dress imparts an enchanted, fairy tale quality to the picture.

“Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosley flew to left and right -
The leaves upon her falling light -
Through the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heared her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott”

During the 1850's and 1860's Hughes continued to produce a series of delicately poetic pictures with wonderfully rich colour and depth. The paintings are intensely emotional, expressed through a brilliant palette dependent on greens and lavenders.