Pre- Raphaelite Triptych

The painter Frederick Weekes was an acknowledged expert on medieval costume and design. He was a friend and collaborator of leading Victorian ‘Gothic' architect and designer, William Burges, with whom he worked on a number of important projects, including Lord Bute's Cardiff Castle and Burges' own house, The Tower House in Holland Park , where he painted furniture and friezes. Our triptych of paintings represents an exciting discovery in Weekes' emerging oeuvre and have been dated by the leading authority in the field to the 1870s. Painted on stippled gold ground on high quality mahogany panel, the depictions of four pre-Raphaelite maidens around a well in Spring, probably form part of an as yet unknown decorative scheme from a long-since demolished – or re-decorated - house. They had languished unrecognised in a private house for most of the last century.