Morgana

By the early 1860s King Arthur was everywhere in Britain. Tennyson's Idylls of the King had come out in 1859 and sent painters back to the old legends, and Sandys chose one of the darkest figures in them: Morgan le Fay, Arthur's half-sister and a sorceress. He shows her mid-spell in front of a loom, where she has woven a robe enchanted to burst into flame and consume the king who wears it. Her arms are flung up and her mouth is open, caught in the incantation. The woman who modelled for her was Keomi Gray, Sandys's mistress, whose face turns up in several Pre-Raphaelite pictures of the decade. It is painted on a small wood panel, jewel-bright, and it went on the wall at the Royal Academy in 1864.