Requiescat

Briton Riviere built his career on animals, and on the feelings the Victorians liked to read into them. He showed this large canvas at the Royal Academy in London in 1888. A knight in full armour lies dead on a bed, a wreath laid on him. Beside him a bloodhound sits upright, refusing to move, its eyes fixed on the still face. The Latin title, Requiescat, is the opening of a prayer for the dead, may he rest. Nothing in the picture explains who the man was or how he died; the whole weight of it sits in the dog's patient watch. This was exactly the note Victorian audiences loved, a medieval setting and a loyalty that outlasts death, and the painting was a success, shown again at the great Paris exposition of 1889. The Sydney gallery bought it from Riviere himself a few years later.