The Trial of William Wallace at Westminster by William Bell Scott
Jumbo Puzzle (Holland) No. 80076. Recent eBay purchase.
1.500 pcs, 90 x 60 cm.
I must confess that I have a weakness for historical motives and this was pure joy (and quite easy too).
William Bell Scott (12 September 1811 – 22 November 1890) was a Scottish artist in oils and watercolour and sometimes printmaking. He was also a poet and art teacher, and his posthumously published reminiscences give a chatty and often vivid picture of life in the circle of the Pre-Raphaelites; he was especially close to Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
On the morning of August 23rd, 1305, there was something of a carnival atmosphere in London. Since the early hours of what promised to be a fine day for Edward I’s capital city, crowds had been gathering to watch that most appealing of spectacles, a public execution. Such an event was not, of course, unusual when the law was often capricious and brutal; thieves, coiners, servants who had struck their masters, the simple-minded and the irreligious, these were some of the subjects on which the hangmen could rely for employment. But today’s proceedings promised to be special. The victim of the judicial process on this occasion was the Scot, William Wallace. Over the years English propaganda had depicted Wallace in the most extreme terms, as a man void of pity, one crueller than Herod, madder than Nero. Above all, he was portrayed as a traitor to Edward I and as such worthy of the worst the law could devise. Not since the execution of Thomas Turberville, the Englishman who had spied for France ten years before, had Londoners had the opportunity to enjoy the death of a traitor.
The Trial of William Wallace at Westminster by William Bell Scott
Jumbo Puzzle (Holland) No. 80076. Recent eBay purchase.
1.500 pcs, 90 x 60 cm.
I must confess that I have a weakness for historical motives and this was pure joy (and quite easy too).
William Bell Scott (12 September 1811 – 22 November 1890) was a Scottish artist in oils and watercolour and sometimes printmaking. He was also a poet and art teacher, and his posthumously published reminiscences give a chatty and often vivid picture of life in the circle of the Pre-Raphaelites; he was especially close to Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
On the morning of August 23rd, 1305, there was something of a carnival atmosphere in London. Since the early hours of what promised to be a fine day for Edward I’s capital city, crowds had been gathering to watch that most appealing of spectacles, a public execution. Such an event was not, of course, unusual when the law was often capricious and brutal; thieves, coiners, servants who had struck their masters, the simple-minded and the irreligious, these were some of the subjects on which the hangmen could rely for employment. But today’s proceedings promised to be special. The victim of the judicial process on this occasion was the Scot, William Wallace. Over the years English propaganda had depicted Wallace in the most extreme terms, as a man void of pity, one crueller than Herod, madder than Nero. Above all, he was portrayed as a traitor to Edward I and as such worthy of the worst the law could devise. Not since the execution of Thomas Turberville, the Englishman who had spied for France ten years before, had Londoners had the opportunity to enjoy the death of a traitor.