The legend of St. George was a favorite with DGR and other artists of the period. Besides this splendid watercolour, which was DGR's first effort to deal with the subject, he made a series of stained glass designs for the Morris firm on “The Story of St. George and the Dragon” (see commentary for The Story of St. George and the Dragon: the Skulls Brought to the King
St. George
and the Princess Sabra
The
Wedding of St. George
DGR was working on the picture in the summer of 1857 and probably offered it for sale to Thomas Plint in December. When James Smetham saw the picture in 1860 he called it “one of the grandest things, like a golden dim dream. Love ‘credulous all gold,’ gold armour, a sense of secret enclosure in ‘palace chambers far apart’; but quaint chambers in quaint palaces where angels creep in through sliding panel dooors, and stand behind rows of flowers, drumming on golden bells, with wings crimson and green” (A Catalogue Raisonné
“Perhps here, more than in any of the other watercolours of this period, Rossetti has indulged his love for decorative shapes and inter-related heraldic patterns” (The Pre–Raphaelites , Tate 1984
DGR: An Illustrated MemorialA Catalogue Raisonné
The Pre–Raphaelites , Tate 1984