King Lear

King Lear,

Abbey exhibited King Lear, another of his large, dramatic pictures, at the Royal Academy in 1898; the painting was accompanied in the catalog by these lines from Act I, scene i:

Ye jewels of our father, with washed eyes

Cordelia leaves you. I know what you are;

And, like a sister, am most loth to call

Your faults as they are named. Love well our father.

To your professed bosoms I commit him.

But yet, alas! stood I within his grace,

I would prefer him to a better place.

So farewell to you both.

The critics saw much to like in Abbey's King Lear. The reviewer for The Art Journal (1898, p. 176) comments especially on the bold use of color and the grouping of the figures on the canvas:

If the admirers of Mr. Abbey felt that the note of the superbly dramatic 'Richard III.' was not repeated with similar force in last year's 'Hamlet and Ophelia,' all doubts should be set at rest by the barbaric majesty of the Scene from 'Lear,' a subject which, under the title of 'Cordelia's Portion,' inspired Madox Brown to the production of one of his finest compositions. The dominant figure in Mr. Abbey's commanding decoration is Cordelia, and it is impossible to resist the colour-charm in which she is invested. Her yellow-green vestment with the deep blue border set against the green robe of France, and opposed to the menacing reds and blacks of Goneril and Regan, is a triumph of originality. As in Richard III. there is a strong suggestion motion, and the drooping figure of Lear sustained by his pages and followed by his men-at-arms from the left to right of the canvas gives this note. The dramatic figure of the sisters in the attitudes of dignified indifference and mock courtesy are splendidly realized, and the foot-light effect discernible throughout the picture certainly adds to the intenseness of the composition. Unmistakably in this important group, Mr. Abbey has reached a very high level and is going far to prove, by this magnificent series of object lessons, that his decorative style is capable of giving the fullest expression of dramatic motives.

"H. S.," the reviewer for The Spectator (May 14, 1898, p. 694), also remarks on the "audacity of the colour" and judges the effects "gorgeous and beautiful." "The truth of the gestures," he adds, "are as finely conceived as are the combinations of scarlet and purple black crimson and sea-green.