“In Time of Peril” by Edmund Blair Leighton

“In Time of Peril” by Edmund Blair Leighton depicts two young princes, one still a baby wrapped in his mother’s elaborate royal clothing, being spirited away from danger to a protective monastery.

This painting was created and exhibited during Queen Victoria’s sixtieth anniversary of reign and represented the anxieties stirred by an aging monarch.

As the adults in the boat await anxiously for permission to enter the sanctuary, the young prince looks over his shoulder and the potential lurking danger.

In a letter, the artists describe the scene as:

“laid at the watergate of a monastery in the fourteenth century;
the outcome of reading of the shelter afforded by such places to the women, children,
and treasure of those who were hard-driven, and in danger.”

“In Time of Peril” remains a favorite printing due to its technical qualities, and the imaginative story it tells evoking western historical royalist fantasy.

The artist, Edmund Blair Leighton, was a painter of historical genre scenes, specializing in Regency and medieval subjects.

Edmund Leighton

Edmund Blair Leighton (1852 – 1922) was an English painter of historical genre scenes, specializing in Regency and medieval subjects.

Leighton produced highly finished, beautiful pictures, displaying romanticized scenes with a widespread appeal.

Events at the time of this Painting

In 1897, when this painting was painted, Queen Victoria was 78 years old and had already written instructions for her funeral, she wanted a military funeral.

After she died in 1901, her son Edward VII, her grandson German Kaiser and Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, helped lift her body into the coffin.

She was dressed in a white dress with her wedding veil. An array of mementos commemorating her extended family, friends, and servants were laid in the coffin with her. This was her request.

One of Albert’s dressing gowns was placed by her side, with a plaster cast of his hand, while a lock of John Brown’s hair, along with a picture of him, was placed in her left hand concealed from the view of the family by a carefully positioned bunch of flowers.

Items of jewelry placed on Victoria included the wedding ring of John Brown’s mother, given to her by Brown in 1883.

Her funeral was held in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, and after two days of lying-in-state, she was interred beside Prince Albert in Frogmore Mausoleum at Windsor Great Park.

Wilhelm II, who help lift the queen’s body into her coffin, was the last German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia, who was reigning during the start of World War I until shortly before Germany’s defeat in the First World War.

He was the eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria and was related to the many monarchs and princes of Europe, with whom his government went to war during World War I.

Timeline of Events surrounding this Painting

1819 – Princess Victoria is born
1837 – Victoria becomes queen
1840 – Victoria marries Prince Albert
1852 – Edmund Blair Leighton is born
1859 – Wilhelm II, German Emperor and the eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria is born
1861 – Albert dies
1860s – Victoria relied increasingly on John Brown and rumors of a romantic connection, and even a secret marriage appeared in print.
1877 – Victoria becomes Empress of India
1878 – Thomas Edison filed his first patent application for the Incandescent Light Bulb
1887 – Victoria engaged two Indian Muslims as waiters, one of whom she promoted to teach her Urdu and to act as a clerk
1897 – The painting of “In Time of Peril” by Edmund Blair Leighton
1901 – Victoria’s reign comes to a close with the death of Queen Victoria
1914 – World War I starts
1918 – World War I ends
1922 – Death of Edmund Blair Leighton

In Time of Peril

Title: In Time of Peril
Artist: Edmund Blair Leighton
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: 1897
Dimensions: Height: 1,245 mm (49.02 in). Width: 1,689 mm (66.5 in).
Museum: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki

Edmund Blair Leighton

Name: Edmund Blair Leighton
Born: 1852 – London
Died: 1922 – London
Nationality: English
Key Works:
- The Dying Copernicus (1880)
- Lady Godiva (1892)
- Two Strings (1893)