David Wilkie Wynfield (1837-1887) was a painter and photographer whose circle became known as the St John's Wood Clique, after the north London suburb where they gathered. The ODNB relates that the group ‘would meet once a week at each other's homes or studios, choose a subject (usually taken from history, mythology, or the Bible), and give themselves a set time in which each to devise a composition. They would then “grill” one another over the success or otherwise of the results.’
Most of the group, the ODNB goes on, ‘specialized in what is now called “historical genre”, paintings set broadly within medieval and Renaissance times featuring historical, domestic, or romantic incident.’ Moreover, Wynfield displayed ‘a propensity for subjects with tragic overtones’.
So the Rudel legend was right up his alley, and in 1873 he produced a painting that seems to have a connection with it. Its title is The Lady’s Knight.
Nothing much, on the face of it, to evoke the tale of the troubadour. But an online search also yields this engraving:
The caption reads: ‘Geoffroi Rudel - from a picture by D. Wilkie Winfield, in the exhibition of the Royal Academy’.
Did the engraver (who has apparently signed himself ‘MorganSc’ in the lower right-hand corner) attach the Rudel name to his rendition of Wynfield’s original for the sheer romantic heck of it? The spelling ‘Geoffroi’ crops up occasionally elsewhere - most notably via Étienne-François de Lantier’s 1825 verse epic - but what it’s doing beneath this obscure English knock-off of Wynfield’s painting is anyone’s guess.
