01 work, PORTRAIT OF A LADY, Francis John Wyburd's Xarifa, with Footnotes. #176

Francis John Wyburd (BRITISH, 1826-1893)

Xarifa, or The Bridal of Andalla: the Zegri lady rose not, etc., c. 1863

Oil on canvas, feigned oval

25 x 30 in. (63.5 x 76 cm.)

Private collection

Scene on the walls of the city overlooking the field of battle. On the distant hills is seen the Spanish camp. Moors pass hastily across the stage, and look anxiously over the walls on the combatants beneath. 

Wyburd often painted Eastern subjects of a fashionable romantic kind, inevitably drawing at least some of his inspiration from Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh: an Oriental Romance. Largely forgotten today, the 1817 publication went on to inspire artists, musicians, composers, choreographers, and many others. Even the East India Company named one of its ships after Moore’s title character, while Barnum and Bailey staged a spectacular circus pageant to recreate her mythical entourage. Moore’s epic “Frame Tale,” about the journey of a Mughal princess from Delhi to Kashmir to marry a neighbouring king, was a runaway hit. The author was not an “Orientalist,” but according to his own introduction to the poem, he was encouraged by friends including George Byron to take on the exotic subject. Moore had never been to India either, but he managed to create an enormously enduring tale that was still in print 100 years later. Marrying fact and fantasy, the plot follows the remarkable journey of Lalla Rookh (“tulip-cheeked”), a fictional daughter of Emperor Aurungzeb (r. 1658–1707). Wyburd, was said to have been particularly enthralled by the story, motivating him to create several paintings inspired by it. More on this painting

Francis John Wyburd (1826–1909) was a British artist, born in Bryanston Street, London, and lived there for at least the next fifty years.

Wyburd was educated in Lille, France, after which he was a pupil of Thomas Fairland.

He married Jemima Wyburd, née Corbould (1840–1913), the daughter of Edward Henry Corbould, who was appointed "instructor of historical painting to the royal family" from 1851 and taught Queen Victoria and her family painting and drawing.

Their son Leonard Wyburd RA (1865–1958) was a painter, interior designer and furniture designer. He was broadly part of the Arts & Crafts movement, and the head of Liberty's Furnishing and Decoration Studio from its foundation in 1883 until he left in 1903. More on Francis John Wyburd

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