A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford (1857) is a painting by John Everett Millais

John Everett Millais

Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Early life:...

 depicting a medieval knight helping two young peasant children over a swollen river. The children are carrying heavy burdens of wood for winter fuel. Though the title refers to the medieval poem Sir Isumbras

Sir Isumbras

Sir Isumbras is a medieval metrical romance written in Middle English and found in no fewer than nine manuscripts dating to the fifteenth century...

, the painting does not illustrate a scene from the original text. However Millais's friend, the writer Tom Taylor

Tom Taylor

Tom Taylor was an English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine...

, wrote verse in a pastiche of the original poem, describing the event depicted. This was included in the original exhibition catalogue.

When first exhibited the painting was extremely controversial, and was attacked by many critics. Most notably, Millais's former supporter John Ruskin

John Ruskin

John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...

 declared it to be a "catastrophe". The painting was also satirised in a print by Frederic Sandys, entitled "A Nightmare", in which Millais himself was represented as the knight. His fellow Pre-Raphaelites Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...

 and William Holman Hunt

William Holman Hunt

William Holman Hunt OM was an English painter, and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Biography:...

 were caricatured as the children, and the horse—transformed into a donkey—was branded with the initials of Ruskin.

Subject

The original poem describes an arrogant knight who is humbled by misfortune in his youth, a story derived from the Book of Job

Book of Job

The Book of Job , commonly referred to simply as Job, is one of the books of the Hebrew Bible. It relates the story of Job, his trials at the hands of Satan, his discussions with friends on the origins and nature of his suffering, his challenge to God, and finally a response from God. The book is a...

 and the legend of Saint Eustace

Saint Eustace

Saint Eustace, also known as Eustachius or Eustathius, was a legendary Christian martyr who lived in the 2nd century AD. A martyr of that name is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, which, however, judges that the legend recounted about him is "completely fabulous." For that reason...

. The subject depicted by Millais portrays the elderly, now humble, Isumbras after the events narrated in the poem. It was described by Frederic George Stephens

Frederic George Stephens

Frederic George Stephens was an art critic, and one of the two 'non-artistic' members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood....

 as follows,

'Sir Isumbras at the Ford' was the subject of the picture Millais made his leading work in the year 1857. It represented an ancient knight, all clad in golden armour, who had gone through the glories of this life — war honour, victory and reward, wealth and pride. Though he is aged and worn with war, his eye is still bright with the glory of human life, and yet he has stooped his magnificent pride so far as to help, true knight as he was, two little children, and carries them over a river ford upon the saddle of his grand war-horse, woodcutter's children as they were. The face of this warrior was one of those pictorial victories which can derive their success from nothing less than inspiration. The sun was setting beyond the forest that gathered about the river's margin, and, in its glorious decadence, symbolised the nearly spent life of the warrior.

The theme of the Christian Chivalry

Chivalry

Chivalry is a term related to the medieval institution of knighthood which has an aristocratic military origin of individual training and service to others. Chivalry was also the term used to refer to a group of mounted men-at-arms as well as to martial valour...

 was a topical one at the time, discussed by Ruskin himself and other authors such as Charles Kingsley

Charles Kingsley

Charles Kingsley was an English priest of the Church of England, university professor, historian and novelist, particularly associated with the West Country and northeast Hampshire.-Life and character:...

, who saw it as a means to overcome class division. It is comparable to the hymn Good King Wenceslas

Good King Wenceslas

"Good King Wenceslas" is a popular Christmas carol about a king who goes out to give alms to a poor peasant on the Feast of Stephen . During the journey, his page is about to give up the struggle against the cold weather, but is enabled to continue by following the king's footprints, step for step,...

, written in the same decade, which also describes an aristocrat helping peasants who have been gathering fuel. Millais was also probably influenced by Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...

's print, The Knight, Death and the Devil.

Controversy

Critical commentary on the painting when it was first exhibited was largely hostile, with many critics finding the horse over-large and ugly and the expressions of the children exaggerated. Ruskin (whose wife Effie

Effie Gray

Euphemia Chalmers Millais, Lady Millais née Gray, known as Effie Gray, Effie Ruskin or Effie Millais was the wife of the critic John Ruskin, but left her husband without the marriage being consummated, and after the annulment of the marriage, married his protégé, the Pre-Raphaelite painter John...

 had left him for Millais a few years previously) was extremely savage, condemning the picture for making errors in "pictorial grammar" by portraying the foreground as lighter than the "more exposed" hills in the background. He insisted that Millais had suffered "not just a fall—but catastrophe".

In response, Millais attempted to repaint parts of the picture before he sent it to another exhibition in Liverpool. The repainted version won a prize at the Liverpool exhibition. Millais altered the picture again in the 1880s, adding decoration to the reins and bridle.

Influence

Despite its early bad reception, the painting became quite influential, inspiring a number of other images of chivalric knights. It was also taken up by political caricaturists, who took their cue from Sandys's caricature to replace the figures with politicians of the day, suggesting alliances between mismatched forces in attempts to "carry over" some piece of legislation. This tradition continued well into the 20th century.
Some of John Tenniel

John Tenniel

Sir John Tenniel was a British illustrator, graphic humorist and political cartoonist whose work was prominent during the second half of England’s 19th century. Tenniel is considered important to the study of that period’s social, literary, and art histories...

's work for the Alice stories of Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

 has been sourced to paintings: "The White Knight echoes Millais's Sir Isumbras at the Ford. "