17 original watercolours of Canterbury Tales Characters

17 watercolours on plain white postcards, nine with narrow coloured border, all but three with titles in black manuscript to lower margin, 135 x 90mm, c.1900.

This collection of seventeen vibrant watercolours of characters from the Canterbury Tales are after those found in the Ellesmere Chaucer, an early 15th-century illuminated manuscript and one of the most significant copies of the Tales. 

Of the twenty-three found in the Ellesmere Chaucer, seventeen have been produced, including: The Shipman, The Knight, Wife of Bath, The Cook, The Miller, The Reeve, The Prioress, The Friar, The Pardoner, The Doctor of Physic, The Nun’s Priest, The Second Nun and The Canon’s Yeoman.

Winifred Sandys was the eldest of the painter Frederick Sandys’s seven daughters and three sons. Taught by their father, all of the children became artists to some degree, but Winifred was the most successful, exhibiting work in pastels and watercolours and excelling at miniature painting. It was Winifred who supported the family through the sale of her pictures after their father died in 1904. After Winifred’s sister Gertrude died in 1920, Winifred married Girlie’s widower, Lionel Crane, the son of the artist Walter Crane.