Her Most High Noble and Puissant Grace 1865

Philip Hermogenes Calderon began as a follower of the Pre-Raphaelites and became a painter of historical and literary genre scenes. His pictures often show women in richly textured dresses, and he was good at telling a small emotional story in a single glance or gesture. He was born in Poitiers in 1833, the son of a Spanish former priest, and studied in London and then in Paris under François-Édouard Picot. He settled in London and became a leading member of the St John’s Wood Clique of painters. His best-known painting, Broken Vows of 1856, shows a young woman overhearing her lover with someone else, and it is now in Tate Britain, as is his Saint Elizabeth of Hungary’s Great Act of Renunciation. In 1887 he became Keeper of the Royal Academy. He died in London in 1898. In Broken Vows, look for the small clues through the fence: the whole story is in the details.