Clifton, John S. (1821-1889) - Love 1850s

This painting by John S. Clifton is based on the poem 'Love' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:-

"The Moonshine stealing o'er the scene
Had blended with the lights of Eve,
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve.
She stood beside the arméd man,
The statue of the arméd knight;
She stood and listened to my harp
Amid the lingering light.
I played a soft and doleful air,
I sang an old and moving story
An old rude song, that suited well
That ruin wild and hoary." 

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John Skinner Clifton (1821-1889) was born in Beverley in East Yorkshire in 1821, son of William Clifton and Mary Noble Clifton. 

He trained at the Royal Academy and exhibited three pictures there 1852-69, and two at the British Institution 1861-67. He is recorded living in London in 1852, but had moved to Oxford by 1857. The 1881 census shows that he was assistant master of the department of science and art at that time, presumably at Oxford University.

He was a painter of historical and literary subjects and, like so many artists, came under Pre-Raphaelite influence in the 1850s. It's possible that he knew Rossetti, Morris, Burne-Jones and their friends when they went to Oxford in the Long Vacation of 1857 to paint Arthurian murals in the Debating Chamber at the Union.