So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, This was a man!"
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar Scene V
King Arthur (Arthur Pendragon) is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and 6th centuries who led the defense against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The fine points of Arthur's tale have been gleaned mainly from folklore and literary convention, and his sparse historical background from various posthumous sources including the Historia Brittonum and the writings of Gildas. As he and his warriors prepared to march on Rome after a series of conquests in Norway, Denmark and Gaul, Arthur heard word that his nephew Mordred, whom he left in charge of Britain in his absence, had seized his throne and married his wife Guinevere. Arthur returned hastily to Britain, defeated and killed Mordred on the river Camlan in Cornwall but sustained mortal injuries of his own. On his deathbed, he bequeathed his crown to his kinsman Constantine and was taken to the isle of Avalon to be healed. From this point the Arthurian legend curtails for he was never seen or heard from again. Local folktale sources claim that Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table currently reside in a remote mountain dwelling, sleeping until the hour of Britain's greatest need.
In nearly all of my thesis pieces, I have used a common visual motif where nature encroaches on man or the long-time sleeper. For the sixth painting in my King Under Mountain series, I capitalized on the watery element of Arthur's katabasis or symbolic journey toward death in Avalon.
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