A watercolour and bodycolour illustration of Tennyson's 'A Dream of Fair Women', published 1831-2, showing Helen of Troy and Iphigenia in classical dress standing in a forest. Signed and dated "EDWARD HENRY CORBOULD Pinxit / December 1859". Verso of the frame inscribed with the artist's name and address and the title and date of the work.

This illustration of an early poem by Tennyson, the Chaucer-inspired 'A Dream of Fair Women' (first published in 1832), reflects Prince Albert's taste for Tennyson's work. He received the watercolour for Christmas in 1859 from Queen Victoria. The Queen had admired a larger work by Corbould, portraying all the heroines of Tennyson's poem, at the New Watercolour Society's exhibition earlier that year and subsequently commissioned this replica of the figures of Helen of Troy and Iphigenia. Queen Victoria thought them "the finest [figures Corbould] has yet painted." 

This watercolour can be seen clearly hanging on the wall in a photograph (RCIN 2905618) of the bedroom of Princess Alice and her husband, Prince Louis of Hesse, at Osborne House from 1862.