Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1879
Examiner, 17 May 1879:
A hard, vulgarly coloured, and supremely ugly picture of a blowsy girl with black hair (the May Queen) in a donkey-cart led by a clown.
Athenaeum, 31 May 1879:
We are much less attracted by The Queen of the May (1041) [than by Execution of the Duc d’Enghien], which shows a party of rough fellows, comprising one dressed as a clown, who lead an unlovely girl in a common cart, This is far from being one of the painter’s best pictures.
Eyre Crowe (1824-1910) 