Painting date: 1893
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 112 x 81 cm
Location: Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, Germany

Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1893 (No. 149). Its entry in Academy Notes of 1893 reads:

"A bare-footed maiden, in puce-coloured robe, sits on the ground, winding her light brown hair round the helmet of an armed knight. He kneels and gazes at her with vizor up. Grove of trees in the background."

Another review dating from 1893 reads:

"In "La Belle Dame sans Merci" the knight of Keats's poem has met the weird lady in the gloom of the pine wood, through the boughs of which is seen an azure stream in harmony with the purplish blue of the siren's robe."

This painting illustrates lines from the poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats:

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes -
So kiss'd to sleep.