Edward Henry Corbould
(1815 - 1905)
 

Edward Henry Corbould, R.I was a British artist, noted as a historical painter and watercolourist. Corbould was known for his water-colours, in which he produced subjects illustrating literature (mainly from Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare), history, and daily life. A few of his pictures are in oils (e.g. The Canterbury Pilgrims, 1874).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Henry_Corbould

The magic mirror 
1853
Watercolour
118 × 151 cm
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/302.2016/

The subject of this painting is from Sir Walter Scott’s poem 'The lay of the last minstrel' (1805). The lovesick Earl of Surrey – courtier, soldier and poet at the court of Henry VIII – is awestruck before an apparition of ‘the fair Geraldine’, to whose lifelong service he had devoted his pen. He kneels in a magic circle surrounded by an array of cabbalistic implements. The vision of Surrey’s unattainable maiden (seen reclining on a couch reading her lover’s verses) is conjured in a magic mirror by the agency of the sorcerer, Cornelius Agrippa.