Vanquished (1884) — Edmund Blair Leighton

A knight in polished plate armour passes under a stone arch on a horse that still wears the red plumes of the tournament. His head is bowed; a young page beside the horse holds the matching plumed helmet. Behind him, through the arch, the contest goes on: another rider, the painted pavilions, the crowded wooden stands. Edmund Blair Leighton painted Vanquished in 1884 as the counterpart to his Conquest the same year — loss given the same weight as triumph, the moment when the day belongs to someone else.

The card is an A6 art postcard, 350 g/m², with a glossy front — well-suited to collectors of Victorian chivalric painting, to a frame, and to letters about the honour of trying. For more medieval subjects, see the wider Edmund Blair Leighton collection.