Edmund Blair Leighton specialised in the historical genre that stood at the apex of the academic system, edifying audiences with scenes of chivalry as well as entertaining them with glimpses of Lady Godiva. In Time of Peril appeared at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1897, the year that marked the triumphant sixtieth anniversary of Queen Victoria's reign. It depicts two young princes spirited away from danger and being comforted by their glamorous mother. The royal refugees and their precious cargo arrive at a protective monastery - safe from harm, if not from public scrutiny. It was a canny choice of subject, for dynastic anxieties inevitably lurk in the wake of aging monarchs. Following its acquisition by the Mackelvie Trust, In Time of Peril quickly became one of the most popular pictures in the Gallery, copied by generations of Auckland's art students. As with many other art galleries in Australia and New Zealand founded in the later nineteenth century, Auckland's collection is particularly rich in late Victorian and Edwardian academic paintings. Despite suffering the hostility of modernist curators, such works nevertheless remain perennial favourites among Gallery visitors, who appreciate their technical qualities as well as the evocative stories they tell. Living in the colonial outpost characterised by E. H. McCormick as 'last, loneliest, most loyal', New Zealanders have always been susceptible to royalist fantasy. (from The Guide, 2001)

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   In Time of Peril appeared at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1897, the year that marked the triumphant 60th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s reign. Edmund Blair Leighton specialised in painting chivalric vignettes, which were popular with the Royal Academy and also reflected the popularity at the time of the Arthurian Revival.

   A critic sagely observed in 1913 that the artist bridged the gulf between legendary life and modern existence, by portraying ‘the people of past generations with feelings that they belong equally to our own time’.

In a letter, Blair Leighton described the scene as ‘laid at the water gate of a monastery in the fourteenth century; the outcome of reading of the shelter afforded by such places to the women, children and treasure, of those who were hard driven, and in danger’. While the adults in the boat all look anxiously at the elderly friar, awaiting his permission to enter the sanctuary, our attention is captured by the child, who looks fearfully over his shoulder, suggesting that their enemies are close behind.

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