English 1802—73
1848—51
This painting illustrates a scene from William Shakespeare’s famous comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We see Titania, Queen of the Fairies, at the moment when, drugged with a love potion, she becomes enchanted with the artisan Bottom, who has been magically turned into an ass. The painting was commissioned from Landseer by the wealthy industrialist Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–59), Chief Engineer of Britain’s Great Western Railway and one of the nineteenth century’s greatest engineers and inventors. When the author Lewis Carroll once saw the painting it inspired him to create the character of the White Rabbit for his children’s book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Commissioned from the artist by Isambard Kingdom Brunel Esq. (1806–59), for his Shakespeare Room, London, 1850; his collection, until 1859; included in the Brunel estate sale, Christie's, London, 20 April 1860, no. 223; from where purchased by Lord Robert Pelham-Clinton (1820–67), North Nottinghamshire; his collection, 1860–67; collection of Adelbert Wellington Brownlow-Cust (1844–1921), 3rd Earl Brownlow, London, Belton, Lincolnshire and Ashridge House, Berkhamsted, by 1873– c. 1886; from whom acquired by Sir William Cuthbert Quilter (1841–1911), 1st Baronet, Bawdsey Manor, Suffolk, c. 1886; his collection, until 1909; included in the Cuthbert-Quilter sale, Christie's, London, 9 July 1909, no. 60; from where purchased by Henry (Heinz) Lowenfeld (d. 1931, Paris); Lowenfeld collection, London, 1909–31; offered for purchase by his widow Mrs Henry Lowenfeld, and from whom acquired, on the advice of Randall Davies, for the Felton Bequest, 1932.
Edwin Landseer’s Scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Titania and Bottom illustrates act 3 of William Shakespeare’s famous comedy. We see Titania, Queen of the Fairies, at the moment when, drugged with a love potion, she becomes enchanted with the artisan Bottom, who has been magically turned into an ass. The painting was commissioned from Landseer by the wealthy Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859), chief engineer of Britain’s Great Western Railway and a pioneering designer of steamships travelling between England and the United States.
Brunel had asked Landseer to paint this scene as one of a group of Shakespearean pictures destined for the dining room of his London home. Titania and Bottom was, however, also a popular success from the moment of its first exhibition, at London’s Royal Academy, in 1851. Writing in her diary on 8 April that year, the young Queen Victoria described the painting as ‘a gem, beautifully fairy-like and graceful’.
Landseer was renowned in the Victorian era as an animal painter and it seems likely that he chose to depict the story of Titania and Bottom because it was the most animal-specific topic he could find in Shakespeare. A report in the London journal The Athenaeum in 1857 noted of Titania and Bottom: ‘This fantasia, with its flowers and elves, and its inimitable white rabbit, with its spectral eyes, will-o’-the-wisp lighted, which quite eclipses Titania … is a fairy animal picture, not a fairy picture’. When Titania and Bottom was seen by the writer Lewis Carroll in the same year, he remarked in his diary: ‘There are some wonderful points in it – the ass’s head and the white rabbit especially’. It is interesting to speculate as to whether Landseer’s imagery had any bearing upon the development of Carroll’s immortal ‘White Rabbit’ character in his Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865).
Text by Dr Ted Gott from 19th century painting and sculpture in the international collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2003, p. 35.
Thought to be contemporary with the painting, though acquired in 1932, this frame is likely to be the one used for the exhibition of the painting at the Royal Academy in 1851.
The frame might be compared to the one on Orchardson’s The First Cloud and Alma Tadema’s The Vintage Festival. These frames, though richly ornamented, are essentially linear in form. Strongly contrasted to Baroque frames, their heritage is in the Classical Revival and the Italian Renaissance.
Framemaker:
Unknown - 19th century
Date:
1848-51
Materials:
timber, composition, gold leaf
Condition:
The outer part of the frame has been painted over with gold paint.
Dimensions:
129 x 180 x 12 cm
Colourman:
BROWN
Location of stamp:
Twice on reverse of loose lining canvas. Also impressed into centre cross brace BROWN/163/HIGH HOLBORN
Transcription:
BROWN,/163/HIGH HOLBORN/LONDON.
Medium:
Ink stencil and impressed stamp
Medium:
Ink stencil and impressed stamp