Ferdinand courting Miranda (from William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act I scene ii)
William Hogarth (London 1697 - London 1764)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1736
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
800 x 1067 mm (31½ x 42 in)
Place of origin
Great Britain
Order this imageCollection
Nostell Priory, West Yorkshire
NT 960074
Caption
A highly significant work, this small-scale history painting is one of the earliest known images to depict a scene from Shakespeare. In keeping with Hogarth's ambitions to create an English school of history painting, the picture does not show the scene as it might have been acted on stage, but as an imagined reality, complete with the aerial intervention so characteristic of the Baroque style.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Ferdinand courting Miranda (from William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act I scene ii) by William Hogarth (London 1697 - London 1764), circa 1736. The picture depicts Act I, Scene ii of The Tempest by William Shakespeare, when the heroine Miranda first encounters her future husband, the royal prince Ferdinand. He has been washed up on the remote Mediterranean island where Miranda and her father Prospero live in exile. Miranda is flanked by Prospero at left and Caliban at right, over whom circles a bat. Caliban crushes a dove beneath his webbed foot, symbolising his threat to the lovers. The spirit Ariel, Caliban's servant, plays music overhead.
Provenance
In the collection of George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield (d. 1764); acquired by Sir Rowland, 5th Baronet from the sale of the Earl of Macclesfield's London house in 1766 at a cost of £23.2.0, from Dorothy Nesbitt, the Dowager Countess of Macclesfield, from whom he also bought his London house, 11 St James Square; purchased by the National Trust by private treaty for £294,029 (after tax remission) with a 100% grant from the NACF, now the Art Fund, 2002.
Credit line
Nostell Priory, The St Oswald Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
William Hogarth (London 1697 - London 1764), artist
Exhibition history
Hogarth, Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2006 - 2007, no.104 Hogarth, Tate Britain, London, 2006 - 2007, no.104 Hogarth, CaixaForum, Madrid, 2006 - 2007, no.104
References
Brockwell 1915 Maurice Walter Brockwell, Catalogue of the Pictures and Other Works of Art in the Collection of Lord St Oswald at Nostell Priory, London 1915, cat. 378, plate XLIII:
