Prospero and Miranda (from William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act I scene ii)
Henry Thomson RA (London 1773 – Portsea 1843)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1804 - 1805 (exh at RA)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
2362 x 1448 mm (93 x 57 in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex
NT 485035
Caption
In 1803 Thomson exhibited a horizontal work of Prospero and Miranda (from Shakespeare’s The Tempest) in a boat on a stormy sea which was probably his diploma work (1804) which is still in the Royal Academy collection. The Petworth version therefore must be the one displayed at the Royal Academy in 1805 (140). It is a somewhat more sophisticated composition than his earlier work. Prospero stands in the centre, in a cave, his back to the viewer, but towards Miranda on his right. Ferdinand approaches them from the beach with signs of a shipwreck behind whilst the spirit Ariel hovers above in the sky, playing music. It depicts the second scene in the first Act of the play after the daughter has declared: 'If by your art, my dearest father, you have / Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.' Hogarth had painted a depiction of the same scene, also as an imagined reality rather than on a stage, in 1736 which is now at Nostell Priory (NT).
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Prospero and Miranda (from William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act I sc ii) by Henry Thomson RA (London 1773 – Portsea 1843), 1805. Prospero, centre, with his back turned and with Miranda on the right, and beyond, the figure of Ariel in the sky. Thomson was born in London; he was a pupil of John Opie and attended the Royal Academy schools. He exhibited at the RA between 1792-1825 and the British Institution between 1806 and 1808. He was elected an RA in 1803. Hogarth's painting of the same scene is at Nostell Priory, NT 960074.
Provenance
In 1835 catalogue of Petworth House; By descent to the current Lord Egremont. On loan from the Egremont Private Collection since 1992
Credit line
Petworth, The Egremont Collection
Makers and roles
Henry Thomson RA (London 1773 – Portsea 1843), artist
References
Phillips 1835 Henry Wyndham Phillips, Catalogue of the Pictures in Petworth House, the seat of the Earl of Egremont.The Collection of Pictures at Petworth House. 1835, Victoria & Albert Museum, MSS.86.FF.67., no. 9 Collins Baker 1920 C.H.Collins Baker, Catalogue of the Petworth Collection of Pictures, in the possession of Lord Leconfield, privately printed by the Medici Society, London, 1920, no. 9