Gulliver presented to the Queen of Brobdignag (from Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels')
Charles Robert Leslie (London 1794 - London 1859)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1835 (exh at RA)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1003 x 1270 mm (39 1/2 x 50 in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex
NT 485039
Caption
The artist was an English genre painter who grew up in America, emigrating to England in 1811, where he became a member of the Royal Academy and a frequent guest at Petworth. This painting depicts a scene from Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, painted as a companion to Leslie’s Sancho and the Duchess, also at Petworth. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1835.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Gulliver presented to the Queen of Brobdignag (from Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels') by Charles Robert Leslie (London 1794 - London 1859), 1835. An interior of a room. In the centre a table on which a minute Gulliver stands and kisses the little finger of the Queen's right hand. The Queen sits on the right of the table around which there are eight other people, including a kneeling dwarf, centre, with his back to the viewer. Two men stand to the left , one is receiving payment and holds the hand of a little crying girl. In Jonathan Swift's, Gulliver's Travels, Brobdingnag is the country of giants, to whom Gulliver was a pigmy 'not half so big as a round little worm plucked from the lazy finger of a maid.' "Her Majesty, and those who attended her, were beyond a cause delighted with my demeanor. I fell on my knees,and begged the honour of kissing her imperial foot, but this gracious princess held out her little finger towards me (after I was set on the table), which I embraced in both my arms, and put the tip of it with the utmost respect to my lips... She then asked my master whether he was willing to sell me at a good price; he, who apprehended I could not live a month, was ready enough to part with me, and demanded a thousand pieces of gold, which were ordered him on the spot." (Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Voyage to Brobdignag, chap.iii)
Provenance
In 1835 catalogue of Henry Wyndham Phillips (1820 - 1868) at Petworth House. By descent to the current Lord Egremont. On loan from the Egremont Private Collection
Credit line
Petworth House, The Egremont Collection
Makers and roles
Charles Robert Leslie (London 1794 - London 1859), artist