Hagar offering Water to her Son, Ishmael, in the Desert
Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, PRA (Plymouth 1793 - Pisa 1865)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1842 (signed and dated) - 1843 (exh at RA)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
711 x 940 mm (28 x 37 in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Borrowdale, Cumbria
NT 622735
Caption
According to the biblical story (Genesis 21: 9-21), Hagar was the Egyptian servant of Sarah, Abraham’s wife. Abraham had a child, Ishmael, by Hagar but when Sarah miraculously gave birth to Isaac, she asked Abraham to banish Hagar with her son to the desert. When they ran out of food and water they sat down and the mother could not bear to look at her child dying but an angel appeared to her telling her that he would survive to become the father of a great nation, the Ishmaelites. She then found a source of water. Eastlake painted this colourful picture soon after he had translated Goethe's Theory of Colours and in the year before becoming the National Gallery's first Keeper.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Hagar offering Water to her Son, Ishmael, in the Desert by Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, PRA (Plymouth 1793 – Pisa 1865), signed and dated, bottom right: C. L. Eastlake 1842. A female in a red dress and white puffy sleeves is holding up a jug towards a naked boy who lies, on the sandy ground and an exotic stripy piece of clothing, with his back to the viewer and draped in a white cloth. A dead palm tree lies to the left and a valley extends into the distance. A blue sky takes up half the picture behind them. This painting is a later horizontal version of the same subject that Eastlake did for his RA diploma piece in 1830.
Provenance
Probably acquired from the artist by Henry Cowper Marshall (1808 - 1884) who moved to Derwent Island house soon after in 1844 and who was the owner when it was exhibited in Leeds in 1868; given to the National Trust with Derwent and St Herbert’s islands by Denis Marshall (d. 1956) in 1951
Marks and inscriptions
Verso: Labels, back of frame - National Exhibition of Works of Art, Leeds, 1868 - Picture Galleries. H.C. Marshall, Esq. 'A thin coat of Copal varnish put on in 1866'. Exh. Royal Academy 1843.
Makers and roles
Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, PRA (Plymouth 1793 - Pisa 1865), artist