for lovers of art

1. The taste for Gothic tales and poems, focusing on themes of magic, terror
and romance, was the great popular cultural phenomenon of the late
eighteenth century. The images in this show suggest some of the parallels
and exchanges between the literary Gothic and the visual arts. A range of
artists is displayed here in this presentation.

2. Gothic art was a
Medieval art
movement that
developed in France out
of Romanesque art in
the mid-12th century, led
by the concurrent
development of Gothic
architecture. It spread to
all of Western
Europe, but took over
art more completely
north of the Alps, never
quite effacing more
classical styles in Italy. In
the late 14th century, the
sophisticated court style
of International Gothic
developed, which
continued to evolve until
the late 15th century. In
many areas, especially
International Gothic Mary
Germany, Late Gothic
Magdalene in St. John art continued well into
Cathedral in Torun. the 16th century.

3. An old man in the
costume of a
hermit or
philosopher
contemplates
human bones in a
lamp-lit cave, while Wright has been
two small men or more concerned
boys dressed as with creating a
pilgrims (the shells sense of weird
in the hats identify mystery; note the
them as such) strange discrepancy
approach with of scale between
trepidation. The the hermit and the
exact subject of this young men.
painting is
uncertain; it may
relate to several
different literary
Joseph Wright
sources.
A Philosopher by Lamplight 1769
Derby Museums and Art Gallery

4. John British Dixon after
Joshua Reynolds
Ugolino 1773
Trustees of The British Museum
This print reproduces Reynolds’ painting of the imprisonment of
Count Ugolino de Gherardeschi (d.1288), from Dante’s Inferno
(1319-21). Thrown into prison after a political intrigue, Ugolino was
left to starve along with two of his sons and two grandchildren.
The painting represents the moment when he hears the door
being permanently sealed, and he is suddenly awakened to his
dreadful fate. He will eventually commit a horrid act of
cannibalism.

5. Joseph Wright
Study for 'The Captive King'
circa 1772-1773
Pen and wash on paper
Derby Museums and Art Gallery
This drawing has been linked to a lost painting of ‘Guy de
Lusignan in Prison’. The detail of the crucifix leaning against
the pillar suggests a setting in the crusades. Guy was a
Frankish king, defeated by the Saracens (middleeastern
Muslims) in 1187 and taken prisoner by them. Wright
sometimes struggled with perspective; the annotations are by
his friend, P.P. Burnett, who he had asked for help in this
respect.

6. Thomas Ryder,
after Joseph Wright
The Captive
published by John
and Josiah Boydell,
1 October 1786
Stipple engraving
Derby Museums and Art Gallery
This print reproduces a painting of an episode in Laurence
Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey (1768). The novel comprises the
reflections of the sensitive traveller, Yorick. In Paris, threatened
with arrest, he reflects upon the terrors of the Bastille, in a
section titled ‘The Captive’. By focussing imaginatively on a
single, suffering prisoner, Yorick is able to conjure the deepest
emotions, which the reader is invited to share.

7. John Downman
Robert, Duke of Normandy,
in Prison 1779
Oil on copper,
Yale Center for British Art,
New Haven
This painting represents a horrid subject from British history.
Robert, Duke of Normandy (1054-1134), the eldest son of
William the Conqueror, was imprisoned by his own
brother, Henry, with whom he had argued, in 1106. He spent
the rest of his life incarcerated, dying in Cardiff prison.
According to legend, Robert was cruelly blinded by having hot
metal bowls pushed into his eyes.

8. John Raphael Smith
after Henry Fuseli
Belisane and Percival under The
Enchantment of Urma
from The provenzal tale of Kyot
published by John Raphael
Smith, 25 August 1782
Mezzotint on paper
Kunsthaus, Zürich.
This print reproduces a lost painting and represents a
Gothic scene of Fuseli’s invention. An evil
wizard, watches over an imprisoned maiden and an
enchanted knight (Percival). The velvety qualities of
mezzotint were seen as peculiarly appropriate to Gothic
subjects of this sort.

9. The subject is from
Thomas Percy’s
poemThe Hermit of
Warkworth (1771). The
Hermit weeps as he
tells the tragic tale of
Sir Bertram and
Isabel to a pair of
eloped lovers. In the
background, Sir
Bertram mourns by
the side of Isabel, the
women he loved but
who died accidentally
by his sword. The
Hermit’s narrative
climaxes with the
Thomas Robinson
The Hermit of Warkworth 1793
revelation that he
Oil on canvas, was that ill-fated
Collection of Sir Robert Goff
hero.

10. A figure stands in the
overgrown ruins of an
abbey, contemplating
the remnants of an old
painting showing the
Resurrection. Above the
figure of Christ a sundial
throws a long moonlight
shadow, suggesting the
imminence of death and
the possibility of
Christian salvation. The
ruin is identifiable as
Tintern Abbey in the
Wye Valley. This was
one of the most-visited
tourist sites of the late
eighteenth-
Philip James De Loutherbourg century, favoured
Visitor to a Moonlit
Churchyard 1790 because of its emotive
Oil on canvas historical associations
From the Paul Mellon
Collection, Yale Center for British with the Protestant
Art, Reformation.
New Haven

11. The romantic hero
Huon comforts his
lover Amanda, when
they discover the body
of the goodly hermit
Alphonso. Fuseli
painted this scene as
one of a series of
twelve canvases
commissioned by the
publisher Caddell &
Davis as illustrations to
a new English edition
of Christoph Martin
Wieland’s epic German
poem Oberon(1780).
The poem focuses on
the adventures of
Henry Fuseli
Huon, sent on a
Huon and Amanda with The Dead mission to a fantasy
Alphonso 1804-1805
Oil on canvas
Baghdad by the
From from The Barrett emperor
Collection, Dallas
Charlemagne.

12. Maria Cosway
Nightscene: A Woman and Two
Children, One Apparently
Dead, at Seashore 1800
Brown ink and
wash, heightened with
white, on paper
Print Collection, Miriam and Ira
D. Wallach Division of
Art, Prints and Photographs,
The New York Public
Library, Astor,
Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
This drawing, is from a group of designs created by
Cosway to illustrate the poem The Wintry Day by
Mary Robinson (1758-1800). Robinson’s poem
contrasts the fates of the rich and the poor. The
latter undergo a variety of Gothic travails, in this
case on a ‘bleak and barren heath’.

13. Maria Cosway
Prison Scene circa 1785-1800
Brown ink and wash, heightened in
white, on paper
Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D.
Wallach Division of Art, Prints and
Photographs,
The New York Public Library,
Astor,
Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
This design also illustrates Mary Robinson’s poem The
Wintry Day (1800). It is one of a set of drawings published
as prints in 1804. It represents the sad fate of the
poor, suffering ‘on the prison’s flinty floor’. The publisher felt
he had to apologize for the artist’s exaggerated style: ‘Mrs
Cosway’s designs, it must be admitted, are sometimes
eccentric, but it is the eccentricity of genius’.

14. Richard Cosway
A Nun Surprising a Monk Kissing a
Nun in a Church Interior circa
1785-1800
Pencil and watercolour on paper,
Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D.
Wallach Division of Art, Prints and
Photographs, The New York Public
Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden
Foundations.
Nuns feature heavily in the erotic literature and art of the
eighteenth century. For readers in the Protestant
world, the rituals and institutions of Catholicism were as
titillating as much as they were morally reprehensible.
Gothic novelists made the most of such associations by
returning repeatedly to medieval Italy or Spain as a