'Queen Mab's Cave', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

Queen Mab's Cave

Date exhibited 1846

MediumOil paint on canvas

Dimensionssupport: 921 x 1226 mm frame: 1070 x 1374 x 70 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Reference

N00548

Not on display

Display caption

Here, Turner found his mythic subject outside classical sources. ‘Queen Mab’ is described in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as ‘the fairies’ midwife’. She reveals secret hopes in the form of dreams, which she creates by driving her chariot over people as they sleep. Turner referred to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where Queen Mab is invoked during Titania’s ‘moonlight revels’. He may also have read Shelley’s poem Queen Mab.

This painting was first exhibited in 1846. A reviewer called it ‘a daylight dream in all the wantonness of gorgeous, bright, and positive colour, not painted but apparently flung upon the canvas’.

September 2004