As well as illustrations for the poetry of Samuel Rogers and Sir Walter Scott, in the early 1830s Turner also made a small group of vignette designs for John Macrone's 1835 of Milton's 'Poetical Works'. Three of these were as illustrations to the epic poem 'Paradise Lost' (no.54). No.53, meanwhile, represents the famous episode in Book One of that poem when Satan summons his legions on the burning lake, although it was never worked up into a finished design. Many other broad colour layouts for vignette illustrations exist in the Turner Bequest.
Gallery label, August 2004
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