Sir Edwin Henry Landseer

The Defeat of Comus

1843

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Not on display

Artist: Sir Edwin Henry Landseer 1802–1873
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 889 × 1689 mm
frame: 1207 × 2015 × 140 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Bequeathed by Jacob Bell 1859
Reference: N00605

Display caption

In 1843 Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, commissioned a number of painters to decorate a small garden pavilion in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. The artists were to select scenes from the masque Comus by the seventeenth-century poet John Milton, and subjects from the work of the Romantic novelist and poet Walter Scott. Like Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery (see Lear and Cordelia displayed above) it was hoped that the project would help encourage British history painting.

This is Edwin Landseer's preliminary sketch, showing the rout of Comus and his company of revellers. The pavilion was pulled down in 1928.

Gallery label, September 2004

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