Although close examination suggests five figures, the third and fourth are relatively inconspicuous, and John Gage has proposed that the group represents ‘the three Fates’, which had been ‘apparently drawn in a sketchbook in the life class of the Academy, cut out, and glued on the canvas’ of Turner’s mythological painting
The Golden Bough, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1834 (Tate
N00371).
2 This would account for the anecdote recounted by Gage, that when the painting was subsequently owned by Robert Vernon ‘this paper began to peel, and the artist was called in to make a repair. He removed the paper and kept it, repainting the group on the canvas ... with only two figures facing away ... and with no attributes to identify them’.
3 Gage has compared them with the Fates seated and reclining in the foreground of Turner’s large
Vision of Medea, exhibited during his stay in Rome in 1828 and again at the Royal Academy in 1831 (Tate
N00513).
4