3-028-608 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Queen Mab's Grotto", from the painting by J. M. W. Turner, 1870. '... conflicting opinions...have been expressed respecting this picture. Some might look for a rhapsody, others might require an apology; some may regard the picture as a most poetical creation of artistic imagination; others may consider it the outcome of great but distempered and decaying powers...surely many will regard the picture, either as to conception or treatment, with ever-renewed delight. Its translation into black and white seems also to bring the composition before the eye with a fresh and pleasing surprise. It will suffice to remind the reader that the picture was exhibited at the British Institution in 1846, and probably painted the year previous; consequently, it belongs to the master's later time. When exhibited it was accompanied by the lines from [Shakespeare's] Midsummer Night's Dream: "Frisk it, frisk it, by the moonlight beam"; and also by the platitude from that wonderful MS. poem of Turner, The Fallacies of Hope: "Thy orgies, Mab, are manifold".' Driving her chariot over sleeping people, Queen Mab uncovers secret hopes in dreams. Turner may have also read Queen Mab by Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. From "Illustrated London News, 1870.