The most painted of the poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson are those of his Arthurian narrative Idylls of the King, that I have recently incorporated into my long series on paintings of Arthurian legends. Among those The Lady of Shalott remains the most popularly depicted. Several other poems of Tennyson have featured in notable paintings.

The Sleeping Beauty is a ‘fairy’ story widespread through most of Europe, best known from the version of the brothers Grimm, and retold by Tennyson initially in his 1830 poem of the same name, expanded into The Day-Dream of 1842.

The central story tells of a princess, who has seven good fairies as her godmothers. An eighth and evil fairy was overlooked, and seeks a way to get revenge. She puts a curse on the princess that she will prick her hand on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. One good fairy tries to reverse this, changing the spell so that it will put her into a deep sleep for a century, and can only be awakened by a kiss from a prince.

Royal edict then forbids all spinning throughout the kingdom, but when the princess is a young woman, she discovers an old woman spinning, and pricks her finger on the spindle. She then falls asleep. The king summons the good fairy to try to address the problem. Her solution is to put everyone in the castle to sleep, and to summon a forest with brambles and thorns around the castle, to prevent anyone from entering.

A prince later hears the story of the Sleeping Beauty, and rises to the challenge to penetrate the trees and bramble thickets around the castle. He discovers the sleeping princess, kisses her, and she and the rest of the castle wake up. The prince and princess marry, and they all live happily ever after.

A pupil of the Pre-Raphaelites working long after most of the them had died, John Collier chooses part of the story before the climax, in his Sleeping Beauty of 1921. Here the princess and her two companions are shown asleep, with the dense woodland and brambles seen through the window.

The same year that his first version of The Sleeping Beauty was published, Tennyson wrote a poem drawn from William Shakespeare’s comedy Measure for Measure, and the character of Mariana.

Set in Vienna, the play relates the events which take place when the Duke of Vienna makes it known that he is going away on a diplomatic mission. His deputy, Angelo, assumes control, although the Duke doesn’t actually go away at all, but remains in disguise to observe Angelo’s behaviour in his feigned absence.

Angelo has been betrothed to Mariana, but her dowry was lost at sea, so he has refused to marry her, leaving her isolated and in perpetual sadness, with no promise of any solution. During the Duke’s feigned absence, it becomes clear that Angelo lusts after another, Isabella, a novice nun who is the sister of Claudio, who Angelo has engineered to become sentenced to death for fornication. Angelo offers Isabella a deal to spare her brother’s life, in which she lets him deflower her.

The disguised Duke arranges a ‘bed trick’ in which it is actually Mariana who Angelo has sex with, which could be construed as consummation of their frozen marriage. Angelo then has sex with Mariana, believing her to be Isabella, but reneges on the deal to spare Claudio. The Duke arranges for a similar head to be sent to Angelo to ‘prove’ Claudio’s execution, in the ‘head trick’.

The Duke then ‘returns’ to Vienna, and is petitioned by Isabella and Mariana, for their claims against Angelo. Angelo attempts to lay blame against the Duke when he was disguised as a friar, so the Duke reveals his role, and proposes that Angelo be executed. Eventually it’s agreed that Angelo is made to marry Mariana, and revealed that Claudio was not executed.

Tennyson’s Mariana focusses solely on her ‘despondent isolation’ before most of the events of Shakespeare’s play. Its 84 lines end with the summary
Then, said she, “I am very dreary,
He will not come,” she said;
She wept, “I am aweary, aweary,
O God, that I were dead!”

A couple of years later, Tennyson rewrote the poem and published his new version under the title Mariana in the South in 1832. That follows more closely the tragic circumstances of The Lady of Shalott, ending in Mariana’s death. This leaves us with a choice of two or even three different Mariana narratives, and a fourth if we include Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Ruth, published in 1853, which was apparently inspired by Millais’ painting below.

Some of John Everett Millais’ sketches for his major painting of Mariana have survived, and show how from early on in its development, the figure’s posture and location had been decided.

The final version of Mariana (1851) was first shown at the Royal Academy in 1851, together with lines 9-12 of Tennyson’s original Mariana:
She only said, “My life is dreary,
He cometh not,” she said;
She said, “I am aweary, aweary;
I would that I were dead!”

Millais’ superb and richly-coloured painting is full of symbols: fallen leaves to indicate the passage of time, her embroidery as a means of passing that time, the Annunciation in the stained glass contrasting her with the Virgin’s fulfilment, the motto ‘in coelo quies’ (in heaven is rest), and the snowdrop flower in the glass meaning consolation. Mariana’s posture is intended to indicate her yearning for Angelo.

Marie Spartali Stillman’s accomplished watercolour of Mariana from 1867 may have been inspired by Millais’ painting, and uses the same basic setting of Mariana gazing out of a window with yearning. However she dispenses with Millais’ complex symbols, and fills her paper with Mariana herself, relying on her facial expression and body language alone.

When first exhibited at the Dudley Gallery, it was well received, but didn’t sell. It then vanished until its re-discovery in the 1980s. It has been suggested that this painting may have been inspiration for Rossetti’s versions.

Rossetti made two quite different studies before painting his finished work of 1870, that are generally accepted as being part of his Aesthetic style rather than the earlier Pre-Raphaelite.

The Heart of the Night (Mariana in the Moated Grange) (1862) is an intriguing watercolour study quite unlike any of the other depictions of Mariana, but clearly referring to Tennyson’s first poem. The figure is obviously yearning deeply, but instead of facing a window, she inhabits the dark. Some symbols are apparent in the distance, including a spinning wheel indicating time, and there are love letters scattered in the foreground.

Rossetti’s next study of 1868 is transformed by his use of Jane Morris (wife of William Morris) as the model, and this probably developed from a study of her head alone. There is also a link to reality, in that the Morris’s marriage was going through a difficult period, and Jane and Rossetti were becoming increasingly close.

Rossetti’s finished painting of Mariana (1870) strangely reverts to that of Shakespeare’s play, and depicts the moments in Act IV scene 1 in which a boy sings to Mariana. Rossetti dresses the woman in the same blue as Millais, and uses Jane Morris as his model. Mariana now sits full of yearning, her embroidery on her lap, as she listens to the boy’s song, bringing in the art of music. There appears little in common with Stillman’s painting, though.

Philip Hermogenes Calderon’s sketchy painting is even more obviously linked to the Shakespeare play, and those same events in Act IV scene 1. The boy is not shown in song, though, as he stares at Mariana’s face, which we cannot see, as she is looking into the canvas. Her purity is confirmed by the white lily flowers.

Valentine Cameron Prinsep’s Mariana (c 1888) was intended to serve as an illustration for a printed edition of Shakespeare’s play; this version was printed by Goupil in Paris in 1896. Instead of following Rossetti and Calderon, he uses a similar composition to Stillman. Mariana is here dressed in white, symbolising her purity, and stares out of anachronistic diamond-pane windows, full of yearning.

Henrietta Rae painted her version of Mariana in 1892, and appears again to refer to Marie Spartali Stillman’s painting of 1867, with its bottle-glass windows, although her composition looks original.

Almost fifty years after Millais’ first painting, John William Waterhouse chose to use Tennyson’s later reworking of his poem, Mariana in the South.

One study has survived, showing how Waterhouse has moved closer to popular images derived from The Lady of Shalott. The moated grange is now kept in permanent darkness, shutters closed. Mariana yearns in front of a large mirror, as if dressing herself in preparation for her death.

Waterhouse’s finished Mariana in the South (c 1897) places her in a posture more closely derived from that of Millais. On the floor are some of her love letters, and there is a large red rose of love on her breast. At the left edge, on a distant mantleshelf, a candle burns its vigil for her lost betrothal, and her prayers that she will one day marry. This matches Tennyson’s words “And in the liquid mirror glowed the clear perfection of her face” from his second version of the poem.

In early 1835, Tennyson wrote a brief elegy describing his emotion of loss following the death of his close friend and fellow poet Arthur Henry Hallam in 1833, titled Break, Break, Break. It was published in 1842.

This remarkable painting by Elihu Vedder is one of the earliest symbolist images made by an American artist. Its origins are probably in sketches he made in 1866 and 1867, according to Regina Soria. The earlier of those was a response to Tennyson’s poem Break, Break, Break, pondering the memory of loved ones when contemplating the sea, as Vedder shows here.

Jesters or fools appear to have originated as entertainers in ancient Rome, and were features in many of the royal courts in Europe. Among the most famous are those in the plays of William Shakespeare. In this article, I look at paintings of fools and jesters, and tomorrow those of their intellectual complements, sages and sundry wise persons.

Some of Shakespeare’s fools play significant roles in the plot, of whom the most famous must be Yoric, on whose skull Hamlet gives one of the most memorable speeches in the English language.

This was sufficient for Philip Hermogenes Calderon to paint a speculative scene of The Young Lord Hamlet in 1868, showing the prince long before the start of the play. Set in happier days before the death of Hamlet’s father, its reading is an interesting challenge. If the figure on hands and knees, wearing the standard jester’s rig, is Yoric, then presumably the young boy riding on his back is Hamlet, and the younger infant in the care of the three women on the right might be the young Ophelia.

Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret shows the famous scene of Hamlet and the Gravediggers (1883) as the prince is about to lament the passing of Yoric to the gravediggers, opening with the words “To be, or not to be…”.

The fool in King Lear has a lesser role, although at least he remains alive and well throughout the play. His most prominent moment is when he accompanies the enraged king out into a tempest.

Ary Scheffer’s watercolour of King Lear and the Fool from 1834 places the pair on Shakespeare’s bleak heath.

In William Dyce’s King Lear and the Fool in the Storm from about 1851, the king is having a good rant into the wind of the storm, his body language profuse. Resting with his head propped on the heels of his hands, the Fool also looks up to the heavens.

Shakespeare’s other plays feature fools and jesters who sing and entertain, like Touchstone in As You Like It.

JW Waterhouse painted his portrait in watercolour, in his undated Jester.

Daniel Maclise’s Wrestling Scene in ‘As You Like It’ from 1854 shows the wrestler Charles on the left, as Orlando on the right prepares for their contest. The two daughters, Celia and Rosalind, embrace one another in anxiety, and Touchstone is seated at the front.

John Collier’s undated painting of Touchstone and Audrey catches the jester in one of his more serious moments, as he woos the simple Audrey.

My last Shakespearean fool appears in Twelfth Night.

Walter Deverell’s Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene IV (1850) show Feste the clown singing to Orsino and Viola, disguised as Cesario.

A few non-theatrical fools and jesters also appear in paintings.

“Keying Up” – The Court Jester was one of William Merritt Chase’s student paintings, made in 1875 when he was studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany. He sent this back to his sponsors in St. Louis, Missouri, where it went on to win a medal at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition that year.

Georges Clairin had a reputation of being a socialite, but his King’s Fool from 1880 is unusual and great fun.

Other than the fictional Yoric, few jesters or fools have attained fame. One notable exception to this is Stańczyk, a Polish court jester who lived between about 1480-1560.

In 1917 Kazimierz Sichulski painted this Portrait of Józef Piłsudski with Wernyhora and Stańczyk in pastels. Piłsudski was a major Polish statesman who was to become Chief of State after the First World War. Stańczyk (left) here symbolises Poland’s struggle for independence. Wernyhora (right) is a legendary Cossack bard who apparently told of the fall of Poland and its subsequent rebirth as a great nation. Both Piłsudski and Wernyhora feature in contemporary paintings by Jacek Malczewski.

Mermaids and mermen are mythical creatures with origins outside the classical Mediterranean civilisations. Conventionally, their upper body is human, while below the waist they have the form of a fish. Mermaids seem invariably young, beautiful and buxom, and are most frequently encountered by fishermen and those who go down to the sea. In the Middle Ages they became confounded with the sirens of Greek and Roman myth, who were part human and part bird.

John William Waterhouse’s diploma study for the Royal Academy, painted in 1900, shows a conventional image of A Mermaid, seen combing her long tresses on the shore.

Despite their separate origin, mermaids have been depicted in accounts of some classical myths, perpetuating medieval confusion.

Gustave Moreau’s Venus Rising from the Sea from 1866 shows the goddess as she has just been born from the sea, and sits on a coastal rock, her arms outstretched in an almost messianic pose. On the left, a mermaid attendant holds up half an oyster shell with a single large pearl glinting in it. On the right, a merman proffers her a tree of bright pink coral, and cradles a large conch shell.

Ary Renan’s Charybdis and Scylla (1894) is an imaginative painting of one of the dangers to mariners in the Strait of Messina, between Sicily and the Italian mainland. Scylla was said to be a six-headed sea monster, but was actually a rock shoal, and Charybdis was a whirlpool. Renan shows both together, the whirlpool with its mountainous standing waves at the left, and the rocks at the right, with the form of a beautiful mermaid embedded in them.

As the First World War was ending, Franz von Stuck returned to his favourite faun motif in A Faun and a Mermaid (1918). This has survived in two almost identical versions, the other now being in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. His version of a mermaid is a maritime equivalent of a faun, with separate scaly legs rather than the more conventional single fish tail. She grasps the faun’s horns and laughs with joy as the faun gives her a piggy-back out of the sea.

Perhaps the earliest painting of a mermaid in European art is in a Christian religious painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder, from 1518-20.

Cranach’s Saint Christopher shows the saint with his back and legs flexed as he bears the infant Christ on his left shoulder. In the foreground is an unusual putto-mermaid with a long coiled fish tail.

Mermaids feature in folktales from many of the traditions of Europe, where they’re known by local names such as havfrue in Denmark.

John Reinhard Weguelin’s watercolour of The Mermaid of Zennor (1900) tells the legend of a mermaid living in a cove near Zennor in Cornwall. This scene brings her together with Matthew Trewhella, a local chorister, whose voice she had fallen in love with. The legend tells that the couple went to live in the sea, and that his voice can still be heard in the cove.

Peter Nicolai Arbo’s Liden Gunver and the Merman (1874-1880) is drawn from an opera The Fishers, by Johannes Ewald and Johann Hartmann, first performed in Copenhagen in 1780. The young woman Liden Gunver, on the right, is taken to sea by the alluring but deceptive merman on the left.

Hans Thoma’s Three Mermaids (1879) lack fishtails as they frolic raucously with fish under the light of the moon.

Gustav Klimt’s Mermaids (Silverfish) (c 1899) appear to be tadpole-like creatures with smiling, womanly faces.