Oil paint on canvas
Tate Britain
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on display
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Turner Bequest
Oil paintings
Collection
Turner owned by Tate
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/joseph-mallord-william-turner-558" aria-label="More by Joseph Mallord William Turner" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Joseph Mallord William Turner</a>
Dido and Aeneas
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
adults
Aeneas
architecture
Carthage
Carthage
cities, towns, villages (non-UK)
classical
classical
classical myths: gods and heroes
countries and continents
Dido
group
groups
historical: imagined views
hunting
landscape
leisure and pastimes
literature and fiction
man
people
periods and styles
places
recreational activities
religion and belief
river
townscape
townscapes / man-made features
Tunisia
Virgil, ‘Aeneid’
water: inland
woman
wooded
<p>The size of this painting reflects Turner’s status in 1814. He was now well established and could focus on creating grand public statements that showed landscape to be a genre with limitless creative and intellectual potential. Its golden tones and trees that frame a far-reaching view are references to 17th-century French painter Claude Lorrain, known as ‘Claude’. His work would be a lifelong influence on Turner. The story is from Roman poet Virgil’s <span>Aeneid</span>. Turner has imagined the city of Carthage on the North African coast. At bottom right (in blue and pale red) are the lovers Dido (Queen of Carthage) and Aeneas.</p><p><em>Gallery label, October 2023</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
25 April 2001 – 29 July 2001
2001-07-29
25 April 2001 – 30 July 2001
2001-07-30
2001-04-25
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2001-04-25
House and Studio
Collection based display
8 July 2002 – 21 May 2007
2007-05-21
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2002-07-08
Turner and Mythology
Collection based display
28 May 2007 – 27 July 2009
2009-07-27
28 May 2007
2007-05-28
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2007-05-28
A Turner Gallery
Collection based display
1 September 2009 – 15 January 2010
2010-01-15
1 September 2009 – 15 January 2010
2010-01-15
2009-09-01
National Gallery (London, UK)
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk
2009-09-01
Reciprocal loan for Turner and the Masters
Loan-out
8 February 2013 – 13 April 2014
2014-04-13
8 February 2013 – 19 May 2013
2013-05-19
2013-02-08
Art Gallery of South Australia (Adelaide, Australia)
http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au
4 June 2013 – 8 September 2013
2013-09-08
2013-06-04
National Gallery of Australia (Canberra, Australia)
8 October 2013 – 18 December 2013
2013-12-18
2013-10-08
Toyko Metropolitan Art Museum (Toyko, Japan)
1 January 2014 – 13 April 2014
2014-04-13
2014-01-01
Kobe City Museum (Kobe, Japan)
2013-02-08
J.M.W. Turner: Makings of a Master
Loan-out
26 March 2015 – 27 May 2020
2020-05-27
27 November 2019 – 27 May 2020
2020-05-27
2019-11-27
Hong Kong Museum of Art (Hong Kong, China)
2015-03-26
British Landscape
Tate partnerships & programmes
13 March 2023
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2023-03-13
Gallery 101
Collection based display
Dido and Aeneas
support: 1460 × 2372 mm
frame: 1740 × 2650 × 100 mm
Accepted by the nation as part of the <a href="/search?gid=999999781" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Turner Bequest</a> 1856
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<p>The size of this painting reflects Turner’s status in 1814. He was now well established and could focus on creating grand public statements that showed landscape to be a genre with limitless creative and intellectual potential. Its golden tones and trees that frame a far-reaching view are references to 17th-century French painter Claude Lorrain, known as ‘Claude’. His work would be a lifelong influence on Turner. The story is from Roman poet Virgil’s <i>Aeneid</i>. Turner has imagined the city of Carthage on the North African coast. At bottom right (in blue and pale red) are the lovers Dido (Queen of Carthage) and Aeneas.</p>
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Display caption
2023-10-25T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><b>129. </b>[<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-dido-and-aeneas-n00494" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00494</span></a>]<b> Dido and Æneas</b> Exh. 1814
<br/>
<br/>THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (494)
<br/>Canvas, 57 1/2 × 93 3/8 (146 × 237)</p>
<p><b>Coll.</b> Turner Bequest 1856 (57, ‘The Morning of the Chase’ 7'11" × 4'10"); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1910.</p>
<p><b>Exh.</b> R.A. 1814 (177); Tate Gallery 1931 (59).</p>
<p><b>Engr.</b> By W.R. Smith 1842 as ‘Dido and Æneas: the Morning of the Chase’.</p>
<p><b>Lit.</b> Thornbury 1862, i, pp. 173, 296; 1877, pp. 123, 342, 432; Hamerton 1879, pp. 150–51, 197; Monkhouse 1879, p. 93; Bell 1901, p. 94 no. 130; Armstrong 1902, p. 221; Whitley 1928, p. 224; Davies 1946, p. 186; Clare 1951, p. 55; Finberg 1961, pp. 192, 210–12, 238, 276, 340, 386, 475 no. 186, pl. 16; Rothenstein and Butlin 1964, p. 32; Lindsay 1966, p. 160; Reynolds 1969, p. 186; Wilton 1979, p. 135; Gage 1980, pp. 64, 184; Kitson 1983, pp. 7, 10.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Exhibited in 1814 with the following lines:
<br/></p>
<p>‘When next the sun his rising light displays,
<br/>And gilds the world below with purple rays,
<br/>The Queen, Æneas, and the Tyrian Court,
<br/>Shall to the shady woods for sylvan games resort.’</p>
<p align="right">4th Book of Dryden's Æneis.
<br/></p>
<p>The first idea for the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a>, subsequently considerably altered, seems to have been the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/w/watercolour" title="Glossary definition for 'Watercolour'"><span>water-colour</span></a> in the ‘Studies for Pictures: Isleworth’ sketchbook of <i>c.</i> 1804–5 (XC-21; repr. in colour Wilkinson 1974, p. 106, as of 1811). There is a further composition study, together with a number of figure studies, in the ‘Hesperides (1)’ sketchbook of about the same date (XCIII-5; and 4 <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/r/recto-verso" title="Glossary definition for 'Recto / Verso'"><span>verso</span></a> and 5 verso-7 respectively). Finberg suggests that it is this picture, rather than <i>Crossing the Brook</i> (No. 130, <i>q.v.</i>), that Cyrus Redding identified as being based on scenery in Devonshire, but this seems unlikely save possibly in the most general sense.
<br/>
<br/>The younger Trimmer, in an account reported by Thornbury, says of the ‘<i>equi effrenati</i>... without bridles’ that his father had told Turner that ‘the Libyan horses had no bridles, and Turner said he knew it, though I doubt if their views are borne out by modern critics.’
<br/>
<br/>An uncredited press-cutting in the Victoria and Albert Museum, dated May 1814, explains the subject: ‘There is a fine historical <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/landscape" title="Glossary definition for 'Landscape'"><span>landscape</span></a> by Mr. Turner, representing the State of Carthage, its rising towers, and public games on the arrival of Æneas, who conducted by Dido issues from her palace to survey the busy scene. There is great facility and great knowledge of grouping evinced in the order and harmony with which a multitude of objects are here accumulated and distributed.’ Another uncredited press-cutting in the same collection describes the picture as ‘a charming landscape, [with] figures <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/classicism" title="Glossary definition for 'Classicism'"><span>classically</span></a> grouped’. Hazlitt in the <i>Morning Chronicle</i> for 3 May was rather more critical: ‘This picture, powerful and wonderful as it is, has all the characteristic splendour and confusion of an Eastern composition. It is not natural nor classical’. A review in the <i>Champion</i> for 7 May, attributed by Finberg to the same critic, elaborates the same theme, adding that the picture is ‘faulty in the too violent opposition of positive blues to vivid yellows, which destroys chasteness of colour, and is at variance with the truth of a representation of early day. We observe, also, an unsatisfactory execution of the parts near the foreground; in distinctness and correctness, a picture of such high pretensions ought not to be deficient. But it is a performance of which our nation has reason to be proud, for we believe no other could at present furnish its equal.’
<br/>
<br/>John Gage suggests that this was the ‘Dido’ that Ambrose Johns wanted to borrow from Turner for an exhibition in Plymouth in 1815, though <i>Dido Building Carthage</i> has been the more favoured candidate (see Turner's letter of 4 November 1815, Gage <i>op. cit.,</i> p. 64, and No. 131[<span>N00498</span>]).
<br/>
<br/>The discoloured varnish that formerly made the quality of this picture impossible to assess was removed in 1984. The surface of the picture does seem, however, to have been considerably impaired when the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> was relined in the late nineteenth century.</p>
<p>
<br/><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, <i>The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner</i>, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-09-22T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
adults Aeneas architecture Carthage Carthage cities, towns, villages (non-UK) classical classical classical myths: gods and heroes countries and continents Dido group groups historical: imagined views hunting landscape leisure and pastimes literature and fiction man people periods and styles places recreational activities religion and belief river townscape townscapes / man-made features Tunisia Virgil, ‘Aeneid’ water: inland woman wooded