Oil paint on mahogany
Tate Collection
Works with images
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>
Cave Despair
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
adults
animals: birds
cave
female
landscape
literature (not Shakespeare)
literature and fiction
magic and occultism
nudes
owl
people
religion and belief
Spenser, Edmund, ‘The Faerie Queen’
witch
woman
painting oil paint mahogany
24 May 2014 – 14 September 2014
2014-09-14
24 May 2014 – 14 September 2014
2014-09-14
2014-05-24
Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery (Norwich, UK)
http://www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk
2014-05-24
The Wonder of Birds
Loan-out
29 October 2024 – 30 September 2025
2025-09-30
30 October 2024 – 2 February 2025
2025-02-02
2024-10-30
Reggia di Venaria Reale (Turin, Italy)
1 September 2025 – 31 January 2026
2026-01-31
2025-09-01
Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest, Hungary)
1 March 2026 – 31 August 2026
2026-08-31
2026-03-01
External
2024-10-29
William Blake and the Age of Romantic Fantasy: British Art & Imagination
Loan-out
The Cave of Despair
support: 508 × 813 mm
frame: 608 × 908 × 70 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
<p><b>451. </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-the-cave-of-despair-n05522" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05522</span></a>]<b> The Cave of Despair, from Spenser's ‘Faery Queene’?</b> <i>c</i>. 1835</p>
<p>THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (5522)</p>
<p>Mahogany, 20 × 32 (51 × 81)</p>
<p><b>Coll.</b> Turner Bequest 1856 (159, 1 unidentified 2'8 1/2" × 1'8 1/2"; identified 1946 by chalk number on back); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1947.</p>
<p><b>Lit.</b> Davies 1946, pp. 165, 188; Gage 1968, p. 681, repr. p. 676, fig. 48.</p>
<p>Martin Davies catalogued this picture as ‘A Visit to the Underworld (?)’, old Tate Gallery catalogues as ‘Unidentified Subject’, and Lawrence Gowing as ‘An <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/allegory" title="Glossary definition for 'Allegory'"><span>Allegory</span></a> of Time’ on account of the hour-glass held by the child-like figure in the centre. More recently, however, John Gage has identified the subject as an illustration to Spenser's <i>Faery Queene</i>. Charles Eastlake was <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> an illustration to the same poem for Sir John Soane while Turner was with him in Rome in 1828–9 (repr. Gage, <i>op. cit.</i>, fig. 47), and in a letter to Eastlake of 11 August 1829 Turner writes that he would have liked to have bought Benjamin West's <i>Cave of Despair</i>, sold with the contents of West's studio in May of that year, ‘and lament I did not’ (repr. Gage, <i>op. cit.</i>, fig. 49). According to Gage, Turner, rather than illustrate any one passage, conflates elements from Cantos VIII and IX: Despair, seen in a cave inhabited by an owl, as in Canto IX, is urging the Red Cross Knight to kill himself with a dagger, partly because he has deserted Una and transferred his allegiance to the witch Duessa, whom Una is shown revealing in the right foreground as a ‘loathly, wrinckeled hag’, an incident which takes place in a different cave in Canto VIII; the hour-glasses illustrate the lines in Canto XI, verse 46, when Despair tries to persuade the Knight that it is ‘better to die willinglie, Then linger till the glas be all out-ronne’. Turner had already illustrated Spenser in one of the <i>Liber Studiorum</i> plates, R. 36, ‘From Spenser's Fairy Queen’, published in June 1811 (repr. Finberg 1924, p. 143; see also No. 439 [<span>N00561</span>]). However, the central figure identified by Gage as the Red Cross Knight is remarkably difficult to make out.</p>
<p><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
2004-10-07T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
adults animals: birds cave female landscape literature and fiction literature (not Shakespeare) magic and occultism nudes owl people religion and belief Spenser, Edmund, ‘The Faerie Queen’ witch woman