Oil paint on canvas
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<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/henry-wallis-578" aria-label="More by Henry Wallis" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Henry Wallis</a>
Chatterton
Bequeathed by Charles Gent Clement 1899
actions: postures and motions
adults
agriculture, gardening & fishing
architecture
attic
bed
bedroom
birth to death
birth to death
body
bottle
box
candlestick
cathedral
chair
City of London
City of London, St Paul’s Cathedral
clothing and personal items
coat
corpse
dawn
death
death - extinguished candle
death: Thomas Chatterton, suicide, 24 Aug 1770
diseases and conditions
document - non-specific
dome
domestic
England
features
furnishings
heating and lighting
history
interiors
literary
man
mortality - fallen blossom / petals
newspaper, ‘Middlesex Journal’
objects
people
places
plant pot
plants and flowers
poet
poisoned
politics and society
reading, writing, printed matter
reclining
religious
roof
rose
society
suicide
symbols and personifications
table
times of the day
townscape
townscapes / man-made features
UK countries and regions
UK London
vessels and containers
window
work and occupations
<p>This highly romanticised picture created a sensation when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856. Thomas Chatterton was a poet whose ‘gothic’ writings, melancholy life and youthful suicide fascinated artists and writers of the 19th century. At an early age, he wrote fake medieval histories and poems, which he copied onto old parchment and passed off as manuscripts from the Middle Ages. The fraud was later discovered. In London he struggled to earn a living writing tales and songs for popular publications. Penniless, he took his own life by swallowing arsenic at the age of 17.</p><p><em>Gallery label, November 2016</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
24 October 2001 – 11 July 2005
2005-07-11
24 October 2001
2001-10-24
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2001-10-24
Making British History
Collection based display
1 August 2005 – 30 July 2007
2007-07-30
1 August 2005
2005-08-01
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2005-08-01
The Pre-Raphaelites
Collection based display
22 September 2005 – 23 April 2006
2006-04-23
22 September 2005 – 2 January 2006
2006-01-02
2005-09-22
Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais (Paris, France)
28 January 2006 – 23 April 2006
2006-04-23
2006-01-28
Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin, Germany)
http://www.neue-nationalgalerie.de/
2005-09-22
Genius and Madness in the West. A History of Melancholy
Loan-out
28 June 2006 – 10 September 2006
2006-09-10
28 June 2006 – 10 September 2006
2006-09-10
2006-06-28
National Gallery (London, UK)
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk
2006-06-28
The Myth of the Artist
Loan-out
6 October 2007 – 27 January 2008
2008-01-27
6 October 2007 – 27 January 2008
2008-01-27
2007-10-06
Manchester Art Gallery (Manchester, UK)
http://www.manchestergalleries.org
2007-10-06
Art Treasures Revisited
Loan-out
29 July 2010 – 14 March 2011
2011-03-14
6 August 2010 – 14 March 2011
2011-03-14
2010-08-06
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2010-07-29
Romantics 2
Collection based display
2 September 2011 – 15 April 2012
2012-04-15
2 September 2011 – 15 April 2012
2012-04-15
2011-09-02
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2011-09-02
Romantics
Collection based display
12 September 2012 – 31 January 2014
2014-01-31
12 September 2012 – 13 January 2013
2013-01-13
2012-09-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
17 February 2013 – 19 May 2013
2013-05-19
2013-02-17
National Gallery of Art (Washington DC, USA)
10 June 2013 – 22 September 2013
2013-09-22
2013-06-10
State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, Russia)
25 January 2014 – 6 April 2014
2014-04-06
2014-01-25
Mori Arts Centre (Tokyo, Japan)
19 April 2014 – 13 July 2014
2014-07-13
2014-04-19
Palazzo Chiablese (Turin, Italy)
2012-09-12
Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde
Exhibition
17 February 2013 – 31 August 2014
2014-08-31
17 February 2013 – 19 May 2013
2013-05-19
2013-02-17
National Gallery of Art (Washington DC, USA)
10 June 2013 – 13 October 2013
2013-10-13
2013-06-10
State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, Russia)
25 January 2014 – 6 April 2014
2014-04-06
2014-01-25
Mori Arts Centre (Tokyo, Japan)
19 April 2014 – 13 July 2014
2014-07-13
2014-04-19
Palazzo Chiablese (Turin, Italy)
2013-02-17
Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde
Loan-out
10 October 2014 – 1 November 2015
2015-11-01
10 October 2014 – 1 November 2015
2015-11-01
2014-10-10
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2014-10-10
Poor Man's Picture Gallery
Collection based display
11 May 2016 – 25 September 2016
2016-09-25
11 May 2016 – 25 September 2016
2016-09-25
2016-05-11
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2016-05-11
Painting with Light: Art and Photography from the Pre-Raphaelites to the modern age
Exhibition
5 October 2020 – 17 October 2020
2020-10-17
5 October 2020 – 17 October 2020
2020-10-17
2020-10-05
Royal West of England Academy (Bristol, UK)
2020-10-05
A Poetic City: The legacy of Thomas Chatterton in shaping Bristol's poetic heritage and culture
Loan-out
8 June 2021 – 14 January 2024
2024-01-14
8 July 2021 – 14 November 2021
2021-11-14
2021-07-08
Museum of Art Pudong (Shanghai, China)
2021-06-08
Light
Tate partnerships & programmes
Chatterton
support: 622 × 933 mm
frame: 905 × 1205 × 132 mm
Bequeathed by Charles Gent Clement 1899
<p><i>Chatterton</i> is Wallis's earliest and most famous work. The picture created a sensation when it was first exhibited at the Royal <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/academy" title="Glossary definition for 'Academy'"><span>Academy</span></a> in 1856, accompanied by the following quotation from Marlowe: 

</p><p></p><blockquote>
<p>     Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight<br/></p></blockquote>
<p>And burned is Apollo's laurel bough.

</p><p>Ruskin described the work in his <i>Academy Notes</i> as 'faultless and wonderful'.

</p><p>Thomas Chatterton (1752-70) was an 18<sup>th</sup> Century poet, a <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/romanticism" title="Glossary definition for 'Romanticism'"><span>Romantic</span></a> figure whose melancholy temperament and early suicide captured the imagination of numerous artists and writers. He is best known for a collection of poems, written in the name of Thomas Rowley, a 15<sup>th</sup> Century monk, which he copied onto <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/v/vellum" title="Glossary definition for 'Vellum'"><span>parchment</span></a> and passed off as mediaeval manuscripts. Having abandoned his first job working in a scrivener's office he struggled to earn a living as a poet.  In June 1770 he moved to an attic room at 39 Brooke Street, where he lived on the verge of starvation until, in August of that year, at the age of only seventeen, he poisoned himself with arsenic. Condemned in his lifetime as a forger by influential figures such as the writer Horace Walpole (1717-97), he was later elevated to the status of tragic hero by the French poet Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863).

</p><p>Wallis may have intended the picture as a criticism of society's treatment of artists, since his next picture of note, <i>The Stonebreaker </i>(1858, Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery), is one of the most forceful examples of <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/social-realism" title="Glossary definition for 'Social Realism'"><span>social realism</span></a> in <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/pre-raphaelite" title="Glossary definition for 'Pre-Raphaelite'"><span>Pre-Raphaelite</span></a> art. 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> alludes to the idea of the artist as a martyr of society through the Christ-like pose and the torn sheets of poetry on the floor. The pale light of dawn shines through the casement window, illuminating the poet's serene features and livid flesh. The harsh lighting, vibrant colours and lifeless hand and arm increase the emotional impact of the scene. A phial of poison on the floor indicates the method of suicide. Following the Pre-Raphaelite credo of truth to nature, Wallis has attempted to recreate the same attic room in Gray's Inn where Chatterton had killed himself. The model for the figure was the novelist George Meredith (1828-1909), then aged about 28. Two years later Wallis eloped with Meredith's wife, a daughter of the novelist Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866).

</p><p>Two preparatory <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawings</span></a> exist for the picture, both in the Tate collection (Tate <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/AWork?id=15908">http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/AWork?id=15908</a><a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wallis-study-for-chatterton-t01721" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T01721</span></a> and <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/AWork?id=15909">http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/AWork?id=15909</a><a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wallis-study-for-chatterton-t01722" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T01722</span></a>.).

</p><p><b>Further reading:<br/></b>Leslie Parris, Ed., <i>The Pre-Raphaelites</i>, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1984, reprinted 1994, pp.142-144, reproduced p.143, in colour.<br/>Elizabeth Prettejohn, <i>The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites</i>, London 2000, pp.192-3, reproduced p.193, in colour.<br/>Christopher Wood, <i>The Pre-Raphaelites</i>, London 1994, pp.61-4, reproduced p.68, in colour.

</p><p>Frances Fowle<br/>December 2000</p>
Summary
2005-09-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>In the 18th century, the impoverished young poet Thomas Chatterton was exposed as a fraud after he sold fake medieval poems. He struggled to earn a living writing tales and songs. Penniless, he took his own life by drinking arsenic at the age of 17. To many Victorian viewers, Chatterton represented the growing divide between the values of the individual artist and the materialism of wider Victorian society. When he first exhibited the painting, Henty Wallis accompanied it with a quotation from the poet Christopher Marlowe: ‘Cut is the branch that might have grown straight’.</p>
</div>

Online caption
2023-11-29T00:00:00
online-caption
ONLINE_CAPTION
actions: postures and motions adults agriculture, gardening & fishing architecture attic bed bedroom birth to death birth to death body bottle box candlestick cathedral chair City of London City of London, St Paul’s Cathedral clothing and personal items coat corpse dawn death death - extinguished candle death: Thomas Chatterton, suicide, 24 Aug 1770 diseases and conditions document - non-specific dome domestic England features furnishings heating and lighting history interiors literary man mortality - fallen blossom / petals newspaper, ‘Middlesex Journal’ objects people places plant pot plants and flowers poet poisoned politics and society reading, writing, printed matter reclining religious roof rose society suicide symbols and personifications table times of the day townscape townscapes / man-made features UK countries and regions UK London vessels and containers window work and occupations