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>
Queen Mabs Cave
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
‘Romeo and Juliet’
‘Tempest, The’
adults
animals: birds
architecture
bank
castle
cave
colour
emotions, concepts and ideas
evening
fairy
figure
formal qualities
lake
landscape
literature and fiction
magic and occultism
military
people
religion and belief
Shakespeare
swan
times of the day
water sprite
water: inland
<p>Turner exhibited this work at the British Institution, an exhibition venue run by art collectors. One reviewer called it ‘a daylight dream... of gorgeous, bright, and positive colour, not painted but apparently flung upon the canvas’. To artist and critic John Ruskin, this was a ‘strange example of the way in which the greatest men may at times lose themselves.’ The character of Queen Mab appeared in William Shakespeare’s plays. Driving her chariot over sleeping people, she uncovers secret hopes in dreams. Turner references <span>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</span> here, but he may have also read <span>Queen Mab</span> by Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.</p><p><em>Gallery label, October 2023</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
30 July 2001 – 30 June 2002
2002-06-30
30 July 2001 – 30 June 2002
2002-06-30
2001-07-30
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2001-07-30
Painting Venice
Collection based display
15 February 2003 – 19 October 2003
2003-10-19
15 February 2003 – 15 June 2003
2003-06-15
2003-02-15
Palazzo dei Diamanti (Ferrara, Italy)
16 July 2003 – 19 October 2003
2003-10-19
2003-07-16
Dulwich Picture Gallery (London, UK)
2003-02-15
Shakespeare in Art
Loan-out
12 October 2020 – 25 September 2022
2022-09-25
12 October 2020 – 25 September 2022
2022-09-25
2020-10-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2020-10-12
Fairy Painting
Collection based display
13 March 2023
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2023-03-13
Gallery 104
Collection based display
Queen Mab’s Cave
support: 921 × 1226 mm
frame: 1070 × 1374 × 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
<div class="text">
<p>Turner exhibited this work at the British Institution, an exhibition venue run by art collectors. One reviewer called it ‘a daylight dream... of gorgeous, bright, and positive colour, not painted but apparently flung upon the canvas’. To artist and critic John Ruskin, this was a ‘strange example of the way in which the greatest men may at times lose themselves.’ The character of Queen Mab appeared in William Shakespeare’s plays. Driving her chariot over sleeping people, she uncovers secret hopes in dreams. Turner references <i>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> here, but he may have also read <i>Queen Mab</i> by Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.</p>
</div>

Display caption
2023-10-25T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><b>420. </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-queen-mabs-cave-n00548" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00548</span></a>]<b> Queen Mab's Cave Exh. 1846</b></p>
<p>THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (548)</p>
<p>Canvas, 36 1/4 × 48 1/4 (92 × 122·5)</p>
<p><b>Coll.</b> Turner Bequest 1856 (28, ‘Queen Mab's Grotto’ 4'0" × 3'0"); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1954.</p>
<p><b>Exh.</b> B.I. 1846 (57); Australian tour 1960 (15); Victoria and Albert Museum <i>Berlioz</i> 1969 (111, repr.); R.A. 1974–5 (B 42).</p>
<p><b>Lit.</b> Ruskin 1846 (1903–12, iv, p. 342); Thornbury 1862, i, p. 349; 1877, p. 467; Edward T. Cook, <i>A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery</i> 1888, pp. 659–60; Lionel Cust, ‘The Portraits of J.M.W. Turner’, <i>Magazine of Art</i> 1895, pp. 248–9; Bell 1901, p. 156 no. 261; Armstrong 1902, p. 227; Falk 1938, pp. 74, 150 n. 1; Davies 1946, pp. 152, 186; Finberg 1961, pp. 413, 509 no. 572; Gage 1969, pp. 146–7, 264–5 n.152; Stuckey 1976, p. 167; Wilton 1979, p. 198; Ziff 1980, p. 170.</p>
<p>Exhibited at the British Institution in 1846 with the lines:</p>
<p>‘Frisk it, frisk it, by the Moonlight beam’.</p>
<p align="right"><i>Midsummer's Night's Dream</i>.</p>
<p>‘Thy Orgies, Mab, are manifold’. —MSS <i>Fallacies of Hope</i></p>
<p>Davies suggests that the apparent reference to Shakespeare's <i>Midsummer Night's Dream</i> might have been intended to form part of a three-line quotation from the <i>Fallacies of Hope</i>, and that the form in which the lines appear in the catalogue is the result of Turner's, or the printer's, carelessness.</p>
<p>The picture was possibly painted in part in response to Francis Danby's <i>An Enchanted Island</i>, first exhibited and <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/engraving" title="Glossary definition for 'Engraving'"><span>engraved</span></a> in 1825 but G.H. Phillips' <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/m/mezzotint" title="Glossary definition for 'Mezzotint'"><span>mezzotint</span></a> of which was republished in 1841 (repr. Eric Adams, <i>Francis Danby: Varieties of Poetic <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></i> 1973, pl. 35). The earlier 1840s saw Danby's attempt to reestablish his reputation in London after nearly ten years' exile abroad. In its turn Danby's picture, painted after he settled in London in 1824, reflects Turner's feeling for light.</p>
<p>For the <i>Art Union</i>, March 1846, the picture ‘admits of more than a usual employment of the vague, illusive, and fanciful; and full advantage is taken by the artist to play with the means he commands to produce a daylight dream in all the wantoness of gorgeous, bright, and positive colour, not painted but apparently flung upon 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/canvas" title="Glossary definition for 'Canvas'"><span>canvas</span></a> in kaleidoscopic confusion.</p>
<p>Ruskin, in an Addendum to the first edition of <i>Modern Painters</i> ii, 1846, reviewing the British Institution exhibition of that year, also criticises the work: ‘Among the various failures, I am sorry to have to note the prominent one of Turner's; a strange example of the way in which the greatest men may at times lose themselves, form causes it is impossible to trace.’ ‘Nothing ... could be more unfortunate than the central portion of the picture in the Institution, a heavy mass of hot colour being employed in the principal shade, and a strange meaningless green spread over the delicate hues of the distance, while the shadows on the right were executed with pure and crude blue, such as I believe cannot be shown in any other work whatsoever of the great painter.’</p>
<p>However, Jerrold Ziff points to a more positive approach on the part of the critic of <i>The Connoisseur</i> for 2 March 1846, who quoted Constable, probably from the recent second edition of Charles Leslie's <i>Memoirs of the Life of John Constable</i>, 1845: ‘Turner has some golden visions; they are only visions, but, still they are Art; and one could live and die with such pictures.’</p>
<p>This picture is, perhaps surprisingly, one of the most frequently imitated of Turner's works, one such version being in the Cleveland Museum (ex. Earl of Arran Collection; repr. <i>Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition</i> Cleveland 1936, pl. 60). One reason could be the special facilities given, it seems, by the British Institution for the copying of selected works after the closure of their exhibitions; see No. 210.</p>
<p>Lïonel Cust identified this picture as the one for which there is an eye-witness account of Turner's activity in finishing it on the British Institution's walls, but John Gage has identified this as <i>Regulus</i> (No. 294, <i>q.v.</i> [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-regulus-n00519" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00519</span></a>]).</p>
<p>This thickly painted picture has suffered from a considerable amount of flaking and crackle.</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
2004-09-23T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
adults ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ animals: birds architecture bank castle cave colour emotions, concepts and ideas evening fairy figure formal qualities lake landscape literature and fiction magic and occultism military people religion and belief ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Shakespeare swan ‘Tempest, The’ times of the day water: inland water sprite