#tate britain

[galleryofart]

The Flower Girl

Artist: Sir James Jebusa Shannon (Anglo-American, 1862–1923)

Date: 1900

Medium: Oil paint on canvas

Collection: Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom

Description

James Jebusa Shannon painted this work while he and his family were on holiday in Eastbourne. The woman was a flower girl who they met every morning on their way down to the beach. She agreed to sit for Shannon in her ordinary working clothes while nursing her baby. The artist’s daughter, Kitty, recalled that her father told the flower girl to come ‘exactly as you are: baby, basket of flowers, the white blouse with the big black spots and old battered straw hat’.

[lionofchaeronea]

The Angel, Standing in the Sun, J.M.W. Turner, 1846

[colleendoran]

This photo of me drawing at the Tate Britain Museum in London was taken by my assistant and comic art restoration specialist Allan Harvey back in 2017 - when I still had hair.

I like to do studies of art while in museums, but sometimes I like to wig people out by drawing from my imagination, as I am doing here.

It was fun seeing people trying to figure out what I was copying when I wasn't actually copying anything.

Petty artist thrills. Good times.

I was sitting in front of William Holman Hunt's painting The Lady of Shallot.

[life-imitates-art-far-more]

Thomas Benjamin Kennington (1856-1916) "Orphans" (1885) Oil on canvas Social realism

[thepaintedroom]

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (British/English, 1889-1946) • A Studio in Montparnasse • exhibited 1926 • Tate, Britain

[collectionstilllife]

Augustus John (British/Welsh, 1878-1961) • Blue Cineraria • c. 1928. • Tate Britain

[joeinct]

Sculpture on Front Terrace, Tate Britain, London, 1 20 25, Photo by Joe Bruha, Copyright 2025

[allegorypaintings]

Life's Illusions

Artist: George Frederic Watts (British, 1817–1904

Date: 1840

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: TATE Britain

Description

Life's Illusions is an allegorical painting that explores the vanity of human desires. Watts believed that art should reveal the mystery of being, and he used universal symbols to represent life's emotions and aspirations.

[mythologypaintings]

The Minotaur

Artist: George Frederic Watts (British, 1817–1904)

Date: 1885

Medium: Oil paint on canvas

Collection: TATE Britain, United Kingdom

Description

In Greek mythology the Minotaur, half-man, half-bull, was appeased by annual human sacrifices. Every year, seven youths and seven virgins were shipped from mainland Athens to the Island of Crete to be devoured by the monster. In Watts's painting, the Minotaur leans out across the sea from a high parapet in anticipation of the ship's arrival. The yellow sunlight of the breaking dawn glints off the shoulder of the beast, accentuating his powerful body and catching the hairs of the tail that flicks out behind him. On the parapet, the Minotaur's large, hoof-like fist has crushed a small bird, a recognised symbol of the innocence and purity of youth.

[artandthebible]

The Good Samaritan

Artist: Joseph Highmore (English, 1692–1780)

Date: 1744

Medium: Oil paint on canvas

Collection: TATE Britain

Description

This painting illustrates the parable of the Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke. The Samaritan has bound the wounds of an injured man attacked by robbers and is helping him to his feet. Heading off into the distance behind them are the priest and the Levite, who have ignored the man’s plight. The painting was made for the aristocrat John Sheppard, possibly for a private chapel in his home at Campsey Ashe in Suffolk. This makes it a comparatively rare example of a sacred subject commissioned from a British artist by an independent patron, outside of the church.

[patrice-bergerons]

JMW Turner:

Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth, exhibited 1842

Whalers (Boiling Blubber) Entangled in Flaw Ice, Endeavouring to Extricate Themselves, exhibited 1845

Rough Sea, c.1840–5

A Wreck, with Fishing Boats, c.1840–5

Seascape with Storm Coming On, c.1840

All paintings displayed in Tate Britain, Room 35, "Toil and Terror at Sea".

[lionofchaeronea]

The Two Crowns, Frank Dicksee, 1900

[royalty-nobility]

Lady Jane Grey Prevailed on to Accept the Crown

Artist: Charles Robert Leslie (English, 1794–1859)

Date: Exhibited 1827

Medium: Oil paint on canvas

Collection: TATE, Britain

The Shortest Reign in British History

Lady Jane Grey was Queen of England for just nine days, from 10 July to 19 July 1553. She was proclaimed Queen as part of an unsuccessful bid to prevent the accession of her Catholic cousin, Mary Tudor. The great-granddaughter of Henry VII, Jane inherited the crown from her cousin Edward VI.

Jane arrived at the Tower of London to prepare for her coronation, but within a fortnight she was back as a prisoner of Mary I who had claimed the throne as rightfully hers. While Mary was reluctant to punish her at first, Lady Jane proved too much of a threat as the focus of Protestant plotters intent on replacing Mary.

On 12 February 1554, Lady Jane Grey was executed on Tower Green at the Tower of London. She was 17 years old.

[artemlegere]

Satan, Sin and Death (A Scene from Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’)

Artist: William Hogarth (English, 1697–1764)

Date: c. 1735-1740

Medium: Oil paint on canvas

Collection: TATE Britain, United Kingdom

Paradise Lost Epic Poem

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The first version, published in 1667, consists of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. A second edition followed in 1674, arranged into twelve books (in the manner of Virgil's Aeneid) with minor revisions throughout. It is considered to be Milton's masterpiece, and it helped solidify his reputation as one of the greatest English poets of all time. The poem concerns the biblical story of the fall of man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

The main conflict of the poem involves Satan’s jealous desire to corrupt God’s new and beloved creation by creating human distrust in God’s plan, a distrust that will lead to disobedience. Through the temptations of the antagonist, Satan, Milton emphasizes the corruption to which humans are vulnerable if they are not spiritually aware of the manipulative power of evil around them. Adam and Eve’s inner struggle, an effort to resist temptation, symbolizes the innate human desire to stay loyal or true to a spiritual compass, which, in Milton’s poem, is represented by God’s exhortations and the messages of his angels.

The inciting incident of the poem finds the antagonist, Satan, banished to hell, where he and his fellow devils construct a temple called Pandemonium, a symbol of chaos and irrationality, and then plot both to make a good out of evil and an evil out of good. Milton portrays the devils’ apparently democratic decision as ironic evidence of their failed capacity for reason: Satan refuses to accept God’s rational hierarchy—that the Son is superior to him—and settles on irrational disobedience. In an allegory reminding the poem’s readers of a conventional Christian understanding of the fall, Satan begets Sin who begets Death. He volunteers to corrupt God’s new and beloved human beings, and a bridge is built between Hell and Earth.

The rising action explores ideas about free will and a redemption in which God’s Son will willingly sacrifice himself, God’s plan for human salvation. The Son is the instrument through which God acts, and Milton shows how God and the Son work separately, yet are manifestations of the same entity, working as one. Free will is one of the major themes of the poem, and Milton suggests a paradoxical idea about it: a human being is free to choose, yet is only truly free when choosing the good. Events unfold as Adam is visited by the Archangel Raphael who recounts the story of creation, reveals the primary conflict between God and Satan, and describes the latter’s fall and the War in Heaven. The war stands as an extended spiritual metaphor in which disobedience leads to one’s blindness from the truth. Raphael warns Adam to be wary of Satan’s temptations; Adam’s choice will rest entirely in his own hands.

At the poem’s climax, Satan accomplishes his goal by convincing Adam and Eve to become disobedient. Plagued by envy and despair, Satan flatters Eve, convincing her to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. He presents knowledge as a means with which she might equate herself with God, using his perverted reasoning to demonstrate how knowledge can be used for evil. Eve, in turn, convinces Adam to join her in this act of disobedience, and he dooms himself, unable to bear the thought of losing her. Ultimately, he chooses loyalty to Eve over loyalty to God. As the pair’s heightened senses take over, their capacity for reason diminishes. The further Adam and Eve drift from God, the more reduced their powers of reasoning become.

In the falling action, Adam and Eve awaken to their banishment from Paradise. They find themselves in a world of shame and evil, blaming each other for their condition, and Sin and Death subsequently enter the world. The fall, however, paves the way for humanity’s redemption and salvation; thus, Milton claims that his epic surpasses the ancient classics, as it pertains to all of humankind, not to a single hero or nation. The archangel Michael grants Adam visions of a future in which his offspring commit murder, as well as scenes of people living for pleasure and the flesh. Unlike Satan, Adam and Eve repent by praying to God.

Michael, in the poem’s resolution, recounts the idea that a Messiah will eventually arrive to reunite Heaven and Earth, noting that there will be much suffering before that reconciliation. Milton suggests that Adam and Eve’s fall is the “felix culpa,” or happy fault or fortunate fall, for God’s mercy is shown. Individuals, he suggests, may hope to redeem themselves through devotion and obedience to God, forming an aspect of his ultimate plan. Comforted by these suggestions, Adam and Eve, in the poem’s final scene, exit into a new world. They have been led to understand that obedience to God and his love for his creation will lead humanity toward salvation, toward regaining a Paradise that has been lost.

[collectionstilllife]

Cedric Lockwood Morris (British,1889–1982) • Iris Seedlings • 1943• Tate Britain

[joeinct]

Balustrade, Tate Britain, 1 20 25, Photo by Joe Bruha, Copyright 2025