John Martin - The Bard

recto, unframed
deliver.odai.yale.edu/content/id/594cf828-e6b8-4ec4-bf14-cac45880305d/format/3



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John Martin: The Bard
ca. 1817

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/1671616:
"Based on a Thomas Gray poem, inspired by a Welsh tradition that said that Edward I had put to death any bards he found, to extinguish Welsh culture; the poem depicts the escape of a single bard.

In mydailyartdisplay.wordpress.com/the-bard-by-john-martin, "Jonathan" connects the painting to the poem The Bard written by by Thomas Gray in 1755:
· · ...
· · On a rock, whose haughty brow
· · Frowns o'er cold Conway's foaming flood,
· · Robed in the sable garb of woe
· · With haggard eyes the Poet stood;
· · ...
· · "Enough for me: with joy I see
· · The diff'rent doom our fates assign.
· · Be thine Despair and sceptred Care;
· · To triumph and to die are mine."
· · He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height
· · Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night.
· · ...

The poem and the painting may have been an inspiration to Lewis Carroll and Henry Holiday in The Hunting of the Snark:
· · 545· · Erect and sublime, for one moment of time.
· · 546· · · · In the next, that wild figure they saw
· · 547· · (As if stung by a spasm) plunge into a chasm,
· · 548· · · · While they waited and listened in awe.

·

See also: Henry Holiday's Snark illustrations and John Martin's "The Bard":
- www.academia.edu/9885417/The_Bellman_and_the_Bard
- www.academia.edu/9923718/Henry_Holidays_Monsterspotting
- www.academia.edu/10251338/Monsters_and_Monstrances
- www.academia.edu/12586460/The_Bard_the_Baker_and_the_Butcher