By Kind Permission of a Private Collection
By Kind Permission of a Private Collection
Turner 's Caligula's palace and bridge, oil on canvas, exhibited Royal Academy 1831, Turner Bequest, Tate Britain ( Wilton P337).
Ruskin 's only other reference to this picture, which he would have seen in Turner's gallery, comes at the end of Modern Painters V (1860), when he discusses Turner's major mythological paintings, as expressive of the artist's 'gloomy tendency of mind' ( Works, 7.389). He compares another painting of the 1830s, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ( Wilton P342), with 'two others - Caligula's Bridge and the Apollo and Sibyl; the one illustrative of the vanity of human labour, the other of the vanity of human life' ( Works, 7.431).
J.M.W. Turner 1775-1851
Caligula's Palace and Bridge 1831
Oil on canvas, 137x246.5cm
Exhibitions: RA 1831 (162); RA 1974 (485)
Engraving:
Engraved by E. Goodall, 1842
Copper engraving, 40x61.6cm
Provenance: The Turner Bequest 1856; transferred to Tate Gallery, 1910
Further Comments: A second engraving of 'Caligula's Palace and Bridge' was executed for the Turner Gallery in 1859, also by E. Goodall.
Collection: Tate Gallery, London