Joseph Severn - Paintings

Paintings

Severn is best known for his many portraits of Keats, the most famous being the miniature portrait in the National Gallery (1819), the pen-and-ink sketch, Keats on his Deathbed (1821), and the oil painting of the poet reading, John Keats at Wentworth Place (1821–23). A later painting, Keats, at Hampstead, when he first imagined his Ode to a Nightingale (1851), is also notable. In the 1860s Severn produced a number of copies and memory portraits as Keats's reputation continued to grow. The most influential of Severn's early Italian genre paintings are The Vintage, commissioned by the Duke of Bedford in 1825, and The Fountain (Royal Palace, Brussels) commissioned by Leopold I of Belgium in 1826. The latter picture likely influenced J. M. W. Turner's major work, The View of Orvieto. One of his most remarkably inventive works is the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner (1839) based on Samuel Coleridge's famous poem, which recently sold at Sotheby's for ₤27,000. Another historical subject, The Abdication of Mary, Queen of Scots, sold for ₤115,250 at Sotheby's Gleneagles sale on 26 August 2008.

Severn also painted such works as Cordelia Watching by the Bed of Lear, Shepherds in the Campagna, Shelley Composing Prometheus Unbound, Isabella and the Pot of Basil, Portia with the Casket, Ariel, Rienzi, The Infant of the Apocalypse Saved from the Dragon, a large altarpiece for the church of San Paolo fuori le Mura at Rome, and many portraits of statesman and aristocrats, including Baron Bunsen and William Gladstone. The last picture he exhibited at the Royal Academy was a scene from Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village in 1857.

Links to images and descriptions of Severn's drawings and paintings

• Keats on his Deathbed at the Keats-Shelley house in Rome
• Ophelia
• A copy of Severn's Portrait of Keats painted in 1819 kept in The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge
• Severn's portrait paintings of himself, Keats, Edward John Trelawny and John Hamilton Reynolds kept in the National Portrait Gallery in London
• "Ariel" kept at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London
• Ariel - Where the Bee Sucks... kept at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London
• Ariel riding on a Bat kept by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford
• The Infant of the Apocalypse Saved from the Dragon kept by the Tate Britain museum in London
• Portrait of Keats kept at The New Art Gallery in Walsall (on the website, chose from the dropdown menu to see the image)
• View of a bay through trees from the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London
• Sketch of a mountain landscape from the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London
• Portrait of John Crossley of Scaitcliffe kept at the Christchurch Art gallery in Christchurch, New Zealand (use searchbar on website to look for the image)