Techniques -

Dimensions - Height 71.1 cm Width 46.4 cm Depth 5 cm Height 95 cm (framed) Width 70 cm (framed)

Object Type - Oil paintings such as this with subjects taken from literature steadily replaced commissions for history paintings in the early 19th century. The public and most collectors of modern works started to prefer lighter and sometimes more sentimental themes.

Subjects Depicted - This painting is an illustration to John Milton's 1632 poem `Il Penseroso', an invocation to the goddess Melancholy, so that she might bring the poet a life of quiet study and meditation. `But hail, thou goddess, sage and holy, Hail, divinest Melancholy.' Like the poem, it is a companion to `L'Allegro', also described here.

A contemporary critic spoke of this painting as `The most profoundly sentimental figure that the artist has ever painted.'

People - Charles West Cope (1811-1890)was a landscape watercolourist as well as an oil painter. He was a friend of the collector John Sheepshanks who gave nine of Cope's works to the Museum. Nearly all his paintings were literary, biblical or historical subjects and domestic genre. He studied fresco painting in Italy and painted several frescos in the Palace of Westminster. Cope exhibited 134 works at the Royal Academy and in 1870 was appointed examiner in painting at the South Kensington Schools of Art, the forerunner of the Royal College of Art.