Prospero, Miranda, and Caliban, from The Tempest

Prints and Drawings

c. 1786

George Romney
English, 1734-1802

What appears to be a single multi-figured composition on this sheet are, in fact, two variant studies (divided by a vertical line right of center) for the shipwreck scene from Shakespeare’s comedy The Tempest.
On the left side of the sheet, Miranda, daughter of the magician Prospero, implores her father to stop the storm he has unleashed. A few vertical lines and a pair of heads in alternate positions suggest the figure of Prospero. To Miranda’s immediate right crouches the monster Caliban. On the sheet’s other half, Miranda clings to a more graphically developed Prospero. A curlicue at far right may indicate Caliban.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: George Romney
Title: Prospero, Miranda, and Caliban, from The Tempest
Place: England (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1786
Medium: Graphite on ivory laid paper
Dimensions: 39 × 57.4 cm (15 3/8 × 22 5/8 in.)
Credit Line: Suzanne Searle Dixon Endowment
Reference Number: 1991.220
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/116239/manifest.json

Humphrey Ward and W. Roberts, Romney: A Biographical and Critical Essay with a Catalogue Raisonne of His Works (London, 1904).
Patricia Jaffe, Drawings by George Romney from the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge, 1977).
Laura Nelke, Alderman Boydell,’s Shakespeare Gallery (Chicago, 1978), no. 21.

The Art Institute of Chicago, “Shockingly Mad: Henry Fuseli and the Art of Drawing”, November 16, 2017 - April 1, 2018.

Private Collection, London [invoice in curatorial file]. Sold by Jane Roberts Fine Arts Ltd., London, to the Art Institute, 1991.

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Prospero, Miranda, and Caliban, from The Tempest

Currently Off View

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.