Slender, with the Assistance of Shallow, Courting Anne Page, from "The Merry Wives of Windsor," Act III, Scene iv
Date:
1825
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
26 5/8 x 31 1/2 inches (67.6 x 80 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1981.13.2
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Subject Terms:
flower (plant) | chair | light | table | men | interior | costume | love | stool | music | window | lute | daughter | literary theme | woman | mandolin | courting | The Merry Wives of Windsor, play by William Shakespeare
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
Shakespeare on Canvas (Yale Center for British Art, 2012-01-02 - 2012-06-30)Constable to Delacroix : British Art and the French Romantics 1820-1840 (Tate Britain, 2003-02-06 - 2003-05-11)
Publications:
A brush with Shakespeare, the bard in painting, 1780-1910 , Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, AL, 1985, pp. 11, 12, fig. 14, PR2883 B78 oversize (YCBA)Acquisitions : The First Decade 1977-1986, Yale Center for British Art , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1986, p. 16, no. 37, N590.2 A7 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 146-147, N590.2 A83 (YCBA)Patrick Noon, Crossing the Channel : British and French painting in the age of romanticism, Tate Publishing, London, p. 136, no. 64, ND467.5.R6 N66 2003 Oversize (YCBA)Duncan Robinson, Acquisitions : The First Decade 1977 - 1986, , Burlington Magazine, vol. 128, October 1986, p. 16, no. 37, N1 B87 128:3 OVERSIZE (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
Charles Robert Leslie was born in London to American parents and spent most of his formative years in Philadelphia. He moved back to London in 1811 to pursue a career as a painter, training with the aging Benjamin West. Leslie soon made a reputation for his historical and genre pictures, his theatrical subjects becoming especially popular. This example represents a scene from Shakespeare’s comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor, wherein Robert Shallow, a country justice, nudges his reluctant kinsman, Slender, toward marriage with Anne Page because she stands to inherit her father’s immense fortune. Although Shallow proclaims his cousin’s affection, Slender’s expression belies these assertions. Anne, who loves another, conveys her corresponding lack of enthusiasm by focusing on the flower in her hand rather than her purported suitor.