Nathaniel Grogan, Irish, c.1740-1807
Title: Lady Blanche Crosses the Ravine Guided by the Count and Saint Foix (a Scene from 'The Mysteries of Udolpho')
Date: c.1796-98
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
77 x 108 cm
Signed: lower left: N. Grogan
Credit Line: Purchased, 1979
Object Number: NGI.4323
Exhibition HistoryTerror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination, The British Library, London, 3 October 2014 - 20 January 2015
Label TextThis picture depicts a scene from Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho: A Romance (1794). It shows the Count, his daughter Lady Blanche, Saint Foix, and their guides, lost in the forest while searching for an inn. With just a single torch and the light of the moon to light their path, they find a 'rude and dangerous passage, formed by an enormous pine ... thrown across the chasm'. Grogan’s painting, typical of the Romantic era, communicates terror and the sublime in equal measure.