Art UK has updated its cookies policy. By using this website you are agreeing to the use of cookies. To find out more read our updated Use of Cookies policy and our updated Privacy policy.

Chatterton

Image credit: Tate

How you can use this image

 

This image is available to be shared and re-used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND).

You can reproduce this image for non-commercial purposes and you are not able to change or modify it in any way.

Wherever you reproduce the image you must attribute the original creators (acknowledge the original artist(s) and the person/organisation that took the photograph of the work) and any other rights holders.

Review our guidance pages which explain how you can reuse images, how to credit an image and how to find more images in the public domain or with a Creative Commons licence available.

Download

Notes

Add or edit a note on this artwork that only you can see. You can find notes again by going to the ‘Notes’ section of your account.

'Chatterton' is Wallis's earliest and most famous work. The picture created a sensation when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856, accompanied by the following quotation from Marlowe: 'Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight And burned is Apollo's laurel bough'. Ruskin described the work in his Academy Notes as 'faultless and wonderful'. Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770) was an eighteenth-century poet, a Romantic figure whose melancholy temperament and early suicide captured the imagination of numerous artists and writers. He is best known for a collection of poems, written in the name of Thomas Rowley, a fifteenth-century monk, which he copied onto parchment and passed off as mediaeval manuscripts. Having abandoned his first job working in a scrivener's office he struggled to earn a living as a poet.

Tate

Art UK Founder Partner

More information
Title

Chatterton

Date

1856

Medium

Oil on canvas

Measurements

H 62.2 x W 93.3 cm

Accession number

N01685

Acquisition method

Bequeathed by Charles Gent Clement 1899

Work type

Painting

Inscription description

date inscribed

Tags

See a tag that’s incorrect or offensive? Challenge it and notify Art UK.

Help improve Art UK. Tag artworks and verify existing tags by joining the Tagger community.