John Keats by Joseph Severn
oil on canvas, 1821-1823
When considering what seasonal painting to share with you this month I couldn’t get beyond this peaceful autumnal painting of John Keats by Joseph Severn.
John Keat’s poem To Autumn is the first one I think of when the leaves start to fall, and Autumn blesses us with the glorious soft and misty morning sunshine. When I look at this painting I can feel the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” Keats describes.
The is a posthumous painting. Joseph Severn painted it from memory after Keats untimely death. Severn had been a good friend to Keats and cared for him during his illness in Rome until Keats eventually died in his arms at just 25 years old.
Severn recalled an image of Keats he had after visiting him in his home in Hampstead the day that Keats had written Ode to Nightingale. He remembered him sitting with two chairs and was struck by the first real symptoms of sadness in Keats at this moment.
Ode to a Nightingale explores the transience of life and I think there is a wistful sadness captured in this painting. The way he rests his head in his hand and the doors open onto the garden showing all the autumn colours of copper and gold. Keats appears to be lost in a book, perhaps losing himself in words when the knowledge of his own illness was too much to bear. Maybe he already knows he won’t see these autumn colours again.
“Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret”
– From Ode to a Nightingale
This painting can be viewed at The National Portrait Gallery in London when it reopens in 2023
Previous Cultured Calm painting choices:
July – Water-Lilies by Claude Monet
