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Creator:
John Martin, 1789–1854
Title:
Belshazzar's Feast
Date:
1820
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
31 1/2 x 47 1/2 inches (80 x 120.7 cm), Frame: 35 1/2 × 51 1/4 × 2 1/2 inches (90.2 × 130.2 × 6.4 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:

Signed and dated, lower left: "J. Martin 1820"

Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1981.25.440
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Link to Frame:
B1981.25.440FR
Subject Terms:
architectural | banquet | Bible | chaos | columns (architectural elements) | concubines | courtiers | death | drinking | feast | food | king (person) | lightning | meteorology | night | Old Testament | palace | prophet | religious and mythological subject | storm | wives
Associated Places:
Babylon | Iraq
Access:
Not on view
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:924
Export:
XML
IIIF Manifest:
JSON

According to the Book of Daniel, Belshazzar was a Babylonian king who held a great banquet for his courtiers, wives, and concubines. As they feasted and drank, sacrilegiously using vessels plundered from the temple at Jerusalem, a disembodied hand appeared and wrote the mysterious words “Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin” on the palace wall. The king sent for the prophet Daniel to interpret them, and he revealed that they foretold Belshazzar’s downfall and the destruction of his kingdom. In 1833, the essayist Charles Lamb pointedly likened John Martin’s depiction of the subject in a larger oil version to a lavish banquet thrown by the flamboyant King George IV at the Brighton Pavilion when he was prince regent. Perhaps ironically, Martin dedicated his mezzotint of Belshazzar’s Feast (1826) “to the King’s [George IV’s] Most Excellent Majesty.”

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016

Thomas Cole's Journey - Atlantic Crossings (The National Gallery, London, 2018-06-13 - 2018-10-07) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Thomas Cole's Journey - Atlantic Crossings (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018-01-29 - 2018-05-13) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

The Critique of Reason : Romantic Art, 1760–1860 (Yale University Art Gallery, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

John Martin (Tate Britain, 2011-09-21 - 2012-01-15) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

John Martin (Museums Sheffield, 2011-06-22 - 2011-09-04) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

John Martin (Laing Art Gallery, 2011-03-05 - 2011-06-05) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Babylon (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2008-06-26 - 2008-10-05) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Babylon (Musée du Louvre, 2008-03-10 - 2008-06-02) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Panoramania (Barbican Art Gallery, 1988-11-03 - 1989-01-15) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Darkness Visible - The Prints of John Martin (Clark Art Institute, 1986-09 - 1987-07-21) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

A Description of the Pictures : The Fall of Babylon, Belshazzar's Feast, and The Destruction of Pompeii & Herculaneum Painted by John Martin : Now Exhibiting at Tate Britain, London, Tate Britain, London, 2011, pp. 3-4, V 2374 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Christine Alexander, "The Burning Clime" : Charlotte Bronte and John Martin, Nineteenth-Century Literature, vol. 50, Berkeley, Calif., December 1995, pp. 288-289, 291-292, 298, fig. 1, la105 N622 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Christine Alexander, "The Burning Clime" : Charlotte Bronte and John Martin, Nineteenth-Century Literature, vol. 50, Berkeley, Calif., December 1995, pp. 288-289, 291-292, 298, fig. 1, available online via JSTOR [YCBA]

Timothy J. Barringer, Picturesque and sublime : Thomas Cole's trans-Atlantic inheritance, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2018, p. 44, fig. 35, NJ18 .C67 B37 2018 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Ind., 1968, pp. cxiii, cxvi, BH181 B87 1968 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 156-157, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]

William Feaver, The Art of John Martin, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975, pp. 43-44, 49-55, NJ18 M39 F43 (YCBA) [YCBA]

William Feaver, The Revelations of John Martin, Sunday Times, London, November 26, 1972, pp. 53, 61, available online via ProQuest [ORBIS]

Richard Green Gallery (Client), 'John Martin : Apocalypse,' Tate Britain, London, 21 September 2011-15 January 2012, British Art Journal, vol. 12, London, Winter 2011-2012, p. 98, N6761 +B74 Oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]

Richard Green Gallery (Client), 'John Martin : Apocalypse,' Tate Britain, London, 21 September 2011-15 January 2012, British Art Journal, vol. 12, London, Winter 2011-2012, p. 98, available online via JSTOR [YCBA]

Andrew Hemingway, Landscape Between Ideology and the Aesthetic : Marxist Essays on British Art and Art Theory, 1750-1850, Brill, Leiden, 2017, p. 161, fig. 2, HX521 H46 2017 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Andrew Hemingway, Transatlantic Romanticism : British and American art and literature, 1790/1860, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst and Boston, 2015, pp. 122-43 and color plate section, color pl. 10, NX452.5.R64 T73 2015 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Anne Hollander, Moving pictures, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1989, pp. 283-284, 286-287, figs. 10, 12, PN1995 H614 1989 [ORBIS]

Ralph Hyde, Panoramania!, Trefoil Publications, London, 1988, pp. 105, 123, no. 109, N7436.5 H93 (YCBA) [YCBA]

John Martin : Apocalypse, Tate Britain, London, 2011, p. 11, V 2373 (YCBA) [YCBA]

John Martin, The Illustrated Magazine of Art, vol. 3, New York, 1854, p. 344, WD 9149 (LSF) [ORBIS]

John Martin, The Illustrated Magazine of Art, vol. 3, New York, 1854, p. 344, available online via JSTOR [ORBIS]

Christopher Johnstone, John Martin, Academy Editions, London, 1974, pp. 10, 14-17, 37, NJ18 M39 +J65 Oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]

Christopher Johnstone, John Martin, Master of the Mezzotint, 1789-1854, an exhibition of mezzotints, 28 January-15th February 1974 at Alexander Postan Fine Art. , Alexander Postan Fine Art, London, 1974, p. 3, NJ18 M39 J64 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Laing Art Gallery, John Martin, 1789-1854 : Artist, Reformer, Engineer, 3rd October-1st November 1970 Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne , Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1970, pp. 5-7, NJ18 M39 +L35 Oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]

Lionel Lambourne, Victorian Painting, Phaidon, London, 1999, pp. 150, 159-161, pls. 179, 188, ND192 V5 L25 1999 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Charles Robert Leslie, Autiobiographical Recollections, EP Publishing, Ltd., Yorkshire, Eng., 1978, p. 110, NJ18 L5772 A3 1978 (YCBA) [YCBA]

John Martin, Belshazzar's Feast 1820 : The Tate Gallery, February and March 1989, Tate Publishing, London, 1989, pp. 1-8, NJ18 M39 A15 B4 1989 (YCBA) [YCBA]

John Martin, John Martin, 1789-1854 : Loan Exhibition of Oil Paintings, Watercolours, Prints Held 30th Oct.-21st Nov. 1975 at Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, Ltd., London, 1975, p. 30, NJ18 M39 H39 (YCBA) [YCBA]

John Martin, John Martin, Lampoon House, Tokyo, 1996, pp. 4-5, 24-25, NJ18 M39 +C2613 1996 Oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]

Barbara C. Morden, John Martin : Apocalypse Now!, , Northumbria University Press, Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2010, pp. 9, 12-14, 21-26, 39-40, 64-65, 91, NJ18 M39 +M67 2010 Oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]

Martin Myrone, John Martin, apocalypse , Tate Publishing, London, 2011, pp. 17, 19, 99-108, cat. no. 29, ig. 29, NJ18.M39 A12 2011 Oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]

Morton D. Paley, The Apocalyptic Sublime, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 1986, pp. 128-138, 144-145, pl. VI, ND1432 G73 P34 1986 [ORBIS]

Mary L. Pendered, John Martin, Painter : His Life and Times, , Hurst & Blackett, London, 1923, pp. 102-108, NJ18 M39 P4 1923 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Jean Seznec, John Martin en France, Faber & Faber, London, 1964, pp. 11-12, NJ18 M39 S49 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Eric Wargo, Infinite Recess : Perspective and Play in Magritte's La Condition Humaine, Art History, vol. 25, February 2002, p. 63, N1 A75 (YCBA) [YCBA]

J. Dustin Wees, Darkness Visible : The Prints of John Martin, , Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., 1986, pp. 2-4, 8, 13, 30, 37, NJ18 M39 W44 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Gillen D'Arcy Wood, The Shock of the Real : Romanticism and Visual Culture, 1760-1860, , Palgrave Macmillan, New York, N.Y., 2001, pp. 92-93, fig 2.3, NX452.5 R64 W66 2001 (YCBA) [YCBA]


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