Where Is The Bard? Museum Location

Q: Where can I see The Bard?

This painting is at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. The museum holds the largest collection of British art outside the UK, with free admission to all.

Q: What is the painting's subject?

The painting illustrates Thomas Gray's 1757 poem about the last Welsh bard prophesying doom for Edward I's line after the king ordered all bards killed. Martin shows him cursing from the mountains before throwing himself to his death.

Q: What was John Martin's style?

Martin created spectacular Romantic visions of apocalyptic destruction and sublime landscapes. His dramatic lighting and massive scale made him enormously popular, though later dismissed as theatrical.

John Martin illustrated Thomas Gray's poem "The Bard," showing the last Welsh bard cursing King Edward I from a mountainous crag. The tiny figure stands against vast, sublime cliffs while the English army passes below. Martin's dramatic contrasts of scale create overwhelming feelings of nature's power.

Martin specialized in apocalyptic and historical subjects rendered with theatrical Romantic grandeur. His visions of cataclysmic landscapes made him one of the most popular British painters of his time. Now at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven.

This painting is at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. The museum holds the largest collection of British art outside the UK, with free admission to all.

The painting illustrates Thomas Gray's 1757 poem about the last Welsh bard prophesying doom for Edward I's line after the king ordered all bards killed. Martin shows him cursing from the mountains before throwing himself to his death.

Martin created spectacular Romantic visions of apocalyptic destruction and sublime landscapes. His dramatic lighting and massive scale made him enormously popular, though later dismissed as theatrical.

The Bard

Where to See It

The Artist

More by John Martin

Hyde Park

Belshazzar's Feast

Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion

Landscape with a Castle

Also at Yale Centre For British Art (Yale University), New Haven, CT

Hyde Park

Belshazzar's Feast

Zebra

Mr. and Mrs. John Gravenor and their Daughters, Elizabeth and Ann

Related Romanticism Works

Saturn Devouring His Son

Women of Algiers

The Third of May 1808

The Nude Maja

The Dog

The Death of Sardanapalus

The Clothed Maja

The Fighting Temeraire

About The Bard

Own Art Like This