03 — ARTWORK
The Bard
- MEDIUM
- Oil on canvas, 127 x 102 cm
- TYPE
- Landscape
PALETTE
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THIS REPRODUCTION
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CURRENT LOCATION · Yale Center for British Art
- FILE
- 920 × 1145 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
The Bard c. 1817 Oil on canvasA woven cloth used as a support for painting. The best-quality canvas is made of linen; other materials used are cotton, hemp, and jute. It is now so familiar a material that the word 'canvas' has become almost a synonym for an oil painting, but it was not until around 1500 that it began to rival the wooden panel (which was more expensive and took longer to prepare) as the standard support for movable paintings (the transition came later in Northern Europe than in Italy). Canvas is not suitable for painting on until it has been coated with a ground, which isolates the fabric from the paint; otherwise it will absorb too much paint, only very rough effects will be obtainable, and parts of the fabric may be rotted by the pigments. It must also be made taut on a stretcher or by some other means., 127 x 102 cm Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
During the Napoleonic threat a number of British painters had taken up the theme of the suppression of the Celtic Welsh by the English King Edward III, epitomized by the destruction of the ancient bards. Martin's vision of a lone bard driven to a rocky wasteland by the invading army comes close to an apocalyptic Romantic conception, the 'last man'.
OTHER WORKS BY JOHN MARTIN
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-r4590001be5b97f,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {The Bard by MARTIN, John},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-14},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/martin-john-rc051c1cf619a7c/the-bard-r4590001be5b97f},
urldate = {2026-09-14},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-14. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.