Francis Oliver Finch

The pupil of the artist John Varley, Francis Finch was also a poet and musician. He was captivated by the work of Shakespeare, Milton, and Keats, and was loosely associated with the Ancients, a group of young artists including Edward Calvert, George Richmond, and Samuel Palmer based at Shoreham in Kent during the 1820s. Finch and the Ancients admired the same poets and were deeply suspicious of modern, industrial development, turning instead to an idealized rural idyll. As an artist Finch is especially known for his evening and moonlit subjects. This drawing derives from Milton's masque, "Comus", first performed at Ludlow Castle, Shropshire, on 29 September 1634. The masque presents a symbolic battle between the forces of good and evil, the latter represented by the figure of Comus and his followers. Finch exhibited two watercolors of Comus at the Old Water-colour Society, one, probably the present one, in 1835, no. 175, entitled "Scene from Milton's Comus" and a later, probably larger version of the same subject in 1844, which was exhibited with the accompanying title, "Scene from Comus -the attendant Spirit disguised as a Shepherd listening to the rout of Comus and his crew, This evening late, by then the chewing flocks.." The present watercolor has been built up using dark pigments enhanced with gum arabic, creating a somber but rich effect contrasting with the highlighting achieved through scratching-out.