Richard II (1775): Art, History and Details

Richard II (1775) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is John Hamilton Mortimer (British, 1740–1779).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

John Hamilton Mortimer supported the prevailing academic doctrine which located history painting at the top of the hierarchy of subject matter. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, he turned to the great subjects of English literature for themes. From 1775 to 1776, Mortimer produced etchings of twelve Shakespearean characters, including King Lear, Ophelia, and Caliban. In this dramatic composition, the skeletal figure of death looms over the tense King Richard II. This rare signed proof is a marvelous example of Mortimer's Romantic sensibility. By the time he was twenty-three years old, Mortimer had won numerous prizes for his drawings and paintings and was considered one of the rising stars of English art. In 1774, he became president of the Society of Artists of Great Britain, to whose annual exhibitions he was a regular contributor. The artist's promising career was cut short by his untimely death at the age of thirty-nine.

Object facts

• Title: Richard II
• Date: 1775
• Creator attribution: John Hamilton Mortimer (British, 1740–1779)
• Culture: England, 18th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching in brown ink
• Dimensions: Sheet: 57.3 x 40.8 cm (22 9/16 x 16 1/16 in.); Image: 34.1 x 28 cm (13 7/16 x 11 in.); Platemark: 39.9 x 32.4 cm (15 11/16 x 12 3/4 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 2002.58

Collection credit

Gift of various donors to the department of Prints and Drawings

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.