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Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775–1851)
The Field of Waterloo, exhibited 1818
Oil on canvas; 58 x 94 in. (147.3 x 239 cm)
Tate, London, Turner Bequest, 1856
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The defeat of Napoleon by Allied armies at Waterloo on June 18, 1815, ended more than two decades of conflict. Turner, who visited the battle site in 1817, imagines its bloody aftermath in this image, inspired by a passage on Waterloo from Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–18) that concludes, "Friend, foe, in one red burial blent!" The painting elicited a mixed response from critics when it was shown at the Royal Academy in 1818: one reviewer compared the scene to "the representation of a drunken hubbub on illumination night" while another praised it as "a terrific representation of the effects of war."
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