Deranged and virtuous widowhood: Horace Vernet’s 'Woman driven insane by love' and 'Edith recovering Harold’s body after the battle of Hastings’

Lee, S. (2017) Deranged and virtuous widowhood: Horace Vernet’s 'Woman driven insane by love' and 'Edith recovering Harold’s body after the battle of Hastings’. In: Hornstein , K. and Harknett, D. (eds.) Horace Vernet and the Thresholds of Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture. Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture. Dartmouth College Press, Hanover, New Hampshire, pp. 153-170. ISBN 9781512600414

Abstract/Summary

This article examines two images of widowhood depicted by Horace Vernet (1789-1863)- 'Woman driven insane by love' and 'Edith recovering Harold’s body after the battle of Hastings'. While the former treated the deranged mental trauma associated with the loss of a beloved during the Napoleonic campaigns, the latter depicted a stoical female response to a spouse's death. Both works are considered within the context of Vernet's challenges to traditional definitions of genre and to his strategy to appeal both to radical factions and to official bodies.