Titania and Bottom

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Titania and Bottom is an oil painting by Henry Fuseli, created around 1790. It measures about 2.17 by 2.76 meters and is now at Tate Britain in London.

The work was made for John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery and shows a scene from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the play, Titania, queen of the fairies, is under a love potion given by her husband Oberon and has fallen for Bottom, who has the head of a donkey. Titania stands beside the seated Bottom, one hand raised with a wand and the other resting on the donkey’s head, while a group of fairies attends to Bottom. A fairy scratches his head, another helps him up, a girl brings dried peas, a hooded woman holds a wax changeling, and witches’ children appear nearby.

Fuseli drew on other artists for ideas: Titania’s flirtatious pose echoes Leonardo’s Leda and the Swan; two fairies diving into calyxes reference Botticelli’s Dante illustration; a butterfly-headed girl nods to Joshua Reynolds’s child portraits; a right-side figure recalls Jan Steen’s The Oyster Eater, but with a tiny old man on a leash. Some figures also borrow from Abraham Bloemaert.

Titania and Bottom sits in the Tate collection since 1887 and is shown as part of Walk Through British Art at Tate Britain. Fuseli’s fascination with Shakespeare and supernatural themes is a key part of why he painted this scene.