Checking His Love Trance, a Cup He Took Full Brimm'd

Will Hicock Low · 1885

Medium

Black, gray and white gouache on cream wood-pulp laminate board

Original size

26.8 × 34.8 cm (10 9/16 × 13 3/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

Rendered in restrained monochrome, this gouache captures a dreamlike moment drawn from Keats's narrative poem *Lamia* — a scene of enchantment suspended between tenderness and danger. Will Hicock Low was among the most accomplished American illustrators and painters of the Gilded Age, trained in Paris under Carolus-Duran alongside John Singer Sargent. He became one of the foremost visual interpreters of Romantic poetry, and his 1885 illustrations for Keats brought him widespread recognition on both sides of the Atlantic. Working in black, gray, and white gouache on a cream laminate board, Low achieved a silvery tonal range that suits the poem's mood of intoxicated, half-waking reverie — figures emerging from shadow with the soft weight of a half-remembered dream. Low's friendship with Robert Louis Stevenson, whom he met during Stevenson's years in France, is well-documented; the two shared a deep enthusiasm for the intersection of literature and visual art that runs through much of Low's finest work. This hand-painted oil reproduction translates Low's delicate tonal poetry into the warmth and depth of oil on canvas, giving the original's quiet drama a new physical presence without losing the hushed, contemplative quality that makes the work so affecting.