Keats' Last Sonnet

Will Hicock Low · 1887

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

60.7 × 45.6 cm (23 15/16 × 18 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

Keats' Last Sonnet is a quietly elegiac work that holds all the weight of a life ending too soon — painted with the hushed reverence the subject demands. Will Hicock Low was an American painter who trained in Paris under Carolus-Duran and came of age among the French academic painters of the 1870s and 80s. He brought that tradition back to America with a particular gift for literary subjects, blending soft, luminous technique with a genuine feeling for the poets and writers who inspired him. Low had a deep and documented affinity for Keats specifically — he illustrated editions of the poet's work and returned to him as a subject more than once, treating the material not as decoration but as genuine homage. Low was a close friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, who dedicated "A Child's Garden of Verses" to Low's wife — a reminder that this was a painter who moved easily through literary circles and understood his subjects from the inside. Now held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, the painting has been studied and admired for well over a century. A hand-painted oil reproduction made by a skilled artist works from that same original — matching the brushwork, tonal depth, and quiet mood that make the canvas feel less like a picture and more like a farewell.