Union of the Thames and Isis

Union of the Thames and Isis, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1808, is an allegorical landscape treating the confluence of the River Thames and its upper tributary the Isis — the name by which the Thames is known above Oxford — as a mythological subject in the tradition of classical river allegory. Turner personified both rivers as reclining nude figures in the manner of antique river god sculpture, embedding them within a naturalistic English landscape of considerable beauty. The ambition of the work — to give an English river scene the same classical dignity as Claude's Italian river gods — reflects Turner's continuing campaign to elevate English landscape to the level of the highest European artistic tradition. The painting was exhibited at a period when his classical ambitions were expressed most directly: Dido and Aeneas had appeared in 1814 and the Carthage paintings were imminent. This allegorical Thames picture represents the midpoint of that classical engagement, where observed English nature and classical mythology were still in relatively equal balance.

Turner combines allegorical figures with a naturalistic river landscape, using warm golden light and careful observation of water effects to unite the mythological subject with observed nature.