A Scene from Midas

This 1838 scene from the comic opera Midas, painted for the Royal Collection, reflects Maclise's interest in theatrical subjects and his connections to the royal patronage that gave the collection its range of Victorian narrative painting. Midas was a popular eighteenth-century comic opera by Kane O'Hara, still performed in the early Victorian period, and Maclise's treatment of its subject combined the mythological theme — King Midas whose touch turned everything to gold — with the theatrical conventions of nineteenth-century comic performance. The Royal Collection's patronage of Maclise reflects Prince Albert's active engagement with contemporary British art and his effort to make the monarchy a center of Victorian cultural patronage.

The theatrical scene is rendered with Maclise's characteristic clarity of drawing and bright palette, the costumed figures arranged with the spatial awareness of an artist deeply familiar with stage conventions.