File talk:Elizabeth Harvey - Malvina.jpg

Fingal's cave

I'm no art expert, so I wondered about the categorization and searched for a description (as I can not recognize the cave in the picture). The British museum gives the following description[1] and on other sites I could find a hint about the cave. Maybe printed works are better, but I have non at hand about this painting. Can you please explain me why/where there is Finegal's cave in the painting? --Mirer (talk) 19:09, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi Mirer,
It's small, in the background, at your right : a depiction of Staffa on the horizon, with a dark shadow showing the entrance to Fingal's Cave. For the studies :

• (in French) Ossian : 15 février - 15 avril 1974, Grand Palais, Paris : Réunion des musées nationaux, 1970, p. 98;
• (in French) Paul Van Tieghem, Ossian en France, 1917, vol. 2, p. 103-104 and 160;
• the works of Saskia Hanselaar (ex : (in French) De la diffusion à la transformation de l'image par la littérature et la gravure ossianiques : le « cas » Balzac, etc.
• Robert Rosenblum, Transformations in Late Eighteenth Century Art, Princeton University Press, 1970, p. 48 (available Google Books)

BeatrixBelibaste (talk) 15:43, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi BeatrixBelibaste, thanks for the image map and your kind and patient explanations! Looks like some information on the painting got lost in time. I found some more information about the cave (in the painting) yesterday in a book from Dr. Benedict Taylor ("Mendelssohn", 2016, ISBN 13:978-1-4724-3539-2, Page 408)(Google Books preview:[2]):

A female English painter by the name of Elizabeth Harvey also exhibited Malvina and Oscar at the same salon of 1806, depicting (again according to the catalogue) "the sea and Fingal's cave" in the background, and the sky "strewn with humid mists" (160)

Unfortunately I couldn't get access to the catalogue. It seems, that I only have access to (a lot) of catalogues of auctions, but not of exhibitions ... but I'll keep that in the back of my mind as well as the painting myself, to get to see them, when I have the chance.

Thanks again! --Mirer (talk) 17:59, 17 February 2019 (UTC)