Victorian Paintings

Some cool picture tangential related to Frankenstein research
(If you have any questions about Frankenstein ask 'em)

Here is the cremation of Mary Shelly's husband after his tragic drowning. In reality they brought an iron cremator to the beach to do it (the fire is the painting isn't going to do much but smoke and blacken a water-logged corpse...) - but this painting echoes with the funeral pyre finale of the novel.




This is Byron's coffin returning home and his Newfoundland dog (actually his 2nd Newfoundlander, he was a dog guy). Byron was a friend of the Shelley's and proposed the 'ghost story contest' that led to Frankenstein.



Frankenstein has a warning against Arctic exploration and in 1845 Franklin's fateful expedition would make its warning a reality. Here is a crazy 1864 painting moralistically entitled 'Man proposes, God deposes' showing polar bears feasting on the wreck of  Franklin's gothically-named ships: The Terror & The Erebus.



Another setting for Frankenstein is the Alps - specifically the 'Mer De Glace', so here are some historical painting of that mountain:


Going Up to the Mer de Glace (1803)


Mer de Glace (1856)

Here is one of the most famous Romantic pictures of a man and a mountain. It was painted the same year Frankenstein was published (1818) and is used as a cover for one modern edition of Frankenstein:


Wanderer above the sea of fog, by Caspar David Friedrich




Finally some pics of the Creature before the 1931 movie completely re-formatted the cultural image. None of these capture the Creature's 'wrinkled yellow skin', 'watery eyes' or true hideousness but they are a good antidote to modern conception of flat-head and bolts:


advertisement for the play 'Presumption; or The Fate of Frankenstein' by Richard Brinsley Peake, 1823





And a great picture that emphasizes the Creature's giant frame