The Upas, or Poison-Tree, in the Island of Java thumbnail 1
The Upas, or Poison-Tree, in the Island of Java thumbnail 2

The Upas, or Poison-Tree, in the Island of Java

Oil Painting
ca. 1820 (painted)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

This legendary subject comes from Erasmus Darwin's poem 'The Loves of the Plants' (1789).
'There is a poison-tree in the island of Java, which is said by its effluvia to have depopulated the country for twelve or fourteen miles...condemned criminals are sent to the tree...and are pardoned if they bring back a certain quantity of the poison'.

Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleThe Upas, or Poison-Tree, in the Island of Java (popular title)
Materials and techniques
oil on canvas
Brief description
Oil painting, 'The Upas, or Poison-Tree, in the Island of Java', Francis Danby, ca. 1820
Physical description
This work was inspired by the writings of Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), especially his "Loves of the Plants", which included an account of the Upas tree. A note on lines 237-8 of canto III reads, "There is a poison-tree in the island of Java, which is said by its effluvia to have depopulated the country for 12 or 14 miles round... With the juice of it the most posonous arrows are prepared; and, to gain this, the condemned criminals are sent to the tree... to get the juice...and are pardoned if they bring back a certain quantity of poison. But...not one in four are said to return. Not only animals of all kinds... but all kinds of vegetables also are destroyed by the effluvia of the noxious tree...the face of the earth is quite barren and rocky intermixed only with the skeletons of men and animals, affording a scene of melancholy beyond what poets have described or painters have delineated".

Francis Danby follows Erasmus Darwin's description, depicting a rocky landscape with the skeletons of criminals and animals, and two criminals, one dead and the other hiding his face in horror, with their boxes for collecting the poison.

This was Danby's first exhibited work in London. The work was much admired, but failed to sell, probably due to its size.
Dimensions
  • Estimate height: 160.8cm
  • Estimate width: 235.4cm
  • Frame height: 204cm
  • Frame width: 270cm
  • Frame depth: 14cm
Dimensions taken from Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860, Ronald Parkinson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: HMSO, 1990 The frame dims are: 2040 x 2702 x 140 mm. Measured by NC July 2017
Style
Credit line
Bequeathed by Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend
Object history
Bequeathed by Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend, 1868
Summary
This legendary subject comes from Erasmus Darwin's poem 'The Loves of the Plants' (1789).
'There is a poison-tree in the island of Java, which is said by its effluvia to have depopulated the country for twelve or fourteen miles...condemned criminals are sent to the tree...and are pardoned if they bring back a certain quantity of the poison'.
Bibliographic references
  • Parkinson, R., Victoria and Albert Museum, Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860, London: HMSO, 1990, pp. 62-64
  • Waagen, Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain: Being an account of more than forty collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Mss, etc, London, 1857, pp.177.
  • p. 101 David Jackson, Werner Busch, Jenny Reynaerts, Andreas Blühm, and Ruud Schenk Romanticism in the North : from Friedrich to Turner. Groningen : Groninger Museum ; Zwolle : WBooks, [2017]. ISBN: 9789462582415
Collection
Accession number
1382-1869

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Record createdJuly 22, 2003
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