John D. Batten: 44 illustrations for the Inferno

Event brought to you by the Oxford Dante Society

Find out more information here.

The Jerwood Room, Lady Margaret Hall 

Open and free to visit without appointment on Saturday 6th November, Sunday 7th November, Saturday 13th November, Sunday 14th November from 10am to 5pm. Also open on the evening of Wednesday 10th November from 4pm to 5pm.  

Open by appointment during the week of 1st-5th November and 8th – 12th November. Please contact oliver.croker@lmh.ox.ac.uk to arrange a visit.  

'John D. Batten: 44 illustrations for the Inferno', will be hosted in Lady Margaret Hall between September and December 2021, marking the publication of the artist’s Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno, ed. Peter Hainsworth (Panarc International).

This exhibition will display the forty-five illustrations for Dante’s Inferno by John Dickson Batten (1860-1932), which are perhaps the greatest achievement of an undeservedly forgotten artist. They were commissioned in the 1890s by George Musgrave (1855-1932) to accompany the second edition of his idiosyncratic translation of the Inferno, which finally appeared in 1933, a year after the deaths of both men. Musgrave left the illustrations to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where they hung for many years on the walls of what is still known as Hell Passage. More recently they have remained hidden away in the college library, unknown even to art historians and Dante scholars. The pictures constitute one of LMH’s hidden treasures. Articulating a distinctive version of the late 19th-century British artistic idiom, they depict with great imaginative verve and precision major scenes and episodes of the Inferno, ranging from the encounter with the three beasts at its start to the vision of the grotesque figure of Satan immediately before Dante and his guide Virgil finally leave Hell for Purgatory.

Find out more about the Dante 2021 Season here.