Apullia in Search of Appullus

Each year the British Institution, a society of London collectors, offered prizes meant to encourage young painters. In 1814 Turner entered. He was 38 and a full Royal Academician, and no academician had competed since 1810. The deadline was 4 January. He delivered this canvas on 15 January, without apology, too late to qualify. Its layout follows, almost element for element, Claude's Jacob with Laban and his Daughters, a painting Turner knew well from the house of his patron Lord Egremont at Petworth. An anonymous letter to the Examiner, a London weekly, called it a direct copy. The story is from Ovid. A shepherd who mocked some dancing nymphs is turned into a wild olive tree, and Turner invented a wife, Apullia, who comes looking for him. The art historian Kathleen Nicholson has argued that a tale about punishing mimicry was itself a jab at an institution that urged painters to imitate the old masters. Low on the left, Turner wrote the whole subject into the paint, and the shepherd's name is carved on a tree.