Inspired by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter, this painting by George Dunlop Leslie depicts the tragic Beatrice, whose father’s botanical experiments have left her beauty entwined with poisonous danger. Hawthorne set his Gothic tale in Renaissance Padua, imagining Italy before he had ever travelled there. Six decades later, Hawthorne’s literary invention became the starting point for Leslie’s own elaborate act of imagination, using his own garden in Oxfordshire rather than direct experience of Italy.

(Timeless: Treasures from the Historical Collection 19 September 2026 –30 May 2027)