The Funeral of Shelley


The Funeral of Shelley is an 1889 painting by the French artist Louis Édouard Fournier. The painting, which is considered Fournier's most famous work, is held in the permanent collection of the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, England.
The canvas depicts a funeral pyre on a beach in Viareggio, Italy where in 1822 the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley's body washed ashore after he drowned while sailing on his schooner "Don Juan" on the Gulf of Spezia during a storm; he could not swim. The scene it depicts is said to be partially historically inaccurate.
Fournier shows Percy Shelley's friend Lord Byron and his wife the novelist Mary Shelley as attending the event. However, it is said neither actually stood in attendance during the immolation. It is also said that Shelley was actually immolated in a furnace brought to the beach. The three men who are depicted watching are Edward John Trelawny, Leigh Hunt, and Lord Byron. Mary Shelley is depicted in the background.