Maria is an 1836 oil painting by the English artist Charles Landseer.Roe p.191 It is inspired by a passage in the 1768 novel A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by the Anglo-Irish author Laurence Sterne.Gordon p.88 It depicts Maria, a mournful young woman left disconsolate by her husband's death. She is accompanied by a small dog.
The painting was displayed at the 1836 exhibition of the British Institution, held at Pall Mall. It was purchased by John Sheepshanks, a noted collector of contemporary British art, who in 1857 donated it to the new Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington as part of the Sheepshanks Gift.
References
Bibliography Gerard, W.B. Laurence Sterne and the Visual Imagination. Taylor & Francis, 2016. Gordon, Katherine May. British Paintings of Subjects from the English Novel, 1740-1870. Garland, 1988. Roe, Sonia. Oil Paintings in Public Ownership in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Public Catalogue Foundation, 2008.