The Sixth Trumpet Soundeth, 1804

Henry Howard RA (1769 - 1847)

RA Collection: Art

This painting was exhibited in 1804 with the following quotation from Revelations: ‘And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river of the Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed.’ These four angels were agents of destruction sent to rid the world of the wicked.

Contemporaries found Howard’s use of this highly dramatic episode to be an inspired choice and the scene was thought to be as ‘grand and awful as it is possible for the human mind to conceive.’ The influence of Fuseli is clearly seen in the dramatic foreshortening of the central figure and the dissolution of the background into darkness.