3-080-927 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Study for "Alastor". Alastor, the subject of a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, comes to a lonely spot in the wood where he is to die at moonrise. His face, modelled on a well-known portrait of Shelley, is wild-eyed with apprehension and fear. Drawing aside the branches of the bushes around him, he peers out at the fast-dying sunlight. A few withered leaves suggest the time of year and symbolise both time of day and time of year and the passing of his life.