Man Proposes, God Disposes
An 1864 Edwin Landseer painting at Royal Holloway, University of London, which students have long believed makes them fail exams. The college covers it with a Union Flag during exams.
Edwin Landseer painted Man Proposes, God Disposes in 1864. The college's art collection says it shows an imagined scene from Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition, which failed in its search for the North-West Passage: two polar bears tearing at human remains.
The painting hangs at Royal Holloway. Curator Laura MacCulloch told BBC News in 2014 that students have tied it to failure ever since the college held its first exams, in the 1920s and 1930s: sit in front of it uncovered during an exam and you fail. The Conversation reported the same year that students also fear going mad, and that the painting is draped in a Union Flag each exam season.
Sources give different starts for the flag. Wikipedia traces it to a 1970s exam, when an invigilator covered the picture in a hurry with the first thing to hand that was big enough. A 2013 piece from the college archives cites a 1984 article that dated it to a 1970s rumour: a student who looked straight at the painting during an exam lost their mind and took their own life. The writer asked archivist Annabel Gill to check. She found no record of any death in the Picture Gallery, and the archive piece calls the story a university legend.
"It is well-documented that students at Royal Holloway believe the painting to be cursed or haunted.[2][3][4] A legend among students dating back to at least around the 1920s or 1930s, and still held in the 1980s, was that anyone sitting in front of the painting during an exam would fail it.[4] A college tradition requires temporarily covering the painting with a Union Jack when student examinations are ongoing.[4] This originated with an incident during the 1970s where an exam invigilator hurriedly covered the painting with the first thing they could find that would be large enough, as a"
- Item of the month, May 2013: Edwin Landseer, Man Proposes, God Disposes, Royal Holloway, University of London, College Archives (2013), via Wayback Machine
- Man Proposes, God Disposes - Edwin Landseer, 1864, Royal Holloway, University of London, Art Collections (2024)
- The painting reputed to make students fail exams, BBC News Magazine Monitor, Tom Heyden (2014)
- The haunted painting of fabled Franklin ship discovered in the Canadian Arctic, The Conversation (2014)