This visionary work was painted during Francis Danby's five-year stay in Switzerland. The artist had fled with his large family from England in 1829 to evade his creditors and by May 1831, the threat of war prompted them take up lodgings in Rapperswill on the edge of Lake Zurich. In August 1832, they moved to Geneva where Danby was rescued from penury by Mme Munier, wife of the Director of the Academy of Arts, who arranged a subscription for a large picture of the Baptism of Christ (Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva). Danby wrote to his friend Gibbons reporting that it quite pleases the connoisseurs who like deep toned pictures as well as myself (2nd January 1833). Tobias and the Fish was no doubt commissioned as a result of that larger picture. The story of Tobias and the Fish is recounted in the sixth chapter of the Book of Tobit. Tobias was sent by his father Tobit to Meda to recover a sum of money that he had hidden there. The Archangel Raphael, sent by God, asked Tobit whether he may escort his son on his journey and, in company with Tobias' faithful hound, they departed together. They reached the Tigris, where a gigantic fish attacked Tobias. The Archangel ordered him to capture it and had him remove and conserve its gall, heart and liver, whose miraculous properties allowed Tobias to defeat a demon on his wedding night.
Probably Joseph Gillott; his sale: Christie's, 19th April 1872, lot 37; to: D Price for 51 gns
London, Tate Gallery, Francis Danby, 1988, number 33
Adams, Eric Francis Danby, Varieties of Poetic Landscape, Yale University Press, New Haven 1973, catalogue number 33, plate 56H. Hansermann,W. The Genevese Background, page 952, plate 8