Transcript Victorian Art

Victorian Art
An Imperfect Legacy
Queen Victoria: Self Portrait 1846
In the early 1960s, Andrew Lloyd
Webber asked his grandmother
for a loan of £50 to buy Lord
Leighton’s painting of “Flaming
June” from a shop in the Fulham
Road. Her response was ” No, I
will not have Victorian Junk in my
flat!”
“Flaming June” 1895
Lord Leighton 1830-1896
For much of the 20th cent, Victorian Art was unfashionable and seen as
devoid of interest. Art critics were bleakly negative. The PreRaphaelites were dismissed as being of “ utter insignificance in the
history of European culture” and but a “shallow interlude in Victorian
philistinism” and their paintings were but “a bonnet shop”! Sir
Kenneth Clark, more in sorrow than anger, considered Victorian Art
as not very good, produced in a slack period in the history of art.
But times and fashions and critical criteria change. Victorian Art has
been rehabilitated to the point where in 2000 a then very affluent
Baron Lloyd-Webber had to pay £6 million for another Victorian
painting, “St Cecilia” by John Waterhouse, to add to his impressive
collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings.
“St Cecilia” 1895
JW Waterhouse 1849-1917
Victorian Art is now very much part of our cultural crown jewels and I propose to tell
its story in the context of its social history.
In 1769 the Royal Academy of Arts was founded to improve the training and raise
the status of British artists for reasons of national prestige. This ensured that Art
became part of an emerging British public culture. This elitist body, part public
institution, part private club was devoted to the maintenance of the traditional
standards and values associated with High Art. It did not encourage innovation as
Victorian painters discovered to their cost and the RA’s reputation suffered in the
later part of the 19th cent. because of its conservatism.
The early 19th century saw reformers target the inaccessibility of art in Britain
caused by the ownership of Britain’s art treasures by social elites and by problems
of geography and the cost of access. What was the point of art if it was invisible to
most of the population? A triumph of Victoria’s reign was the creation of public art
galleries in London and most of our major cities through a combination of private
philanthropy and Government authority
In 1824, Parliament acquired several collections of Old Masters and founded the
The National Gallery of England to “improve the taste of the public”. Housed in a
tenement in the Mall, it did not compare favourably with the Louvre and a new
purpose-built gallery was opened in 1838 by Queen Victoria. It was located in
Trafalgar Square to provide convenient access to all classes. It was argued in
Parliament by one of its aristocratic supporters that “it would be frequented by the
industrious classes, instead of them resorting to ale houses , as at present.” The
public loved it. In 1848 The National Gallery admitted over 700,000 visitors from all
classes, an indication that High Art was becoming part of Popular Culture.
A Party of Working Men at the National Gallery 1870
It was enormously significant that Art had become an element of government policy
because it was believed that exposure to it improved the moral and spiritual condition
of all classes. There were high hopes that Art would win the battle against Alcohol
and redeem the urban proletariat. With creditable foresight, the Government
eventually provided an annual grant for the purchase of pictures which enabled the
Gallery to assemble the great collection we enjoy today..
Even Sunday Opening of Galleries to improve access was eventually conceded later
in the 19th cent. against strong opposition in Parliament.
The Debate on Public Access
Legislation was passed in 1845 allowing any town with a population of more than
10000 to establish an art or science museum on the rates. The result is a legacy of
municipal art galleries in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and other cities and
towns with fine collections of contemporary Victorian Art often donated by local
benefactors and private civic institutions.
The success of the 1851 Great Exhibition provided the money to create what has
become the V&A, our popular national museum of the decorative arts and design.
The Exhibition had shown the designs of British manufactures compared unfavourably
with those of other countries. This shock catalysed the founding of Art and Design
Schools around the country to serve British Industry and some of them still nurture
sparks of British creativity today.
Another 19th cent problem was that London, the Heart of the Empire, lacked a gallery
to showcase British Art to the world. Exhibitions at the Royal Academy and elsewhere
and travelling art shows provided only limited and impermanent opportunities to view
British painting. It was estimated in the 1890’s, that since the time of Hogarth in the mid
1700’s, the British School had produced some 20 to 30000 artists whose work was
largely unrecognized. Quantity was not a problem. For the Government, money was.
The National Gallery was not the answer because a bias towards pre-modern foreign
art had dominated its acquisitions since its foundation. It was an institution so
conservative that it did not possess a single modern French painting until 1905. This
anti-modern bias persisted in the 20th century with the unfortunate consequence that
Britain does not have a fully representative collection of early 20th century Modern Art.
We have to be grateful to Henry Tate, the sugar baron and philanthropist for a
memorable legacy. He harried and bullied a reluctant government to accept his offer of
his collection of contemporary British painting and the money to build a gallery to
house it. The government provided a site and The National Gallery of British Art
dedicated to “the encouragement and development of British Art” or the Tate Gallery
as it became known was opened in 1897 by the Prince of Wales. The Hundred Years
War between the Tate and the National Gallery then erupted and it was only ended
with the opening of Tate Modern a century later.
It is worth mentioning also that in 1896 the National Portrait Gallery finally moved to its
permanent home next door to the National Gallery to house the images of the Nation’s
heroes.
But what can be said about the art created for the new patrons and the new mass
market in the 60 years of Victoria’s reign- the Age of Steam Power, Steel, Machines,
Empire, Reform and Education. It started on a high note with that greatest of Victorian
painters, Joseph Turner, sensing the seismic changes which were unfolding around
him. He produced 2 iconic paintings embracing the beauty and power in technology
and the end of the old way of doing things:
“The Fighting Temeraire” 1838
JW Turner 1775-1851
detail
“Rain, Steam and Speed”
J W Turner 1844
Perhaps these paintings were and are the definitive images of the Age of Steam. If
Turner intended that nothing more needed to be said on the matter then Victorian
painters took him at his word: there is little mark of an Industrial Revolution on
Victorian Painting. Victorians did not want pictures of the rapid industrialisation
happening around them and so artists did not engage with Technology. Even the
splendid painting of “Work” by Ford Madox Brown is about navvies “in the pride of
health and manly beauty” Muscles not machines were what mattered
“Work” 1852-1865
Ford Madox Brown 1821-1893
In an age of Revolution and Reform, the
cautious nature of Victorian Taste often
produced conservative and escapist art. As
the Art Journal said ”we are conservative by
education, habit and principle “ Artists gave
Victorians what they wanted: paintings that
told stories and reinforced virtue and family
values, sentimental pictures evoking strong
emotions and paintings showing death,
disasters and war. The evocative image of
“The Young Widow” by Edward Johnson is a
good example of an early soap opera format.
“A Young Widow” 1877
Edward Killingworth Johnson
1825-1896
There was a taste for the Classical world, for the Medieval and for animals, children,
and semi-nude women. Artists often looked to the Bible, Poetry and Literature for
inspiration. Portraits and Landscapes were always in demand. Even Fairies were
popular possibly because of their importance in British folk culture. Sleep was also a
fashionable theme. John Fitzgerald, a then well known painter of portraits and fairies
painted his reaction to the Age of Speed. His work “The Painters Dream” is a
curious composition showing the artist in a drug- induced coma surrounded by
fairies and goblins.
“The Painter’s Dream” 1857
J A Fitzgerald 1823-1906
Even the great artist Edward Burne Jones could not resist putting everyone to sleep
in his beautiful painting of “The Sleeping Beauty”.
“The Sleeping Beauty” 1885-1890
E Burne-Jones 1833-1898
Warfare against the Age”
Victorian Art is technically proficient and conservative in style .It is well represented in
our national and municipal collections and with a promiscuously wide range of subjects,
it makes for interesting viewing Progressive, it was not! Even the reformist PreRaphaelites and the Arts and Crafts Movement looked back to earlier times to validate
their ideas rather than to the future. In Architecture, the popularity of Victorian Gothic is
another case in point.
The status of Women Artists was improved in the Victorian Era and some made
distinctive contributions to Victorian Art. They were first admitted as students to the
Royal College of Art in 1837 and one wonders whether the new Queen influenced that
decision. However, in their life drawing classes young women were protected by having
to use a male model wearing a suit of armour. Admission to the Royal Academy Schools
followed in 1861- with the armour replaced by a drape. Sadly, no woman was honoured
with Membership of the Royal Academy in the 19th century.
The invention of photography in the 1830’s and the development of paper prints by
Henry Fox-Talbot meant that painting now had a new competitor as an art form. From its
early days as a child of Victorian physics and chemistry, painting influenced photography
and vice versa.
This photo of “The Open Door” by Fox-Talbot is clearly influenced by 17th cent. Dutch
painting.
“The Open Door” 1843
W H Fox-Talbot 1800-1877
Some two decades later, the
photographs of Julia Cameron
presented a new challenge for
portrait painters.
“My Niece Julia Jackson” 1867
Julia Cameron 1815-1879
However artists soon realized that they could use photographs to achieve realistic
representations more easily. William Frith was the first to do so in his very successful
painting of England at play on “Derby Day”.
“The Derby Day” 1858-58
W P Frith 1819-1909
A critic wrote in the Art Journal, the conservative voice of the Victorian Art
Establishment “it was the picture of the season but the tone of the subject was
essentially vulgar and no supremacy of execution can redeem it”. And now the
painting is a National Treasure.
Prints based on original paintings had been part of the art market since the 18th
century. Photo-based engraving techniques allowed the mass production of cheap
prints for the domestic market and Art prints were regularly included in, for example,
The Illustrated London News and other journals
Print: “Crossing Lancaster Sands” JM Turner 1877
The new technology catalysed a
huge expansion of pictorial
journalism and it is there that one
can find images of the Industrial
Activity that are hard to find in
Victorian painting.
Boring a Gun 1875
Pictorial advertising also developed; the most famous example being that of Millais’
painting “Bubbles” which was used to sell Pears Soap.
“Bubbles” 1886
J E Millais 1829-1896
Pears Soap Advertisement
Art news and art criticism become an important feature of popular journalism. The
writings of John Ruskin, the most famous of Victorian art critics, were a major influence
in the 19th cent. debates about the nature of Art.
In summary, I believe that the evolution of Art Culture in the Age of Victoria into a
creative activity of national importance supported by a Public- Private partnership
was a major achievement which for the last hundred years has served us well.
Some Art Historians have claimed that in his later work Turner was the first
Impressionist painter. He is certainly a claimant but there are other candidates such
as David Cox, for example, who painted this lovely picture of “Rhyll Sands” in 1855.
“Rhyll Sands” 1855
David Cox 1783-1859
Whatever their merits, she deserves to be nominated for a posthumous Turner Prize,
if not for her art but for the Britain she left behind in 1901
“Balmoral” 1865
Queen Victoria