University of Warwick Institutional Repository: a Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Phd at The
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University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/34732 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. The Contemporary Response to British Art before Ruskin's Nodern Painters: An Examination of Exhibition Reviews Published in the British Periodical Press and the Journalist Art Critics who penned them, from the late Eighteenth Century to 1843. (Two Volumes) Volume One Naura Barnett Submitted for the degree of Ph.D. to The University of Warwick Department of the History of Art November 1993 Contents Volume One Introduction PI Chapter One: The Primary Source Considered The subject under study p6 The state of current research p13 The methodological problems associated with the primary source p29 Chapter Two: The Critics The importance of uncovering their identities p41 The profession of art critic before Ruskin p51 Chapter Three: The Case Studies Robert Hunt of The Examiner and John Taylor of the Ella p75 Part Biographies p76 Part ii: The contexts considered - the Olin and The Examiner p100 Part iii: The case for ascribing the aun's exhibition reviews to John Taylor p128 Chapter Four: The Case Studies Continued Taylor's and Hunt's exhibition reviews compared p155 Chapter Five: The Critical Idiom p209 Chapter Six: The Historical Context A Microcosm p246 Summary and final conclusions p263 Notes to all Chapters p267 Appendices Appendix I p310 Appendix II p311 Appendix III p312 Notes to Appendix III p338 Appendix IV p343 Appendix V p345 Bibliography p347 Volume Two Illustrations Plates 1 to 50 Summary A particular literary genre, the exhibition review, forms the subject of this dissertation. It represents one facet of a discourse which began to develop in Britain during the latter years of the eighteenth century. Art historians have become increasingly interested in such criticism, but have usually treated it, not as an historical phenomenon which in itself deserves a full investigation, but as a pool of evidence from which to draw remarks concerning individual artists or works of art It is argued that such a one-dimensional approach is unsatisfactory, but that in attempting to go beyond it, the methodological problems posed by this primary source need to be considered. It is stressed that the building up of a basic corpus of knowledge is very important, and an inventory of identified critics is presented in order to assist this. Some observations on the careers of these critics are given. The exhibition reviews published in two contrasting periodicals, the Sun and The Examiner, form the subjects of case studies. The latter are known to have been penned by Robert Hunt and present no problems of attribution. The former are ascribed to John Taylor and the supporting evidence is put forward. The reviews are compared and it is shown how they differed according to their published contexts, and according to the idiosyncracies of their authors. It is suggested that in spite of these differences, a shared critical idiom was a strong force which led reviewers to make many similar comments. This idiom and the precedents which determined its nature are examined. The ways in which it at once harboured and yet disguised certain ideologies are demonstrated. Evidence which helps to place reviews into a more rounded picture of the past is given in conclusion, including statements which show that contemporaries perceived the press as an important influence on the development of taste. Introduction If the history of art criticism in England is ever written - it does not promise to be a brilliant book' Claude Colleer Abbott <1> A particular literary genre, the exhibition review, forms the subject of this dissertation. It represents one facet of a discourse which began to develop in this country in the latter years of the eighteenth century: periodical art criticism <2>, Over the last decade or so, art historians have become increasingly interested in examining such criticism for the light it sheds on many aspects of art and society during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (particularly the nineteenth, which witnessed the flourishing of periodical literature) - and exhibition reviews especially have attracted the attention of those, who, applying their researches to individual artists, have been concerned with how such artists were received throughout their lives. Judy Crosby Ivy's recent Constable and the Critics (1991) <3> presents a catalogue of comments made by those who reviewed the works exhibited by this artist during his career. The catalogue brings together criticisms taken from approximately sixty different British periodicals and spans the years 1807 to 1837. Bearing in mind that Ivy's catalogue is restricted to the response of periodical art critics to Just one artist's career (and not necessarily the most often reviewed artist at that), its size, which is sufficient to fill a small volume, and the fact that it took Ivy a decade to gather the raw data, should put this doctoral thesis into perspective: initially intended to examine the even -1- wider phenomenon of art criticism published in the British press, and now taking exhibition reviewing as its main focus, it nevertheless can only hope to scratch the surface of what is a large and still relatively unexplored primary source. The scholarly significance of Ivy's book is threefold: Firstly, it is representative of the growing interest since the 1950s in the wealth of information to be found in the nineteenth century periodical press. Secondly, it forms part of that trend in British art historical research which has seen a shift away from the tracing of stylistic developments towards a greater concern with the interactions between art and society. Thirdly, it demonstrates how art historians have typically approached nineteenth century periodical art criticism: that is, as evidence to throw light on the reception of a particular artist or work of art, rather than as an historical phenomenon which in itself needs deeper analysis. An even more recent publication, Andrew Hemingway's Landscape Imagery and Urban culture in Early Nineteenth Century Britain (1992) <4> reveals that this growing interest in nineteenth century journalist art criticism is now resulting in some scholarly investigation along the latter lines (as indeed does this dissertation). A chapter in Hemingway's book examining some of the links between the overall political tendencies of a selection of periodicals and the aesthetic and political values demonstrated in the writings of their art critics is pertinent to this study, not just in terns of the findings, but also in terms of the methodology employed. Since the present dissertation places some emphasis on methodological problems, and at one level Hemingway's approach must be seen as a methodological solution, it will -2-- be necessary to refer to his study on a number of occasions throughout the following pages. Chapter One, below, examines how the barriers erected by academic disciplines, fashions in academic research, prejudices and preconceptions connected with literary genre, and how the dispersed nature of these periodical writings have all contributed to the slow advance of scholarship in this field. Hence, Ivy's book, although representative of one of the most up to date publications, accurately asserts that 'research into "popular" art criticism in the periodical press is still in its early stages' <5>, and, Hemingway quite rightly points out that 'The criticism of the periodical press has only been mined to discover comments on individual works, and no general analysis of it has been published' <6>. The extent to which a doctoral thesis can modify this situation must necessarily be modest, but the following pages hope to contribute to scholarship by drawing attention to the, as yet largely unacknowledged, methodological problems which this primary source presents to the art historian (Chapter One); by bringing together information on some of the critics (Chapter Two); by providing case studies of two contrasting periodicals and their critics (Chapters Three and Four); by presenting some cautious observations concerning the language and criteria used in exhibition reviews (Chapter Five); and by providing a short discussion of the historical context (Chapter Six). The history of British art criticism envisaged by Claude Colleer Abbott (quoted at the head of this Introduction), or the 'general analysis' proposed by Hemingway will not be found in the following pages: the main aspirations of this dissertation being to provide a spring board for further research, to provoke questions, to analyse -3- certain problems, suggest solutions, and to draw conclusions which acknowledge the limitations of what can be deduced given the present state of knowledge. A definitive history of British art criticism is still very much a future prospect, if a methodical analysis of a substantial proportion of the writings of periodical art critics is to be included in such a work. Nevertheless, if such a history eventually appears, on the basis of what we know so far, we might ask whether Abbott's somewhat unpropitious prediction will be fulfilled. At one level, some of the findings of this study tend to support his point of view in the sense that few of the art reviews of the early nineteenth century make obviously 'exciting' reading, and indeed a unpublished M.A. thesis in 1977 concluded, rather depressingly, that 'Despite the good intentions of the majority of critics, the strongest impression produced by the criticism and reviewing of this period, is its general worthlessness' <7>. However, one must ask in whose terms should such a notion of 'worth' be defined and should be wary of confusing certain qualitative evaluations with historical importance.