Peter Canon-Brookes, Ed., the Painted Word: British History Painting, 1750-1830

REVIEW

Peter Canon-Brookes, ed., The Painted Word: British History Painting, 1750-1830

G. E. Bentley, Jr.

Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, Volume 27, Issue 3, Winter 1993-1994, pp. 79-80 Winter 1993/94 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 79

all-important cultural text, the more so since it acknowledges that in the eyes The Painted Word: British of current academic feminists, this style failed to achieve the revolution in History Painting, 1750- female discourse that Wollstonecraft 1830. Ed. Peter Canon- attempted. Brookes. Woodbridge, Kelly concludes with an interesting Suffolk and Rochester analysis of Wollstonecraft's Historical NY: The Boydell Press, and Moral View of the Origin and 1991. 139 pp. 156 plates. Progress of the French Revolution, which he reads as an attempt to re- $70.00. claim a "feminized" French Revolution (170), a controversial reading of her Letters from Scandinavia as the self- Reviewed by destructive representation of the G. E. Bentley,Jr. female philosopher as merely a woman (193), and a familiar reading of Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman, his impressive little book on The heroism were in great houses and which usefully focuses on the trial Painted Word has nothing to do churches and munificent institutions, scene as staging the thematic concerns T with William Blake (who is mentioned such as the Royal Society of Arts which of the book as a whole. only in an aside to Stothard's "Pil- commissioned (but did not pay) James Readers will continue to turn to grimage to Canterbury" engraving). Barry to cover the walls of its Great Eleanor Flexner, Emily Sunstein, and However, it has everything to do with Room with his series of paintings il- especially Claire Tomalin for more en- his context, for history painting was lustrating "The Progress of Human gaging accounts of Wollstonecraft's what Blake practiced (in water colors) Culture." However, the noblemen and personality and the development of all his life, giving visible form to heroic bishops and magnates with suitable her thought, and to Mary Poovey, Cora and dramatic events from literature and walls to decorate preferred pictures of Kaplan, and the contributors to the history, including religion and myth. their dogs and horses and wives, second Norton Critical Edition of A Here is set out verbally and, more im- rather than Culture or II Penseroso or Vindication of the Rights of Woman portant, visually, a record of what The Prodigal Son. Of the devotees of for more perceptive accounts of the Blake and his leading contemporaries history painting, only the Americans ambivalences and contradictions in from Barry and Fuseli to Reynolds and Benjamin West and John Singleton Wollstonecraft's life, thought, and wri- West thought was the noblest form of Copley were commercially successful; tings. But Gary Kelly's Revolutionary visual art, the equivalent of the epic in for West, success was guaranteed by Feminism provides the best account poetry and of the opera and symphony the personal patronage of George III, we have of how Wollstonecraft's in music. We can scarcely appreciate and for both West and Copley it was literary style and rhetorical engage- the consistent sense in Blake's art prints rather than paintings which es- ment with specific texts worked to without understanding what he and tablished their popularity and secured construct a "revolution in discourse" his contemporaries meant by history their incomes in old age. that verbally embodied the rights of painting, and here the context as it One might like to think our own women to participate equally in the developed in his time is set out more time more enlightened about painting bourgeois cultural revolution of the completely than I have found else- than Blake's, for family portraits and romantic period. 1 where. race horses no longer dominate the But there is a paradox here, for most walls of the best galleries and homes. of those who devoted their lives to However, fashionable ladies and noble history painting, such as Barry and Blake sportsmen have not been displaced in and Haydon, starved for their pains, public favor by goddesses and pro- and many of the painters who spoke phets, for this exhibition of "The most eloquently of the dignity of his- Painted Word" was the last to be held tory painting, such as Reynolds and at the distinguished Heim Gallery, Romney, made their handsome livings which has now gone out of business. by painting portraits. The noblest his- The noble and the heroic apparently tory paintings were heroic in size, and have no more appeal to our age than the only walls appropriate for such to Blake's. 80 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1993/94

The Painted Word consists of: Macklin's Poet's Gallery (1789 ff. — But it was the American Benjamin West including the Bible), and Robert Bow- who transformed the genre of history 1 Michael Bellamy, Foreword 5 yer's Historic Gallery (1793 ff), com- painting in the public consciousness: 2 Martin Butlin, Introduction 7-8 bining fashionable annual exhibitions 3 Martin Postle, "Narrative Painting: 2 the fundamental changes in the relation- Hogarth to Reynolds" 9-13 and multi-volume folio publications. ship between painters and their public, the 4 Peter Canon-Brookes, "From the Indeed, Boydell was "the most impor- rise of exhibitions charging for entry 'Death of General Wolfe' to the tant patron of the arts in England in the (directly or indirectly), the vast increase in 'Death of Lord Nelson': Benjamin late eighteenth century" (39). The the dissemination of reproductive prints . . ., and the evolution of modern West and the Epic Composition" paintings shown at their annual exhibi- 15-22 marketing techniques, all owe their 5 David Alexander, "Print Makers tions to which fashionable London greatest impetus to [West's] The Death of and Print Sellers in England, flocked are, of course, unique, but a General Wolfe [1776] and the inspiration 1770-1830 23-29 surprising number were in the Heim provided by its example. (18) 6 David Alexander, "Patriotism Gallery exhibition: and Contemporary History, The Painted Word is both an important document and a valuable study of 1770-1830" 31-35 1 James Northcote, "A Monument 7 Geoffrey Ashton, "The Boydell Belonging to the Capulets, Romeo history painting of the late eighteenth Shakespeare Gallery: Before and and Paris dead; Juliet and Friar and early nineteenth centuries. As After" 37-43 Lawrence" {Romeo and Juliet) for such it has a great deal to offer any 8 Catalogue by Martin Butlin, Michael Boydell's Shakspeare (#66); serious student of William Blake. Bellamy, Martin Postle, and Peter 2 Francis Wheatley, "Ferdinand and Canon-Brookes 45-132 Miranda Playing at Chess" {The 1 Michael Bellamy writes 9 Bibliography 133-35 Tempest, V, 1) (1790) for Boydell 10 Index of Artists, Engravers and (#92); Considering the great amount of Publishers 137-39 3 Richard Westall, "Portia and Bassanio" ink which was spilled over the 11 Reproductions of each of the 142 {The Merchant of Venice) (1795) for subject of History painting in the works exhibited, including color Boydell (#108); eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it is amazing how little has plates of each of the paintings 4 John Opie, "The Death of Archbishop been written about it since .... no Sharpe" (1797) for Bowyer (#103); attempt at an overall survey of what The reproductions are, of course, 5 Northcote, "The Murder of the Princes exactly was meant by the frequently the most important part of the work. in the Tower" signed "James incanted phrase 'History Painting', Northcote pinxt 1805" "Commis- Many are small (c. 38 x 6.4 cm.), but covering both the paintings and the sioned by Samuel Whitbread" (the the most important ones, such as engravings made from them, appears previous version [1786] inspired West's "Death of General Wolfe" to have been undertaken. (5) Boydell's Shakspeare Gallery) (#49); 2(1) The Dramatic Works of Shakspeare, (1776) and Copley's "Death of Major 6 James Durno, "Shallow, Silence, Revised by George Steevens, 9 folio Peirson" (1796) and De Louther- Falstaff, Bardolph . . ." {II Henry IV, volumes with 99 plates (c. 43 x 29 cm.) plus III, ii), "reduced version" of the paint- bourg's "Battle of Maida" (1807) oc- two elephant-folio volumes (c. 68 x 51 cm.) ing for Boydell (#117); cupy the whole page (21.6 x 22.9 cm.) with 93 different plates (London: John and or more, though of course still a great 7 James Durno, "Falstaff (as the Old Josiah Boydell, 1791-1805); (2) The Old Woman of Brentford) and others" [and The New) Testament, Embellished reduction from the original dimen- {Merry Wives of Windsor, IV, ii), sions (De Loutherbourg's painting is with Engravings, from Pictures and "reduced version" of the painting for Designs by the Most Eminent English Ar- 152 x 215 cm.). Considering that what Boydell (#118). tists, 6 folio vols, with 70 engravings (c. was available for exhibition was mere- 28.5 x 37.0 cm.) -34s 113 vignettes (Lon- ly what the Heim Gallery could offer Virtually all serious English painters don: Thomas Macklin, P1791-1800) plus for sale, the range, quality, and impor- of the time made history paintings, and The Apocrypha . . ., 1 vol. with 6 full-page tance of what was shown is, to me, "it is important... to dispel the popular plates and 23 extraordinary, large vignettes myth . . . that narrative painting was by De Loutherbourg (London: Cadell & astonishing. Prints such as Wilson's Davies, 1815-16); (3) David Hume, The the beleaguered activity of a handful "Destruction of the Children of Niobe" History of England, from the Invasion of (1761) and Reynolds's "Nativity" of individuals"; "indeed this is one of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, 5 (1785) and West's "Death of Lord Nel- the aims of the present exhibition" folio vols, in 9 with 195 plates (London: 3 son" (1811) may be acquired readily (11). English "narrative painting" came Robert Bowyer, 1793-1806). 3 enough by the affluent and the as- of age in the 1760s, when The use of "narrative painting" as a synonym for history painting seems to me siduous, but the Heim Gallery also ex- native artists such as John Hamilton Mor- unfortunate, for it includes works such as hibited the paintings behind some of timer, Robert Edge Pine, Nathaniel Dance, Hogarth's very popular suites of designs the these famous engravings. Doubt- and Joseph Wright (of Derby), carved out for "The Rake's Progress" and "Marriage a less the most famous and influential their careers, and foreigners, notably Gio- la Mode," which are certainly "narrative attempts to commercialize history vanni Battista Cipriani, Angelica Kauffmann paintings" and equally certainly not history and Johann Zoffany, brought a new sophi- paintings. painting were John Boydell's stication to figurative art, in England. (10) Shakspeare Gallery (1786 ff.), Thomas