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Anatomy of Riches SIR ROBERT PASTON’S TREASURE

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Anatomy of Riches SIR ROBERT PASTON’S TREASURE The AnAtomY of RIches SIR ROBERT PASTON’S TREASURE Spike Bucklow reaktion books To Tara, Ella and Izzy Published by Reaktion Books Ltd Unit 32, Waterside 44–48 Wharf Rd London n1 7ux, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 2018 Copyright © Spike Bucklow 2018 All rights reserved Supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art Additional support from the Marc Fitch Fund No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers Printed and bound in China by 1010 Printing International Ltd A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library isbn 978 1 78023 979 8 Contents Prologue 9 one Ancestors 15 The Peasants’ Revolt – Norfolk’s insurrection – Judge William Paston – the Paston letters – John Paston – John Amend-All – Sir John Fastolf – the Wars of the Roses – Margaret Paston – Margery and Richard Calle – the Tudors – Clement Paston – William and Katherine Paston two Growing Up 37 Oxnead, Norfolk – the Court of Charles i – Westminster School – civil war – the Cavalier winter – Trinity College, Cambridge – Robert Paston’s gap year – the body politic – the execution of Charles i – the weather – Oliver Cromwell’s death – the coronation of Charles ii – Cromwell’s head three Going Home 61 Robert and Rebecca Paston – the Restoration – the moon’s ‘strange spottedness’ – infant mortality – music – the Plague – the Fire – London – shot by highwaymen – welcome to Norwich – turning the hourglass – collecting colours – preparing canvas – drawing – painting four The Gathering 91 Still-life paintings, collections – theatrical curtains – parrots – pets – slaves – black skin – cochineal insects – Andean silver – Spanish silver – blue-and-white porcelain – Chinese silver – snail shells – ostrich eggs – herrings – the globe – Polynesian navigation – knowledge exchange five Red and White Elixirs 121 The book from the well – Hermes, merchants, thieves and the crafts – the Royal Society – gunpowder, saltpetre and bird droppings – aurum potabile – iron-eating ostriches – making colours – the royal art – secrets – corporations – the volatile, the fixed and salt – Atalanta Fugiens – failure six The Scattering 169 Ciphers – Customs Farms – Robert’s childhood gift – hospitality – Charles ii’s visit – food and diets – melancholy – Charles ii’s daughter – party politics – 1st Earl of Yarmouth – William Paston – Gough’s pews – James ii, William and Mary – Walpole and Catherine the Great – recycling seven Repentance 193 Fortuna – wonder – the patience of Job – shipwrecks – the single eye – Cézanne – Thomas Browne – The Garden of Cyrus – harmony – orchards – Sir Walter Raleigh’s cordial – belonging – Indra’s net – sylva – Atalanta fleeing – the hourglass – shells and the whirlwind Epilogue 225 References 235 select Bibliography 269 Acknowledgements 271 Photo Acknowledgements 273 Index 275 East Anglia; the Pastons’ world. Prologue his book uses a very large but little-known still-life paint- Ting as a window on to a world of momentous change and it explores events that helped shape today’s world. I first became aware of the painting when five men cautiously manoeuvred a very heavy crate into our conservation studio one damp winter afternoon. The crate was left to allow its contents to acclimatize to our studio’s envir- onment, then unpacked to reveal a much bigger than usual still-life, which stayed untouched while money was raised for its conservation. During that time, while working on other paintings, I glanced at it most days and gradually adjusted to its oddities. Eventually, the paint- ing’s physical needs were assessed and it disappeared off to London for a second opinion. It then reappeared to undergo an intensive treatment that took over four years. When it first arrived, the painting was called the Yarmouth Collection. By the time it left its name had been changed and it is now known as the Paston Treasure. Whatever the name, I found it fascinating. And it became even more intriguing after scientific investigation revealed a number of changes, including, hidden under the visible paint, a mysterious woman wearing a red laced bodice and ribbons in her hair. The hidden woman was just one of the things that made me want to know more about the people and the things that lay behind the painting. Before I came to work in conservation I used to make props and special effects for films and tv, in the days before computer -generated imagery. Looking back, surrounded by Old Master paintings, I began to feel that my time in the film indus- try was like a modern version of medieval cathedral building. Both 9 the anatomy of riches involved different craftspeople coming together for one project and then moving on to other projects as their particular stage in the pro- cess ended. Through the 1980s I worked with a constantly changing stream of art directors, designers, illustrators, sculptors, mould - makers, painters and mechanics, moving round London from studio to studio. Similarly, in the cathedral-building tradition of journey- men, the Paston Treasure’s seventeenth-century painter moved around Europe from patron to patron. I imagined parallels between my own life as part of the enormous teams of people who made films like Star Wars and Indiana Jones and the lives of the many people involved in the making of this painting. Yet 350 years have passed since it was painted and I knew that tracing those people would be a challenge. Since the Yarmouth Collection had turned into the Paston Treasure in just a few years, track- ing the people who had contributed to it over the centuries would not be easy. It might not seem like a good start, for example, that art historians are still unable to agree about exactly who painted the Paston Treasure. All that can be said is the artist was probably Dutch and probably male.1 Luckily, however, there are clues about many of the other people behind the painting and about many of the things it depicts. Some of those people are named but some are unnamed and their contributions are just evident from their work. This book tries to follow their trails using well-known historical events, literature in the patron’s library, surviving personal letters and the painting itself. The painting will be considered as both a visible image – a still-life – and as a physical object, a 247 × 165 × 5 cm-sized thing made of wood, iron, canvas, oil and pigment. This book enters into the world of a seventeenth-century English country gentleman, Sir Robert Paston (1631–1682), the man who oversaw the Paston Treasure’s creation. It is a story of one man and the things he held dear at a time of rapidly shifting values, a time very much like our own. Sir Robert’s world was troubled by political upheavals, wars and strange diseases, and he had to negotiate his way through radical social and technological changes, the difficult birth- pangs of the modern world. The book explores the origins of our world through the experience of Sir Robert and the fate of his family 10 Prologue and its wealth. Some parts of his painting are now quite faded, but it is nonetheless still a faithful record of how the whole world’s des- tiny changed in the course of his lifetime. Sir Robert’s treasures came from all over the world, and as his fortunes reversed, they continued their journeys elsewhere. Like anything else, a painting comes into existence when all the things it needs are ready. For any cultural artefact, those things include ideas, materials, time and, usually, money. The particular shape a painting takes is determined by a patron’s wishes and an artist’s skills, with the artist sometimes having more influence over the out- come and the patron sometimes having a greater say. In the case of the Paston Treasure, the dominant creative force was undoubtedly Sir Robert. The highly skilled painter was used as a humble scribe, to whom Sir Robert dictated the composition. While there are plenty of seventeenth -century still-life paintings that feature exotic domestic goods, there are very few ‘group portraits’ of one person’s exotic posses- sions. And, of those few, the Paston Treasure is the only one in which their owner had the upper hand in its creation. The painting is unique. Of course, paintings are conceived in the imagination. They are the fruit of thoughts and feelings that are painted, not written. So, to understand the Paston Treasure, analysis of the available historical evidence needs to be complemented with sympathy, empathy and speculation.2 For a traditionally inclined man like Sir Robert, specu- lation meant considering everything as a mirror that reflected, in its own way, an aspect of God. According to many – including his close family friends Thomas Browne and Thomas Henshaw – anything at all could be such a mirror or ‘hieroglyph’. As this book will show, those hieroglyphs included loved ones, music, paintings and even things as apparently worthless as pigeon droppings. In other words, every single thing on earth had its own inherent meanings but also reflected, or pointed to, other things with other meanings. The book’s title is a nod towards a book that Sir Robert had in his extremely well-stocked library – Richard Burton’s extraordinarily popular The Anatomy of Melancholy, which was first published in 1621. Burton described his book as a river that was ‘sometimes precipi- tate and swift, then dull and slow; now direct, then [meandering]; 11 the anatomy of riches now deep, then shallow; now muddy, then clear; now broad, then narrow’.3 Burton’s book was about much more than just melancholy, and, likewise, this book is about more than just Sir Robert’s pic- ture or his treasures.
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