Hugh Buchanan Paints the John Murray Archive Austen, Byron, Conan Doyle, Etc
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Hugh Buchanan paints the John Murray Archive Austen, Byron, Conan Doyle, Etc ... National Library of Scotland George IV Bridge · Edinburgh EH1 1EW 26 June – 6 September 2015 John Martin Gallery 38 Albemarle Street · London W1S 4JG 18 September – 10 October 2015 Hugh Buchanan paints the John Murray Archive Austen, Byron, Conan Doyle, Etc ... John Martin Gallery · 2015 Foreword The John Murray Archive Preface An Artist in the Archive The John Murray Archive was transferred from 5o Albemarle As a first year graphics student at Edinburgh Art College in the twenty five miles of shelving, this is probably the largest pri Street (where the Murrays lived from 1812) to the National 1970’s I would often spend my lunch breaks wandering aim vate archive in Europe. It was work from this last project that Library of Scotland in Edinburgh in 2006. It is made up of lessly around the second hand bookshops of the Grassmarket, was shown at Summerhall in Edinburgh in 2013 as part of the over 150,000 manuscript letters as well as manuscripts of the buying the odd tattered volume here and there, never even Historical Fiction Festival. works of Byron, Walter Scott, Livingstone and many others. It dreaming that thirty years later I would be working with Later that summer I was sitting by the edge of a lake in is much more than just a collection of authors’ writings; it is similar but rather more important material in the National Berlin, where I had gone to paint porcelain, when I received an a complete publisher’s archive that includes ledgers, account Library five hundred yards away at the top of the hill. In sec email from David McClay of the National Library of Scotland. books and letter books. It spans one of the most exciting and ond year I dropped out of the Illustration course and switched ‘Why don’t you come and paint a proper archive?’ he asked; complex periods in our country’s history, a time of innumer to Drawing and Painting. From then on I put my bibliophilia ‘You’ve heard of John Murray’s I’m sure?’ And so began one able pioneering discoveries in science, medicine, exploration to one side and concentrated on watercolours of architectural of the most fascinating years of my life. Every week we would and archaeology. By the end of the nineteenth century the interiors, particularly the play of light across rooms. take two authors – Austen and Byron, Leigh Fermor and world was almost unrecognisable from what it had been at In 2008 in search of new subject matter I was drawn back to Lancaster, Scott and Hogg, Washington Irving and Isabella the beginning. And the Murrays were at the forefront of most the world of books and exhibited a series of paintings of librar Bird, Darwin and Livingstone … and attempt to assemble com of the developments. They published many of the key books ies. However, a critic pointed out in a review, that the spines positions from their incunabula – letters, maps, passports etc. of the period – Jane Austen’s Emma and Persuasion, Byron’s of endless rows of books were, after a while, rather boring. So Some were easy and some defeated us. Often we would have Childe Harold, Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, Charles I asked myself what it was about books that really did interest to back track, as better ideas occurred to us. The process of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and David Livingstone’s me and I came to the conclusion that it was the paper itself, composition alone took six months. Missionary Travels to mention just a few. Murray also launched especially when torn or stained, crumpled, brittle or greasy. Bringing paint into the strong room was obviously out of the Quarterly Review in 1809, with the help of Walter Scott Archives in other words. Add some glistening wax seals and the question. Nor was this a cobwebbed vault, but a modern and George Canning, as a Tory counterblast to the Whig maybe a cobwebbed vault to the mix and I found that I had room filled with dexion shelving and humming with neon. Edinburgh Review. It became the leading literary and politi endless scope, not only for evoking the pathos of age, which But what we were able to do, by turning the overhead lights cal quarterly of the century, and brought people of power and has always interested me, but also some aspects of the lives off, and with the aid of low, hand held lamps, was to replicate influence into the Murray circle. of the people that created all those painstakingly transcribed the effects of raking sunlight – illuminating every crease fold JoHn R. MuRRay documents, be they great novels, ordinary letters, title deeds or and wrinkle in the documents. By laying them on different simple rental agreements. coloured papers we were also able to evoke some kind of mood My search for the archives that lived in my imagination – for the camera. those in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast and Umberto Eco’s The It had not originally been my intention to include images Name of the Rose – led me from Drumlanrig in Dumfriess of the authors or their principal characters, but, having started shire, (the finest in situ archive in Scotland), to Forchtenstein, on the Leigh Fermor passports, I saw that it added a clarity the Esterhazy stronghold south of Vienna. Stretching to and vigour to the compositions. Not only that, but dialogues 4 5 Introduction Byron’s Toothbrush and Other Stories began to open up between the portrait images and the docu With the John Murray Archive the National Library of Scot the size of the collection can be overwhelming. However, it is ments themselves. Raeburn’s portrait of Scott is the basis of land can boast of having one of the world’s largest and most the quality of the archive which is truly striking. As well as the engraving on the Bank of Scotland ten pound note. So important literary archives. It was perhaps inevitable there providing insight into the creative and writing process through the postcard of Raeburn’s portrait that I used in the Childe fore that Hugh Buchanan, an artist renowned for his work in original drafts, rewrites and proofs of works, there is forensic Harold composition should be identical; and yet, when it came archives and libraries, would eventually find himself immersed detail on each book’s sales and reception. Sometimes this is a to painting the banknote and the postcard I subconsciously in that remarkable collection. story of unparalleled success, at other times of disappointing interpreted Scott’s image in different ways. When placed with Having admired Hugh’s paintings for a number of years failure. Whatever the story it is one worth discovering. The the cheques – coincident with his bankruptcy – he appears I was delighted to have the opportunity to introduce him lively correspondence between publisher and author can range to be pleading and mournful – while in my depiction of him to the history and archives of John Murray and now to see from fraught, celebratory, gossiping and poignant as the lives with his correspondence with Byron he appears complacent the impressive results of his engagement with the collection; of the authors are as often as not the topics of discussion as and defiant. nineteen captivating watercolours, representing nine Murray their literary endeavours. Through working with the John Murray Archive I have authors. Whilst most of the names of these literary greats will Growing success led John Murray II in 1812 to transfer his learned so much about the humanity of the authors, from the be well known, the name and connection with John Murray business from London’s Fleet Street to the more fashionable way Paddy Leigh Fermor carelessly repaired his maps with will, perhaps, be less so. Albemarle Street. There he established the most glittering lit photocopies and sellotape, to the messages hidden within The publishing house of John Murray was founded in erary circle where scientists and politicians could mingle with the mottos of the Ettrick Shepherd’s incongruously elaborate London’s Fleet Street by the Scotsman John McMurray. He explorers and poets. It was here for example in 1814 that Lord wax seals. Then there is Byron’s handwriting – the surpris had been advised to drop what one friend described as the Byron and Walter Scott, the two most popular writers of the ingly pedantic curlicues on the envelopes contrasting with ‘wild highland Mac’ from his name in deference to the strong day, first met. It was in that same room years later that Murray the drunken scrawl within. And lastly there are Jane Austen’s antiScottish feeling in the city at that time. However, the was involved in one of the most notorious of literary crimes: cheques, written out by Murray to her brother after her early Murray family maintained their strong Scottish connections the burning of Byron’s memoirs, thought by Murray’s literary death. They have an ineffably plangent quality that, along with throughout successive generations, so much so that when the advisor William Gifford to be ‘fit only for a brothel and would so much in this priceless collection, informs us on a level that current John Murray, seventh of that illustrious name, decided damn Lord Byron to certain infamy if published.’ biography can rarely reach, to bring 234 years of business independence to an end it was to However, the Murray family made amends for this destruc HuGH bucHanan the National Library of Scotland that their unparalleled pub tion by putting together over the generations the greatest lishing archives eventually came.