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This Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation Has Been Downloaded from Explore Bristol Research This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from Explore Bristol Research, http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk Author: Kear, Joanna Madeleine Title: Victorian classicism in context : Sir E.J. Poynter (1836-1919) and the classical heritage. General rights Access to the thesis is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International Public License. A copy of this may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode This license sets out your rights and the restrictions that apply to your access to the thesis so it is important you read this before proceeding. Take down policy Some pages of this thesis may have been removed for copyright restrictions prior to having it been deposited in Explore Bristol Research. However, if you have discovered material within the thesis that you consider to be unlawful e.g. breaches of copyright (either yours or that of a third party) or any other law, including but not limited to those relating to patent, trademark, confidentiality, data protection, obscenity, defamation, libel, then please contact [email protected] and include the following information in your message: •Your contact details •Bibliographic details for the item, including a URL •An outline nature of the complaint Your claim will be investigated and, where appropriate, the item in question will be removed from public view as soon as possible. Victorian Classicism in context: Sir E. J. Poynter (1836-1919) and the classical heritage Volume 1 (Text) JoannaMadeleine Kear 'A thesis submitted to the University of Bristol in accordancewith the requirementsof the Degree of Ph.D in the Faculty of Arts, October 1999.' Word count: 73,631 Sir E. J.Poynter (1838-1919) currently occupies an anomalistic position within the history of art and the classical heritage. His greatly diminished reputation is essentially a product of posthumous re-evaluation and neglect and bears testimony to the vagaries of art appreciation and public taste. He remains singularly neglected amongst the triumvirate of artists called the Victorian 'Olympians', despite occupying a uniquely prominent position in the art establishment of his day. Recent scholarship has tended to regard Poynter's art as simply imitative of that of his contemporaries Frederic, Lord Leighton and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema in both style and subject, and thus has afforded him a diminished position in the history of art and the classical heritage. This thesis was formulated with the express purpose of reassessingPoynter as an artist and a theoretician in the contexts of late Victorian/ Edwardian painting. The considerable dearth of recent literature relating to this artist and the sustained contemporary art historical interest in the Victorian period were major sources of inspiration to the conception of this project. The composition of this thesis has been governed by underlying contextual objectives and concentrates on select aspects of Poynter's work which relate him specifically to Victorian receptions of the ancient world. The central objective is not to rehabilitate Poynter as a leading Victorian 'Olympian', but to recover the contexts and rediscover some of the locations in which he worked in order to obtain a cohesive understanding of his classicism. This thesis is dedicated to my parents in recognition of their loyal support and encouragement. "Diolch am fawr" Emily, Geraint, Julia, Tim, Nicld, Genevieve and Emma for listening and providing a great environment in which to live and work Special thanks must also go to my supervisors at the University of Bristol, Michael Liversidge and Catharine Edwards, who have supported me throughout my postgraduate career and have provided me with an invaluable research experience. 'I declare that all the work contained in this thesis is the result of my own researchand that the views expressedare my own and not those of the University' U'/ Contents Chapter 1 Sir E. J. Poynter- the artist and his classical vision 1 i The classical heritage 1 ii Artifacts, archaeology and the Victorian classical painter: Poynter and his inspiration 15 iii The decline and fall of E. J.Poynter 22 Chapter 2 Poynter and the nude; the classical tradition and Victorian moral consciousness 25 i Morals and maidens: Victorian moral consciousnessre-assessed 32 ii Theorising the nude: the nude form in academic thought and practice 49 iii Poynter and the mythologisation of the female form 69 Chapter 3 The (im)age of Empire: Poynter's imperial visions 81 i Poynter, imperialism and the historical legacy of medals and coins 84 ii The Imperial Hero: the rejection of the exemplum virtutis and the emergence of the anonymous'hero' in Poynter'spaintings 99 Chapter 4 Antiquity restaged: representations of the ancient world in Victorian art and theatre 111 i Revivals of Greek drama in academic institutions 1880-1900 117 ii Victorian classicism in aesthetic theatrical productions 132 iii Victorian classicism in Roman spectaclesand toga plays 148 Conclusion 163 Bibliography 168 If my remarks should tend in any way to revive the interest in antique art, in which cultivated Englishmen took the lead at the end of the last century and at the beginning of this, they have been The Greek will not useless.. very simplicity of art is so misleading, that there is a danger lest its infinite superiority to every other should be lost sight of. I say superiority to every other art, for we know that their sculpture exceeds anything done since, and I affirm that on certain points of spontaneity of life and vigour, the best Italian painters were children even to those secondary artists I whose works remain for us to judge from... If then we are to look forward to the more general production of a class of art of that high creative kind, which I have dwelt on, and which is decidedly in the background 2 in this land.. we must study the works of the great masters of antiquity. The essentially classical ethos which infused the art and ideological expositions of Sir Edward John Poynter is appositely revealed in these extracts taken from two of his lectures which were formally presented in an educational context. This impassioned rhetoric extolling ancient Greek art as the archetype of creative, visual expression connotes the ideological impetus behind his almost singular devotion to classical subjects in his art. Poynter's ideological and artistic focus on the classical tradition combined to form a highly individualistic artistic oeuvre which, as explicitly referred to by these comments, was primarily focused upon elevating the status of modern art to the level attained by the ancient Greeks. His devotion to this monumental task of re-establishing the neoclassical tradition in English painting was of paramount importance to his artistic vision and totally absorbed his creative, ideological and artistic energies for the duration of his career. At times his unwavering commitment to his vocation appears to have been greater than the sense of allegiance which he felt to his own family who disparagingly referred to him as "the grim labourer" and harshly criticised the excessive workload 3 which regularly plunged him into deep depression and physical enervation. I Su E.J. Poynter, Lectures A>i Chapman & Hall, Lmdon, 4th 1897, 309-10. The italics are Poynt&s 2E. and enlargededition, p. own. J Poynter, Ten Lectures on Art Chapman & Hall, Piccadilly, 1879, 132. 3AW. p. Baldwm, The MacDonald Sisters Peter Davis Ltd, 1960. This valuable primary source, written by Poynter's great-nephew, celebratesthe lives of the four MacDonald sisterswho each married key figures in Victorian art and society. Agnes, Alice, Georgians and Louisa MacDonald respectively married Poynter, John Lockwood Kipling, Edward Coley Burne-Jonesand Alfred Baldwin. Two of the sansborne to thesemarriages went an to becomeeminent men in their own right, notably the author Rudyard Kipling and the future Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin. The Poyntecshad two seas, Ambrose MacDonald Poynter (1867-1923), a minor architect and amateur art historian and Hugh Edward Poynter (1882-1968) who became a successful Army administrator and later President of Baldwin Steels in Canada and Australia. The paucity of primary sourcesregarding E.J. Poynter himself; is such that this biography remains one of the most vital accountsof his character,temperament and private life. Poynter dedicated himself to reviving the neoclassical tradition of art in Britain through the dual mechanisms of his art and his teaching practices which are infused with the spirit of classical academicism and explicitly demonstrated the influence of earlier artists working in this style. Neoclassicism had been the dominant style in English art from the late eighteenth and throughout the early decades of the nineteenth century and was manifested though various forms of visual expression. During the 1760s and 1770s the leading British history painters Benjamin West, Gavin Hamilton, and James Barry became influenced by the reformist principles of neoclassicism and began producing large scale paintings of classical subjects in the severeand grand antique manner advocatedby the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann. This 'Grand style' of history painting was ideologically affirmed and sustained by Sir Joshua Reynolds, founding father and First President of the Royal Academy, whose Discourses presented between 1768 and 1790 contain the classic exposition of the 4 neoclassical notion of the beau ideal. The neoclassical style was further popularised in England through the work of John Flaxman, the inspirational sculptor, draughtsman and designer who was renowned for his famous illustrative designs that were inspired by the fluid and pure forms of ancient Greek vase paintings. During the 1820s and 1830s, however, this tradition began to flounder and was only seriously upheld by William Etty, whose mythological and historical paintings focused primarily upon the representation of the nude figure. The classical thread was continued through the work of minor artists such as Etty's pupil William Frost who continued to exhibit loosely classical pictures of nymphs and pseudo-bacchic subjects.
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