Art Appreciation Lecture Series 2021

Love, sex and death: The constant companions of art

Elizabeth (Stanhope) Forbes: art and life in Victorian Britain

Josephine Touma, Manager Public Programs, Art Gallery of New South Wales

10 & 11 March, 2021

Lecture summary: Walking through the Schaeffer gallery of nineteenth-century British art, you might have come across a painting of a young girl playing the lute, sitting before a window in a Victorian domestic interior. With the title Mignon, the label tells us it depicts a tragic character from a Goethe novel. Coinciding with International Women’s Day, my lecture will take a closer look at this painting and others by the remarkable and under-acknowledged Canadian-British artist Elizabeth Forbes (neé Armstrong, 1859-1912), painter, printmaker, poet, illustrator and co-founder of the Art School. Forbes’ work – largely populated by women and children, real and fictional – reveals much about Victorian attitudes to life, love and loss. And a new look at it might reveal some of our 21st century assumptions about art, history and gender.

Slide list (All works by Elizabeth Adela Forbes, unless otherwise noted)

Portrait of the artist, c. 1882, drypoint on paper, 36 x 30.5 cm, Penlee House Gallery & Museum,

Mignon, 1890, oil on canvas on hardboard, 102.3 x 72.2 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales

Portrait of Stanhope with ‘Cello, undated, oil on board, 23.5 x 14.6 cm, private collection Stanhope Alexander Forbes, Elizabeth Adela Forbes, undated, oil on canvas, 33.5 x 27 cm,

Photographer unknown, Forbes’ indoor and outdoor studios. Published in The Studio, vol.4, 1895

Museum interior, c. 1873-1877, oil on panel, 13.7 x 8 cm, private collection

Jules Bastien-Lepage, Joan of Arc, 1879, oil on canvas, 254 x 279.4 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art

William Merritt Chase, Studio interior, c 1882, oil on canvas, 71.2 x 109 cm, Brooklyn Museum

The apple pickers, 1883, oil on canvas, 86.4 x 66.1 cm, private collection

Boy with a hoe, c.1882, oil on canvas, 48 x 55.8cm, private collection

Zandvoort Fishergirl, 1884, oil on canvas, 67.3 x 53.3cm, Newlyn Art Gallery James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: furnace, 1879-1880, etching and drypoint in brown ink, 16.8 x 23 cm, Art Gallery of NSW

Proudly sponsored by:

In the almshouses, Zandvoort, 1884, drypoint, 26.2 x 12.3, Penlee House Gallery and Museum

An old dame of Pont-Aven, 1882, drypoint, 19.7 x 14 cm, Penlee House Gallery and Museum

Girl at a window, n.d., drypoint, 15.2 x 11.4 cm, private collection

Stanhope Alexander Forbes, Old Newlyn, 1884, oil on canvas, 37 x 28.5 cm, private collection

Thomas Cooper Gotch, Mental arithmetic, 1883, oil on canvas, 148 x 118.5 cm, National Gallery of Victoria

Walter Langley, Among the Missing, 1884, watercolour, 118 x 85 cm, Penlee House Gallery & Museum

A Newlyn Maid, undated, oil on canvas, 27.9 x 22.9 cm, Penlee House Gallery & Muesum

School is out, 1886-89, oil on canvas, 105.4 x 118.7 cm, Penzance Town Council collection

Thomas Cooper Gotch, My crown and sceptre, 1891, Art Gallery of NSW

Henry Scott Tuke, The promise, 1888, 56.8 x 67.5 cm, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Stanhope Alexander Forbes, A fish sale on a Cornish beach, 1884-85, Plymouth City Museum

Stanhope Alexander Forbes, The health of the bride, 1889, oil on canvas, 152.4 x 200 cm, Britain

The Bakehouse, after 1885, drypoint (second state), 26.4 x 20.3cm, Victoria & Albert Museum

Net beating, 1886, drypoint, 19 x 12 cm, Victoria & Albert Museum

A minuet, 1892, oil on canvas, 88.9 x120cm, Penlee House Museum & Gallery

A game of ‘Old Maid’, 1891, oil on canvas, 101.5 x 63.5cm, private collection

Jean, Jeanne and Jeannette, 1892, oil on canvas, 55.6 x 45.4, Manchester Art Gallery

At the edge of the wood, 1894, oil on canvas, 134.5 x 80 cm, Wolverhampton Art Gallery Will-o'-the-wisp, c.1900, oil on canvas, 68.6 x 111.8cm, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC King Arthur's Wood: a fairy story, written and illustrated by Elizabeth , : Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1904, edition of 350 (example in Reading University Library)

The Gipsy, 1901, oil on canvas, 96.5 x 122.5 cm, private collection Midday rest, c.1904, charcoal, watercolour, gouache and oil on paper, 46 x 33 cm, Jerwood Collection, London

Blackberry pickers, 1912, oil on canvas, 83.9 x 99.8 cm, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

References

Deborah Cherry Painting women Victorian women artists. London Routledge, 1993. Cook, Judith & Hardie, Melissa & Payne, Christiana Singing from the walls: the life and art of Elizabeth Forbes. Sansom, Bristol, 2000

Fox, Caroline Stanhope Forbes and the . David & Charles, Newton Abbot, Devon, 1993.

Pamela Gerrish Nunn Victorian women artists. London Women's Press, 1987.

For access to all past lecture notes visit: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/members/events/love-sex-and-death-2021/