Eastlake & the Gallery Revolution Wednesday 21 November 2012 Kerry Messam & Jamie Ruers

Introduction Welcome to the ‘Eastlake & Gallery Revolution’ Art Bite led by us: Jamie Ruers and Kerry Messam. We are both Young Explainers working alongside the Arts and Heritage Engagement Team at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery and are beginning our second year studying Art History BA (Hons) at Plymouth University. We hope that you will enjoy looking around with us at the art works that surround us in the gallery and that you will go away having learnt a little more about Charles Eastlake and what he did to professionalise the display of art. The reasoning’s behind why certain paintings are chosen to be collected or hang side-by-side, and the interesting clues as to a paintings background and culture are some of the reasons that really drew us both into studying Art History at degree level, and makes us always want to know more. The topic of our Art Bite is ‘Charles Eastlake and his revolutionary methods of displaying artworks in museum and gallery spaces’. This was something which Charles Eastlake thought about in his work as one of the first museum curators and as one of the first scholars interested in the evolving discipline of art history. When we walk around the gallery observing the many types of art works in terms of when and where they were painted and what they show, it is also interesting to consider why they are there, why they hang beside each other and what this tells us about art on the larger side of the spectrum of art history.

We’d like to introduce his ideas to you and get you to go around the current exhibition thinking about some of the historical points we are drawing attention to in our talk. This Art Bite is about the gallery revolution which began with Eastlake as the first Director of The . We’re going to be looking at the exhibition today with this gallery revolution in mind and we’re going to include today four examples of art purchased by Eastlake. We will use these four examples to try to show why they reflect his ideals within his collecting policy. Traditional hang In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, public museums and galleries began to emerge in countries such as France and Britain as they began to build up their own national collections. The in Paris was originally a palace and its princely collections became a national art museum in 1793. By contrast, The National Gallery in London was first open to the general public in 1824. Its original location was at 100 Pall Mall, the town house of John Julius Angerstein, whose collection of 38 paintings was bought by the British government – it was only in 1838 after William Wilkins’s purpose built gallery was created that it moved to its current location of Trafalgar Square. These collections were a part of a nation's identity, as it was a privilege for the respective country to own such pieces of work. Other national museums include Rijksmuseum of the Netherlands and the Museo del Prado of Spain. The decision to make these open to the public was in part a nationalistic gesture and in part an attempt to improve national design for manufactured goods as well as to encourage a native school of art.

Traditional methods of showcasing collections were through the mosaic hang. This consisted of walls filled, from the floor to the ceiling, with paintings arranged not by year or country of origin. None of the paintings had labels to inform the public of the artist, the name of the painting, its year or the medium used. This lack of information excluded many people, mainly of the lower classes who were not educated in art, because it was very difficult to interact with something of which they knew nothing about. Educated gentlemen used this lack of labelling to prove their status and knowledge to their peers and lower classes. By identifying the artists themselves, remembering the key dates and perhaps even telling of the stories that the paintings imagery told this would establish their status in society among their fellow peers.

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, educated men collected various sixteenth and seventeenth century Italian, Flemish, Dutch and French art to hang. It was down to the men of taste and class, to learn key critical terms and concepts that distinguished particular artistic qualities from each other, starting with the Italian Renaissance and onwards. This knowledge was a sign of aristocratic breeding and often only for the upper classes. Eastlake wanted to allow the paintings to speak for themselves. Hence he started to think in radical new ways about the layout of galleries. What Eastlake was saying was in line with new government directives that were made clear in the report of various Select Committees notably that of 1853, when it was decided that in the future The National Gallery should no longer be a treasury of select and acknowledged masterpieces reflecting the tastes of the conservative aristocratic trustees, who tended to favour sixteenth century Italian art and at seventeenth century French art, but rather that it should aim to become a survey collection, capable of telling the whole story of Western European painting from origins to the present day.

Eastlake’s influence A mosaic hang, which it was called in England, Italy and France, would group together on one wall or close by, contrasting examples from opposing schools as we will show you today. Charles Eastlake wanted to change the way that artwork was displayed, to allow everyone, from all backgrounds and classes, to actually be able to see the pictures properly and hence to enjoy them. To do this he started the process – on paper at first and later in a few experimental galleries where space allowed, of hanging paintings by their country of origin and in chronological order, to help the public gain a better understanding of the history of Western art. Instead of hanging walls full of paintings from top to bottom, Eastlake endeavoured to move the pictures closer to the viewer by hanging them at eye level. Eastlake also introduced labels to go alongside the artwork, so that everyone had the chance to learn about the art displayed. With more empty space on the walls, he was also the first person who really thought about the colour of the walls against which the pictures should be hung. Eastlake decided that red, rather than the greyish green colour of previous public exhibitions, was best for enhancing the majority of the paintings.

All of these interesting innovations are crucial because these things are very much still in the Gallery’s interest today and are continuously improving and developing the public’s relationship and interpretation of art, old and new. As you look around the gallery today, you can see how these changes are apparent and help your experience with art. You could say that tour guides and Young Explainers like us are aiming to help the public of all backgrounds and educations to interpret, engage and experience art on a completely new level, which is some way is Eastlake’s legacy and heritage. There is more space for the paintings, clear labels and introductory panels and ultimately the environment to learn and appreciate art. Although we are in a temporary exhibition, the same forces are at work in the permanent galleries at The National Gallery and many other art galleries too. Eastlake himself was ‘Catholic’ in his tastes after fourteen years spent in Rome and Italy observing the works of Old Masters from the Italian Renaissance. Eastlake appreciated all schools of painting for their innate merits such as the French, the Italian, the Dutch and the British too. After 1859, Eastlake thought The National Gallery had enough examples of early Italian art, the type of art that he had been specifically directed to purchase originally by the writers of the report of the 1853 Select Committee. Therefore, he wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say he would be starting to concentrate from that point onwards on purchasing for the nation examples of pictures by later Italian artists as well as painters from different countries and ages. Now let’s turn to the five pictures which reflect Eastlake’s choice and influence.

Art movements such as the Dutch Golden Age and the Romanticists took a great deal of inspiration from nature so this was a popular topic in the nineteenth century. Eastlake was purchasing Dutch landscapes as a way of promoting the importance and significance of this new style of art. During this time British tastes were changing due to Industrialisation which in turn created a need and want for this rural art. ‘A Waterfall in a Rocky Landscape’ by Jacob van Ruisdael, circa 1660-70 We will begin with Jacob van Ruisdael’s ‘ A Waterfall in a Rocky Landscape ’ painted in-between 1660-1670, oil on canvas. Already, as you can see, there is a clear label identifying this information to you, the title of the artwork also clearly states the genre. Ruisdael painted many waterfalls from the late 1650’s onwards. He was greatly inspired by the Amsterdam landscape painter Allart van Everdingen who had visited Scandinavia in 1644 and had made a number of drawings of rocky mountainous scenes with torrents and waterfalls. This is a clear example of the classical phase of Dutch landscape painting. Eastlake endeavoured to collect work from Northern Europe – especially after 1859 – the year he acquired this particular work. Ruisdael, being one of the most famous landscape painters of the seventeenth century and the leading promoter of the classical phase of Dutch landscape, was inevitable. Appreciating the technicality and skill of Ruisdael’s attention to detail captured through his application of oil paint, which was applied in thin glazes of oil paint creates an atmospheric quality and allows for intricate details in the clouds in the sky or the branches of the trees. The dark, earthy browns, greens and blues represent a direct observation and serious reflection of the power which nature holds which is also emphasised by the strong contrasts of light and colour seen in the crashing waves of the waterfall and stormy clouds in the sky. These highly focused characteristics of application and colour are key to Dutch landscape painting; the atmospheric qualities created through the thin glazes of paint and natural colour palette highlight the importance of colour and light within a landscape. Eastlake would have collected this painting to represent the style of the Classical phase and this shifting attention to communicating stronger and more expressive lighting conditions. The composition focuses on the water in the foreground but there is a slight diagonal which is anchored by the trees on the right. Most of the compositions within the Dutch Golden Age followed this style creating a focus that divided the canvas asymmetrically, whether it was a tree or windmill. Eastlake would have collected this very painting as a representation of the compositional qualities within the paintings structure. The layout also creates a great sense of movement through the use of line; starting with the edgy rocks and thrashing waves in the foreground leading up to the trunk and branches of the threes in the mid ground and ending with the thunderous clouds in the background. All of these qualities underline the power of nature and a sense for truth and realism in painting. Ruisdael’s ability to capture a landscapes variety of textures and elements such as the fluidity of water, fragility of leaves and coarseness of rock strongly reflects the traditional detail in realism which was inherited from early Netherlandish painting. This is undoubtedly why Eastlake felt it necessary to include Ruisdael within his collection as a leading painter of landscapes during the seventeenth century.

‘Contemplation’ by Charles Eastlake, circa 1836

In this portrait we can see some of Eastlake’s very own artistic ability and creative skill in ‘Contemplation’ painted around 1836. He was intent on a career in the artistic field and began studying in Plymouth. He went to London, where he studied under Benjamin Haydon and receiving tuition from the Royal Academy as of 1809, where he was taught by, among others, Turner. This is a great example of not only Eastlake’s artistic ability, but his appreciation for past historical artistic learning which strives to show the journey of growth and development in art. He was especially keen to imitate the rich colouring of and the beauty of .

Eastlake endeavoured to collect early Renaissance pieces to promote artists who were not well known compared to the famous Old Masters such as Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. This ultimately expresses his advanced taste and his ambition to represent art histories development as a whole rather than just the celebrated artists throughout time.

‘The Good Samaritan’ by Jacopo Bassano, circa 1562-63

This religious scene, painted by Jacopo Bassano between 1562-3 depicts the famous parable of the Good Samaritan, and describes how a Levite traveller was left robbed, stripped and beaten on the side of a road, while a fellow Levite 'passed by on the other side' as did a priest, but a Samaritan stopped to save him. The village in the background is believed to be the artist's native village of Bassano in central Italy. Eastlake’s foundation to his collecting policy widely focused upon the Italian Renaissance, and he made it a priority to collect artworks from this period in time in which depicts some of the most skilful and technical artwork to date.

This painting is extremely important as Eastlake strove to collect work from all over Europe, not just specifically those from Florence like Michelangelo. Bassano was from Veneto and was particularly grounded in the work of Titian and Lotto which contrasted with Florentine tastes. He was greatly inspired by Northern European prints and also was influenced by the expressive style of Raphael and Parmigianino showing that Bassano’s work is a development on from the High Renaissance.

The paint has been applied in a traditional fashion, as the artist took inspiration from German Renaissance artists, who worked two hundred years before him. Every muscle and bone is evident perhaps to enhance the strain on the Levite's body. The tone of his body is luminous, almost suggesting that he's angelic, or Christ-like, as he mimics the white rays of light in the distant background.

The two bodies in the fore fit together, almost geometrically like a pair of shapes in the computer game Tetris. They complement each other and are nearly connected, as one body ends, the other begins. Similarly, the rocks, the running hills, and even the clouds are geometric. The sharp angles and the dark colours add to the intensity of the painting and the despair that it reflects. The perspective of the viewer is perfectly central between the hilly background and the rocky background. It appears as though the Samaritan is pulling the Levite into the lighter half of the painting. All these characteristics represent the progression on from the accomplishments of the High Renaissance, both in Italy and Germany, and therefore tell the progression of art history through this period in time across Europe.

This very painting was once in the collection by Sir who was the most famous artistic son of Plymouth and the first President of the Royal Academy of which Eastlake would then become the seventh.

‘The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne’ Gerolamo dai Libri’ circa 1510-18 This was a central panel of a triptych, or a three-panel painting, from an Altarpiece for the Santa Maria della Scala in Verona, painted between 1510-1518. The symbols of the dead dragon at the feet of the Virgin Mary and the olive branch held by Christ may refer to the end of the 1516 siege of Verona. This Italian Renaissance altarpiece not only represents some of the most articulate work from this extraordinary era but also the importance of religious scenes based on patronage and the ability to capture human anatomy and form.

This image contains a repetition of linear figures, such as the lemon tree, St Anne, Mary, also the trees in the background, all of which emphasise the central linear figure of baby Jesus. The white skin of Jesus also illuminates him from the rest of the painting. Mary, on the right in red, also boasts this whitish skin tone, but also distinguishing them as the youthful Holy Family from St Anne on the left, who has darker, olive skin – a trait of age or the elderly, indicating perhaps that St Anne lacks the purity of the Virgin Mary. This painting almost glows with the amount of gold it contains; the gold in the robes of St Anne and Mary, the gold in the angel's robes and wings, the lemons above their heads and even the fence have a regal characteristic about them.

The perspective of the painting is directly facing Christ. The angels look up at Christ as to direct attention to him in the centre. The hills and shape of the tree in the background also create a 'V' shape into the centre to focus on Christ. The crossed fencing does this too, as it all brings the focus of the viewer to Christ in the centre.

Unlike Bassano's “Good Samaritan,” this is a still image – it is a portrait of three generations of the Holy Family. The focus is completely central with all surrounding aspects leading to the centre, unlike the “Good Samaritan” which works like a storyboard and uses the entirety of the canvas. Where Bassano used geometric, harsh shapes and angles, here Gerolama dai Libri has created smooth textures which allows the whole scene to blend nicely together. It makes the women appear elegant in their robes and the scenery appears heavenly.

Most people during Eastlake’s time did not like early Italian art; Eastlake himself found the earliest examples rather ‘unsightly’ as he put it due to the static poses and lack of depth. However, he saw the need for the gallery to acquire works like this in order to be as representative as possible of the history of art. In 1858 Eastlake acquired no fewer than 22 early Italian pictures from Florentine dealers in which he felt he had to strongly justify these purchases in the annual report.

Conclusion Overall, this collection is a snapshot of the grandeur of the purchases in which Eastlake made during his career allowing galleries to tell of a fuller art history. During his decade in office Eastlake bought over 150 masterpieces for the nation of a wide variety of schools and dates, even though the majority were Italian pictures from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We hope that you have enjoyed looking at a few of Eastlake’s purchases this lunchtime. But Eastlake’s legacy was not only the pictures which he successfully bought. He thought hard, for the first time, about how the pictures should be looked after (in terms of cleaning and conservation) and displayed, which included how they were arranged (by school and date, where space permitted this to happen), lit and the colours of the walls. Furthermore he was pioneering in the way he disseminated information about the pictures to the general public, both through adding information to their frames as a form of early labelling and also through the publishing of new types of scholarly catalogues. We hope that you can leave this Art Bite today having understood why Eastlake chose these particular paintings through his collecting policy. Ranging from early Italian Renaissance art, northern European art and even contemporary British art, Eastlake prospered in turning The National Gallery into one of Europe’s foremost art institutions. Eastlake has improved the way we interact and interpret art within the gallery and has made it possible to connect on a higher level with art and its history.