Space Into Time English Canals and English Landscape Painting 1760-1835
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Space into Time English Canals and English Landscape Painting 1760-1835 Susanna Cole Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2013 © 2013 Susanna Cole All rights reserved ABSTRACT Space into Time: English Canals and English Landscape Painting 1760-1835 Susanna Cole In a sense, it is always too late to talk about time. --- Jacques Derrida1 England’s canal network, critical to the nation’s predominance in the development of modern industry, goes largely unnoticed today except by some scholars of transportation. As I suggest in my introduction, one of the reasons may be that since the Second World War the canals have been cleaned up and turned into an attraction for boaters and tourists. With their brightly painted cabins occupied by families on vacation, the boats, now motorized, glide slowly and silently past the bucolic banks of the canals. These are, in appearance, as originally proposed by the development companies and drawn and engraved for the newspapers: beautiful country spaces to be admired and enjoyed by the public. Another reason may be the exertion of a willful nostalgia: because the comparatively slow-moving canals can appear pre-industrial we choose to think of them that way. These choices have made the English canal system part of a pre-modern England, imagined just as the canals were being built. That England would always stand as “a living emblem” of itself remained for the most part uncontested (putting Cromwell to one side) until the 1 Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: U Chicago P, 1982), 42. construction of the canals. No narrative was required to explain the meaning of the countryside of estates and villages: they were “taken as a given” and had “no apparent origins”.2 The canals visibly introduced time into what was perceived as an unchanging landscape. Time entered not only in the speed of transport on the canals but also in the factories that ran by the clock and the canals that ran by timetable. The geological layers unearthed in the digging of the canals revealed the passage of eons of time and the instability of the earth itself. Time entered in the movement of people and goods in bustling new towns that were in the interior of the country, made prosperous in part by the access the canals gave them to the seas. There was enthusiasm for the progress of English industry and science, a sense of national pride, and great expectations for the wealth of the country. There was a sense that if the old landscape and the new could not be reconciled, the identity of the nation would be lost.3 The general ambivalence about the changes the canals would bring began at the top with the landed nobility who first financed and built them. Their desire to extract wealth from their own lands overcame their fear of a dynamic population. Gainsborough, in his Cottage Door paintings, appealed to his audience’s sense of nostalgia for the passing of the timeless English landscape at the very moment that the canals were being built and many of them were investing in them. Ambivalence is also present in Constable’s attempts to cope 2 These are Raymond Williams’ remarks about the effect that Ben Jonson achieves in Penshurst. The Country and the City (New York: Oxford University, 1975) 40. 3 It should be noted that fundamental change was a long time coming. “Land remained the ruling and governing classes’ principal form of wealth and revenue until 1914…. This was true even in England, where agriculture was radically reduced in economic importance.” Arno Mayer, The Persistance of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (New York: Pantheon, 1981), 9. with landscapes expressive of both time and space. The desire to return to an almost mythic prior time is palpable and his attempt to leap into the future with The Leaping Horse avoids the issue in the other direction. The heyday of canals, from 1765 to 1835, is the interstice between the early days of modernity in England and modern England in its full-blown glory. It is also a curious period in which the development of one technology, the canal, as it was elaborated in the landscape, propelled two generations of artists to work on the same problem: the visual representation of time and space. If one sets a later date for modernity (which I believe would be incorrect), one has the additional liability of facing a closed system of a time-based society and visual culture. By setting the onset of modernity in the 1760’s, the anxiety and the failure of artists to develop the presence of both time and space in their work. At the very cusp of the period, in a work such as Turner’s Dudley, Worcestershire, time does not empty space of meaning, any more than the supremacy of space in pre-modern England truly nullified time. Contents Figures ii 1. Introduction 1 2. What a Splendid Whole 20 3. A World of Moving Objects 57 4. Excessively Fond of A Cottage: Gainsboroughs Cottage Door Paintings 85 5. The Floating Population Represented: John Constable’s Flatford Mill Paintings 115 6. Here, Space turns into Time: Turner’s Dudley Worcestershire 152 7. Afterword 172 i Figures 1. A Plan of the Old Navigation from Liverpool to Manchester (in part) & of the Duke of Bridgewater’s Canal from the Coal Mine to Manchester; & to Stradford. Gentleman’s Magazine, January 1766. 2. Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater. After unknown artist. Line engraving. 1766. 3. Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater. After unknown artist. Line engraving. 1766. 4. John Farr reading Horace’s Odes c. 1765-70. Francois Xavier Vispre. The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 5. View of part of the Duke of Bridgewater’s Navigation cross the Irwell. C. 1760’s. Salford City Library, England. 207 mm. x 270 mm. 6. View of Barton Bridge Line engraving. 20.4 x 26.1 cm. 1794. Eng. Robert Pollard (1755-1838) after John Swertner (1746-1813). From: A Description of the Country in and around Manchester… 1795. John Aikin, M.D. Pl. X. 7. A Navigation Afloat In the Air Line engraving. 12 x 14.6 cm. 1795. Eng. Philip Audinet (1766-1837) after Thomas Stothard, R.A. (1755-1834). From: A Description of the Country in and around Manchester…. 1795. John Aikin, M.D. Title page. 8. Francis Parsons, James Brindley, 1770, oil on canvas, 51¼ in. x 39 ¼ in. The National Portrait Gallery, London. 9. Robert Dunkarton after Francis Parsons, James Brindley, 1773, mezzotint, 21 1/8 in. x 13 in. The National Portrait Gallery, London. 10. George Stubbs, The Wedgwood Family, 1780, oil on panel, 47 1⁄2 in x 59 1⁄2 in. The Wedgwood Museum, Barlaston. 11. First Day’s Vase, Black basalt with encaustic decoration, 1769, height 25.5 centimeters, on loan from a private collection to the City Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent. 12. Dish 1130. Vue du pont de Worsley, sur le canal navigable, du Duc de Bridgewater. On a 16” oval dish. Source: Vuë du Canal du Duc de Bridgewater près du Pont de Worsley. Par J.J. Rousseau, engraving and aquatint by Burdett. ii 13. Dish 516. L’aqueduc sur la riviere Irwell, faisant parti du Canal navigable du Duc de Bridgewater, au près de Manchester, vu au travers d’une arched du pont de Barton, une peu audessus de l’aqueduc sur la même riviere. On a 13” round dish. Source: Vuë de l’Aqueduc du Duc de Bridgewater. Par J.J. Rousseau, engraving and aquatint by Burdett. 14. Dish 979. Vue a Shuckborough, dans le Compte de Stafford. On a round compotier. Source: The West Front of Shugborough, with the Ruins, Orangerie and Chinese House, drawing by Dall. 15. Dish 1030. Autre vue au même endroit [Shuckborough]. Source: The West Front of Shugborough, with the Ruins, Orangerie and Chinese House, drawing by Dall. Taken from preparatory drawings by Nicholas Dall, paintings still at Shugborough Hall. All on lids or oval compotiers. 16. Dish 1129. Vue de la Maison de M. Wedgwood, à Etrurie dans le Comté de Stafford. On a 15” oval dish. Source: Untraced drawing, possibly by Stringer or, more likely, Nicholas Dall, who did a drawing and painting of the estate at Oakedge, near Shugbor- ough with a barge in front in a very similar composition. 17. G.F. Yates, The Bridgewater Canal Aqueduct at Barton, near Manchester, 1793, watercolor. Science Museum, London. 18. The Cottage Door c. 1780-86. Thomas Gainsborough. Oil on canvas, 149.85 x 121.3cm 19. ‘A cottage in the style of a fishing hut on the banks of the Severn’, from The Red Book of Holkham 1789. Humphry Repton 20. ‘Improvements’, from Fragments on the theory and practice of landscape gardening 1816. Humphry Repton 21. River Ferry with Many Passangers and Animals undated. Paul Sandby. 22. The Leaping Horse 1825. John Constable. Oil on canvas, 139.7 x 185.4cm 23. Map of the Stour Valley in Constable The Great Landscapes 24. First study for The Leaping Horse c. 1824. John Constable. Pen, brown ink, grey and brown wash on laid paper 20.2 x 30cm 25. Second study for The Leaping Horse c. 1824. John Constable. Pen, brown ink, grey and brown wash on laid paper 20.2 x 30cm 26. The Leaping Horse (full-size sketch) c. 1824. John Constable. Oil on canvas, 149.85 x 121.3cm iii 27. Interior of the cabin if the horse boat Friendship the Boat Museum, Ellesmere Port, Herbert Tooley 28.