BURNING BRIGHT Essays in Honour of David Bindman BURNING BRIGHT Essays in Honour of David Bindman BURNING BRIGHT Essays in Honour of David Bindman * Edited by Diana Dethloff, Tessa Murdoch and Kim Sloan, with Caroline Elam First published in 2015 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Text © Contributors, 2015 Images © Named copyright holders on p.276 This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Non-derivative 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for personal and non-commercial use providing author and publisher attribution is clearly stated. Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0. This license does not cover third-party copyright material. It is the obligation of the user to ensure that any reuse complies with the copyright policies of the owner of that content, as listed on p.276. The publishers wish to acknowledge the support of The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and The Henry Moore Foundation. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library. ISBN: 978-1-910634-18-9 (Pbk.) Available to download free: www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press ISBN: 978-1-910634-34-9 (PDF) DOI: 10.14324/111.9781910634189 Designed by Stephen Hebron Printed in Belgium by Albe De Coker Front Image: William Blake, Dante and Virgil Among the Blasphemers, c. 1824 – 27 (detail). Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Mass., Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.433. Back Image: Louis François Roubiliac, William Hogarth, 1741. National Portrait Gallery. Frontispiece: David Bindman, © President and Fellows of Harvard College. Photo by Kris Snibbe/ Harvard Staff Photographer. Contents Foreword: Celebrating David Bindman 7 caroline elam Part I: SCULPTURE 1. Introduction: Carving a Niche in Sculptural History 12 Tessa Murdoch 2. Netherlandish Allegories of Madness in English Perspective 16 Léon e. Lock 3. Michael Rysbrack’s Sculpture Series for Queen Caroline’s Library 27 at St James’s Palace Joanna Marschner 4. Roubiliac’s Hogarth and the Playful Portrait Bust 37 Malcolm Baker 5. Spinning the Thread of Life: The Three Fates, Time and Eternity 47 Tessa Murdoch 6. Collecting a Canon: The Earl of Northumberland at 55 Northumberland House and Syon House Joan Coutu 7. Eccentric Pioneers? Patrons of Modern Sculpture for Britain c.1790 66 Julius Bryant 8. Canova and Thorvaldsen at Chatsworth 77 Alison Yarrington 9. William Wyon as a Pupil and Follower of Flaxman 89 Mark Jones Part II: Drawings, Watercolours & PAINTINGS 10. Introduction: ‘A close inspection’ of British Paintings and Drawings, 100 ‘within the context of their own time’ Kim Sloan 11. ‘The gipsey-race my pity rarely move’? Representing the Gypsy in 105 George Morland’s Morning, or the Benevolent Sportsman Nick Grindle 12. The Face of Saartjie Baartman: Rowlandson, Race and the 115 ‘Hottentot Venus’ Alison E. Wright 13. Blake, Linnell and Varley and A Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy 126 Martin Butlin 14. William Blake’s Sodomites 136 Martin Myrone 15. Edward Harding and Queen Charlotte 146 Jane Roberts 16. John Everett Millais, James Wyatt of Oxford and a Volume of 160 Retzsch’s Outlines to Shakespeare: a Missing Link Stephen Calloway 17. An Aesthetic Sitter on an Empire Sofa: William Blake Richmond’s 171 Portrait of Mrs Luke Ionides Mark Evans 18. ‘A dose of Paradise’: Some Effects of Renaissance Drawings on 180 Victorian Artists Susan Owens Part III: PRINTS 19. Introduction: A Fine Line: Collecting, Communication and 192 the Printed Image Diana Dethloff 20. ‘I will not alter an Iota for any Mans Opinion upon Earth’: 197 James Gillray’s Portraits of William Pitt the Younger Simon Turner 21. Amorous Antiquaries: Sculpture and Seduction in Rowlandson’s 207 Erotica Danielle Thom 22. Infernal Machines in Nineteenth-Century France 215 Richard Taws 23. Wood-engravings from the Collection of Francis Douce at the 224 Ashmolean Museum Mercedes CerÓn 24. ‘The Human Element’: The Contribution of C.R.W. Nevinson 234 and Eric Kennington to the Britain’s Efforts and IdealsLithographic Project of 1917 Jonathan Black 25. Idea and Reality: Edvard Munch and the Woodcut Technique 243 Ute Kuhlemann Falck 26. John Heartfield: A Political Artist’s Exile in London 253 Anna Schultz David Bindman’s Publications 265 Tabula Gratulatoria 273 Image Credits 276 [ 6 ] contents Foreword: Celebrating David Bindman CAROLINE ELAM In 1966, the year he published his first article on Blake (see David Bindman’s Publications, p.267), David saw an advertisement in the Personal Column on the front page of The Times, offering for sale a painting of The Raising of Jairus’s Daughter by the obscure English artist and Keeper of the Royal Academy, Henry Thomson (1773 – 1843). Still a penniless Ph.D. student at the Courtauld Institute, but already an avid collector of long standing, David was intrigued by an ambitious biblical subject exhibited at the RA in 1820. He offered the owner £50 on the spot and hired a van to remove the picture from Cranbury Park, Hampshire, where it had been stored behind the organ in the chapel. He took it to the Conservation Department at the Courtauld, then in Portman Square, but, with its contemporary frame, it was too large to go through the door. Realising its fundamental unsuitability for his own or any other private collection, David offered the picture to the Tate, which took it as a probably unexhibitable gift to the Friends of the Tate Gallery and stored it in Intro.1. Henry Thomson, a boiler cupboard. The canvas remained in limbo and unaccessioned for forty-six The Raising of Jairus’s Daughter, exhibited 1820. years until rediscovered and rehabilitated by Martin Myrone, who had it conserved Oil on canvas, 241.4 × and reunited with its original frame. It is now prominently displayed in the cur- 299 cm (Tate, presented rent Tate Britain chronological re-hang, improbably sandwiched between a Turner anonymously 2012) [ 7 ] and a Constable. The label reads ‘Presented anonymously, 2012’, and in a thorough account of the painting’s provenance and rediscovery in the online catalogue entry by Thomas Ardill, the 1966 purchaser is described simply as ‘a distinguished art his- torian’. But, since his identity can be traced via a story in The Times (9 March 1967), referenced in a footnote, it is perhaps not too indiscreet to re-reveal it now. The story epitomizes so many of David’s qualities: his compulsive and quixotic collecting, the breadth of his interests, his generosity, and the lasting effects of his teaching on the curatorial direction of museums – since Martin Myrone is one of the former pupils who have contributed to this Festschrift for David’s 75th birthday (see p.136). And, crucially, both picture and story have their comic side. Presented to him on his 75th birthday, this volume is above all a tribute to David from his former students – though a few colleagues who were not his pupils have crept in by the side door. The editors of the three sections all studied with David as undergraduates or graduate students at Westfield College and one went on to be his colleague at UCL. Their introductions give an invaluable picture of David’s teach- ing methods and principles, in which ideas and objects have always been central, indissolubly combined and mutually explanatory, pursued hand in hand with per- sonal and institutional art collecting. The contents of the book are divided according to the media across which David’s research and teaching have ranged – sculpture, paintings and drawings, and prints – and the essays within each section are arranged chronologically. These are traditional choices, but the categories could as easily have been thematic. And while some themes are well-established – there are valu- able essays here on patronage, collecting and iconography, on the inter relationship between technique and stylistic change – others engage with more recent meth- odological currents in the study of visual culture: the representation of race, gen- der, sexuality, political violence and propaganda, exile, notions of the canon. This plurality of approaches is a reflection of David’s own research trajectory, which has embraced theoretical innovation without ever relinquishing historical rigour or a beady-eyed engagement with the object. He has been able to reconcile opposing factions in art history not just with tolerance but with enthusiasm. And from the very beginning, there has always been a radical and ethical dimension to his research and writing. In addition to the tributes to David embodied in these essays and made explicit in authors’ acknowledgments, copious further reminiscences and anecdotes may be found in an accompanying, privately published booklet, which takes its title from his recent struggles with the US visa authorities – David Bindman: An Alien of Extraordinary Ability. The Editors would like to thank many people who have made these volumes such a pleasure to prepare. Lara Speicher and Jaimee Biggins, of the newly re-launched UCL Press, welcomed the proposal for Burning Bright with enthusiasm from the outset; we are very proud to be included in the Press’s first year of publication. (In accordance with its Open Access policies, this book will be available online.) Out of friendship for David, Stephen Hebron of the Bodleian Library gave up his free time in an exceptionally busy year to design the volume: it is entirely thanks to him that it looks so beautiful. Frances Carey has been essential to the whole process, supply- ing ceaseless quantities of information and moral support, and compiling the list of David’s publications. Monica Sidhu has, among many other things, masterminded the record-keeping and acknowledgement of donations.