To forge the 'modern' art world -- whatever you think of it, and we're not going
into all that now -- a hammer was needed, and there are many prints on the
weapon: the Impressionists, the First World War and (more parochially) Roger Fry
and the 'Bloomsberries' will do for now. But forging also needs an anvil, and
the there was really only one candidate for that: the art establishment of the
time which, for present purposes, we will identify with Victorian
pictures.
After the extraordinarily hostile reception to the early Impressionist and
Post-Impressionist shows, not to mention fisticuffs with the Futurists etc, etc,
it was perhaps inevitable that tastes would change. And so they did,
dramatically, leaving the likes of Lord Lloyd Webber (plain Andrew at the time)
to acquire major 19th-century works for pocket-money prices in the Sixties. And
then the wheel turns again, the noble lord's collection is worth a fortune, you
can't move for Pre-Raphaelite picture-books, and Strudwick angels are on every Christmas card.
Even so, it is clear that a sizeable majority of the critics are still of a mind
with Roger Fry. Press coverage of the Leighton Centenary show in 1996 was rather
evenly split (the Watts Gallery had a large
display of cuttings at the time), and the recent exhibition of Lord Lloyd
Webber's cannily acquired collection was by no means received with universal
acclaim.
The whole thrust of the Phryne project is to encourage people to go and
see what is in the galleries: 'art appreciation' that is not gounded on a gut
liking for the pictures being appreciated is a grisly business. Nevertheless,
it seems interesting to offer a few, maybe rather eccentric, reasons why
Victorian pictures might worth a look in the first place.
The first reason to look at Victorian art follows straight on from the
controversy that still surrounds it. That controversy does at least leave you in
a position to have opinions. Liking Watts is
an view that can lead to a heated debate; not liking Titian just sets you up as
a nutter.
The second reason is also a consequence of the Modernist takeover. If you want
to see the most modern pre-Modern art, then the Victorian era is the place to
look. Okay, the Victorians were not like us: they wore stovepipe hats and had a
high infant mortality rate. But they were much more like us than late-medieval
Florentines, or even the denizens of Tudor England. A painting such as Holbein's
'Ambassadors' is stuffed full of hidden meaning {1} that you could spend
years studying. Which is fine if you want to do that; but an understanding of
the underlying Tudor mindset may still remain elusive.
And the third reason follows on from that. The Victorians were the last of a
line. Artists spent years visiting the Continent, and poking around in galleries
and museums, as well as being trained in the studios of Paris. They looked, and
were taught to look, on Titian, Holbein and all the rest (especially Velasquez)
as painters from whom they could learn. The archaeological discoveries of the
19th century also delivered a huge injection of classical art, much of which had
been lost for centuries. All this surfaces, here and there, in the Victorian
oeuvre, which you can read if you wish as a fusion or culmination. Sure,
some Modernists borrow and pastiche, but the sense of continuity has largely
gone.
Reason number four will be not be popular: the Victorian era was one of huge
propserity, and if you don't pay peanuts you tend not to get monkeys. The
folk-picture of a real artist being a person starving in a garret is
about as true as that of a pirate having a wooden leg. Maybe some pirates had
wooden legs; maybe a typical pirate did; who knows? But the idea that you do
better piracy if you're disabled is obvious tosh.
Your average Pre-Raphaelite picture-book doesn't talk about anything as vulgar
as money, but Christopher Wood {2} has a good section on Victorian prices
and some of the other more serious books do also. Many of the most enduring
Victorian pictures were painted over months or even years for a specific show,
often the RA Summer Exhibition. Spending such a long time on a single picture
was highly speculative, and it was speculation that only made sense because of
the high prices that could be obtained if the picture was well-received. (It
might be added that it was a speculation that -- when made by artists still to
gain a reputation -- only made sense because there was a fairly well-understood
consensus about what made an acceptable picture.)
Having started with the relationship beteen Victorian painting and what came
before, this final reason relates Victorian painting to what came after. It is
interesting that the low-point for 19th-century pictures -- when His Lordship
was picking them up for old rope -- was not a nadir in all things Victorian. For
instance, Gilbert and Sullivan light operas were hugely popular until quite
recently (and still have a considerable following). Victorian plays, such as
Wilde's and some of Shaw's are regularly performed and, of course, filmed. And
we can't forget Dickens. Victorian pictures connect with all these arts at
various points: for instance through portraits of authors and actors (in or out
of costume), and through records of set and costume designs by artists such as
Alma Tadema.
We must also acknowledge that some aspects of Victorian painting are not really
dead, but have simply moved to a more downmarket address. Critics often remark
that fantasy and science fiction art, even the design of films (starting, they
all say, with Griffiths' Intolerance), is related to Victorian images.
Visit half a dozen fantasy artists' websites and you'll be very lucky if one of
them doesn't quote the Pre-Raphaelites as a seminal influence. (If this seems a
point against the Victorians, you are welcome to ignore it.)
That will do for the moment. But the real reason for looking at any picture is
still because you like it.
{1}The Ambassadors' Secret, John North, Hambledon & London,
2002.
{2}Victorian Painting, Christopher Wood, Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1999.
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