Georgian Gentleman

William Constable

Winifred Constable

I recently came across a painting by an artist I had never heard of – Henry Walton. Paraphrasing his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

Walton was born in 1746, and was baptized on 5 January in that year at Dickleburgh, Norfolk. He was one of three children of Samuel Walton, yeoman farmer, and his wife, Ann Newstead. Father served as churchwarden and overseer of the poor. Little is known of Henry’s early schooling but the collection of books belonging to him at his death suggest that he could read Greek, Latin, and French, so presumably he had a very thorough education.

A Gentleman at Breakfast, painted in 1775

In 1765, aged nineteen, Walton moved to London, although it is not clear whether he had a trade or formal training at this stage. The first recorded painting by him was a husband-and-wife portrait dated 1768. In 1770 he enrolled at the Maiden Lane Academy, in Covent Garden, London, to study Art, and while there became a pupil of Johan Zoffany. By 1771 Walton was living at Great Chandos Street, Covent Garden, painting portraits in oil and miniatures, often featuring close friends and family. 1771 saw Walton elected a fellow of the Society of Artists, where he exhibited two portraits. In 1772 he was elected a director of the society, showing four works at that year’s exhibition. He exhibited there again in 1773 and 1776.

Thomas Inyon aged 70, painted in 1776

On 10 September 1771 Walton married Elizabeth Rust, the daughter of a wool draper and herself a miniature painter. She came from the Suffolk village of Wortham and shortly after the marriage Henry Walton purchased Oak Tree Farm, in the village of Burgate, near to Wortham, and converted one of the cottages into a house and studio. The marriage was to prove childless.

While he was initially drawn to landscapes, during the early to mid-1770s Walton seems to have concentrated on working as a portrait painter, presumably because it was easier to get commissions for these from the Suffolk gentry. He also painted Edward Gibbon on at least half a dozen occasions (including this one at the National Portrait Gallery).

Another was of Horatio Walpole, first earl of Orford:

In 1776 Walton exhibited his first genre subject, A Girl Plucking a Turkey (Tate collection), at the Society of Artists. This was followed by other genre subjects, notably A Girl Buying a Ballad (Tate collection), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1777.

                                         Girl plucking a turkey, 1776

A Girl Buying a Ballad

In November 1778 Walton was turned down for membership of the Royal Academy, allegedly because of his prior connection with the rival Society of Artists. Feeling snubbed, he showed only two more works there in 1779 after which he ceased to exhibit altogether. During the 1780s Walton devoted himself increasingly to his farm in Burgate. He also travelled to Yorkshire, where he painted portraits of important local families.

Country Maid

The Market Girl

By the early 1790s he was established as a picture dealer and adviser to some major private collectors, notably Lord Lansdowne, Lord Fitzwilliam, and Sir Thomas Beauchamp-Proctor, to whom he sold a Poussin from the collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Walton’s expertise was apparently such that ‘there was scarcely a picture of note in this country, with the history of which he was unacquainted’ . Walton continued to paint local Norfolk and Suffolk families well into the early 1800′s. By 1810 Walton was in poor health, having contracted a fever ‘which caused a great alteration in his appearance’. One evening in May 1813, on returning from a party to his London lodgings in New Bond Street, Walton complained of feeling ill. He was found dead in bed the next morning, the immediate cause of death being described as “hydrothorax and pleurisy” and he was buried near his parents in the churchyard at Brome, Suffolk.

Isabella Beetham, born Isabella Robinson (c.1744-1825) was an interesting character. She came from a wealthy family but when she was twenty she eloped with an itinerant Irish actor called Edward Beetham. Her family cut off her maintenance and she was forced to take up portraiture as a way of keeping the wolf from the door. She specialized in making paper cut-outs (what we now call silhouettes, but which were then called shades). She then studied with the London minituarist John Smart, and started to paint the silhouette of the sitter (rather than to cut it with scissors). She painted on glass as well as on paper, and some of the results are really beautiful.

Meanwhile her husband continued to work on the London stage. He also invented things – initially the roll-up weighted safety curtain to be used at theatres to prevent fire from spreading. But there was insufficient money to pay to take out a patent and the idea was soon copied by others, and he never made his fortune from it. Another invention – and one which he did patent, was called a “patent Mangle with Rollers”. Basically this was a primitive form of washing tub where the wooden rollers were kept pressed together so that the moisture in the clothes was wrung out. It was a considerable financial success and Edward was able to move in to shop premises at 26 and 27 Fleet Street in London. He sold his mangles downstairs and Isabella did her painting upstairs.

One of the things which make Isabella so collectable, and distinguishes her from the many gifted but anonymous amateurs who did paper cut-outs and painted silhouettes, was that she started backing her creations with a trade label giving her name. From around 1774 her works were backed with a splendidly verbose label of which part reads “By application leagued with Good Natural Gifts Mrs Beetham has enabled herself to remedy a Difficulty Much lamented and Universally Experienced by PARENTS, LOVERS AND FRIENDS.The former, assisted by her Art, may see their offspring In any part of the Terraqueous Globe. Nor can Death obliterate the features from their fond Remembrance. LOVERS the Poets have advanced, ‘Can waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole. She will gratify them with more substantial though Ideal Intercourse by placing the Beloved Object to their View. FRIENDSHIP is truly valuable was ever held a Maxim.…”

OK, so that is a bit over the top, but at least it means her works can be identified!

An advertisement, published in 1792, read:

PROFILES:  Mrs. BEETHAM, who has ever been distinguished as one of the most eminent who ever attempted PROFILE LIKENESSES, continues to execute them with that Taste and Elegance which remains unrivalled. She paints them on Chrystals, ornamented with gold and silver, displaying the hair and drapery in a manner more beautiful than can be conceived till seen: and if not the most striking likeness, no gratuity will be expected. She likewise finishes them on IVORY, COMPOSITION, AND PAPER, for RINGS, LOCKETS, BRACELETS, &c.

Time of Sitting, One Minute

Specimens to be seen at her house, no. 27, Fleet Street”.

In the early 1790s, the Beetham’s oldest daughter, Jane, began working with her mother, and continued to do so until she got married in 1797. A label from that period noted that “Mrs. And Miss BEETHAM” were creating “PROFILE LIKENESSES.” Jane  exhibited several of her works at the Royal Academy between 1794 and 1816, sometimes using the name ‘Beetham’, sometimes dropping an ‘e’ and calling herself ‘Betham’ and occasionally using her married name of ‘Read’

And, just in case I am accused of bias by not showing any male sitters, here are a couple of her portraits of  two splendid-looking gentlemen, courtesy of Bonhams auction house.

(For the biographical information I am indebted to an article by Joy Ruskin Hanes  in the New England Antiques Journal)

Newton, self portrait

My post is on a splendid artist called Richard Newton who had his first drawing published when he was 13 or 14 and then proceeded to produce pictures at the rate of at least one a week for the next seven years. By the time he was 21 he had nearly 300 of his works published. Many of them are youthful, sometimes scurrilous, often irreverent, and are occasionally brilliant cartoons.

Let me start with his drawing of the inside of William Holland’s print shop, bedecked with prints (some of them recognizably by Newton himself). It is shown courtesy of the Brtish Museum.

Why? Because William Holland published works which were considered seditious (Rights of Man) and was in prison in 1793, leaving the young Newton to run the shop for him.

Despite being kept busy running the shop he nevertheless landed useful commissions, including one to illustrate Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1795). He was later involved in providing illustrations to Tom Jones by Henry Fielding.

Richard Newton had been born in 1777. Some of his earliest works were drawings of George III – in particular having a dig at the royal low-brow taste in theatrical entertainment as here, where the King considers it appropriate to study clowns in close detail. They in turn inspect the monarch (hence the title of “Rival Clowns”). This was part of a series of prints showing the King’s  lack of good taste.

Richard also drew a number of anti-slavery caricatures as well as a series about the characters he met on his prison visits (i.e. when visiting Holland in Newgate). He moved around London – the British Museum site lists his addresses in Great Portland Street, (November 1791 to December 1792) 26 Wallbrook (the address given on prints published in 1794) Brydges Street, London (three houses in this street near Drury Lane belonged to Newton’s father, where Richards lived from early 1797 onwards, apparently sharing the house with the Hixon family, copperplate printers).

The youthful artist was not averse to puns (as in this picture entitled Night Mare). A man awakes to find a demon sitting on his wife in bed, smoking a pipe. At the window the ‘night mare’ makes an appearance.

See also “A peep into Brest with a navel review”

The lad also liked lavatorial humour as in “Treason”, and in “John Bull in Paris between a shower and a stink”.

Fashions were ridiculed as in Tippers of 1796, as were the ogling males in Madame Parisot.

I rather like his picture of the barber’s shop; in “Shave for a penny” the poor guy in the chair gets cut by the barber, who has been distracted by the man calling round to collect spare hair with which to make wigs.

Richard’s prodigious and bawdy output included these three prophetic cartoons showing Death: the irony is that at the age of 21 death did indeed come knocking at his door. He died of typhoid (popularly known as jail fever) in 1798. It was a huge loss to the world of satire, because here was a man with a big talent.

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Once in a blue moon I think it is a good idea to leave the comfort of the Eighteenth Century and visit the present time: in this case it means a blog on a splendid exhibition of sculptures which has been taking place this month in the cloisters of the Cathedral at Chichester.

For those not familiar with Chichester it is a city on the South coast, largely contained within its original Roman walls. Streets running through the North, South, West and East gates converge on the old market buttercross in the centre of the city – a cross which for some reason carries a black effigy of a figure wearing a crown. It looks a bit like Charles Ist to me but the cross is a century earlier – no doubt someone will enlighten me!

I was in Chichester on a wet blustery day when I stumbled across the exhibition at the Cathedral – made all the more remarkable because I was the only person in the cloisters. It was a curiously powerful feeling to experience the statues ‘in private’ – some have a lovely sense of movement, others a hint of menace and hidden power.

Some are decidedly Georgian, as in Mr Bennet’s daughter,

while others are positively medieval in their feel (as in Exultate Jubilate)

I particularly liked this one entitled Gale Force Nun:

Another memorable sculpture entitled The Last Ball of Summer shows a woman about to step out of her ball-gown – the gold ribbon, lacing her in at the back, dangling undone.

The sculptures are the work of renowned artist Philip Jackson, who lives and works in West Sussex.

Here are a few more:

Conclave

Moonstruck

The Musician

The Magistrate