Who was cast as "Uncle Tom"?

Years ago, when I first researched Black Victorians,  I trawled through the catalogues of the annual Royal Academy exhibitions for  titles that suggested 'Black' sitters or subjects. ['Head of  a Negro'  and 'Othello' were quite frequent.]  I swiftly found that after the publication in 1852 of Harriet Beecher Stowe's  Abolitionist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, scenes from the story became suddenly popular.
Furnished with the artist's name, further research might lead to the painting, although in all too many cases the proliferation of minor artists in the period meant that both they and their works languished in oblivion. Even for better-established painters, very often works are unlocated, unrecorded anywhere since their first appearance.  So it was gratifying when, shown the canvas here, by Thomas Uwins:

and deciding that it probably depicted the enslaved 'Uncle Tom', I returned to my very old RA lists to find that Uwins had exhibited a painting entitled 'Uncle Tom: A Study from the Life' in 1856.    The painting is evidently indeed a study from a live person, rather than a dramatic scene or a fictional character. It must have been painted sometime between 1853 and 1855 when ill-health forced Uwins to retire from his post at the National Gallery and give up oil painting (he died in 1857).  Parts of the picture, such as the table and book are unfinished - although the sketchiness actually enhances the appeal - so it seems likely it was sent to the RA  anyway, to chime with the public mood.  In its first year, a million copies of Stowe's story were sold in Britain and in 1855 it was described as 'the most popular novel of our day.'  
'A Study from the Life' implies that the figure depicted was a man of African ancestry living in London - of whom there were of course many in the 1850s, who could have been employed as a model.  Was he perhaps even closer to the subject? one of the formerly enslaved from the US who sought refuge in Britain during this decade?   Collectively known as 'fugitive slaves' after the law of that name passed in 1850 decreeing that those who had escaped should be returned to their 'owners' (prompting groups to hunt down runaways) several are known to have found asylum in Britain and for some likenesses were published, usually as frontispiece illustrations for their autobiographical 'slave narratives' which served both to create [small] incomes for the authors and contribute to British Abolitionist campaigning. Research continues.  




 a  

The Seasons at Red Lion Square and/or Red House

The William Morris Network had an interesting visit to the V&A reserve collection, where we saw the four heavy wood panels painted by Rossetti with medieval ladies representing the Seasons.
And we spent an age inspecting and conjecturing and trying mentally to fit them on to the great settle at Red House, supposedly dismantled and reassembled from Morris’s earlier lodging in Red Lion Square.  Their dimensions do fit the sides of the Red House settle, but the massive bevelling does not.

On two panels the bevels are painted red, on two they are greeny-black with paler patterning. Two figures face left, two right, but neither the poses nor the colours accord with any linear arrangement of spring-summer-autumn-winter.   

Top left here Summer shows the girl eating cherries on the branch. Top right Spring the woman bends over a nest of chicks, amid blossoms. Lower left Autumn the figure catches apples as they fall into her skirt. Lower right, presumably  Winter,  she drinks from a fountain while wrapped in a cloak, with evergreen foliage behind. 
Each figure is 'too tall' for the picture-space, bent heads and feet touching the top and bottom edges in an awkward quasi-medieval manner. 
According to J.W.Mackail, presumably following information from Burne-Jones, as soon as the great settle arrived at Red Lion Square in early 1857, Rossetti 'at once made designs for oil paintings to be executed on the panels of the cupboard doors [a Salutation of Beatrice triptych] and the sides of the settle', which sound like the present pieces.
Two of the panels ( Spring and Winter ) were later owned by H.C.Marillier, who became managing director of Morris & Co in 1905 and who in 1910 sent photos to Jane Morris asking about their origin.   Jane replied on 8 August:  
'The left hand lady I think is certainly by Rossetti, the other I can't say - from what you say of the Indian red background with the diaper I can see in the photograph, I think it is possible they were the inside of the panels  of the bookcase at Red House - which were very thick and may have been divided after they left our hands.' 
Inferentially,  Marillier's 'left hand' photo was of the Winter panel, the other with diaper was Spring.  But what was the 'bookcase' at Red House?  was that Jane's term for the drawing-room settle, which certainly has more shelves and cupboards than seat?   But if  these heavy panels, 3.2cm thick, were 'inside', the bookcase doors would surely have been too heavy to be practical. And there are 3 not 4 vertical divisions on the settle.  It all remains rather a puzzle. 
If the panels were in fact painted for the sides of the original settle, it seems likely that the two facing left (Winter and Spring) were on the right side, the figures facing towards the room, with Summer and Autumn on the left side, though this arrangement makes no more logical sense than any other.

Janey Morris and Grace Adam

On 20 February artist Grace Adam will lead a gallery tour of the Jane Morris centenary display in Room 28 at the NPG.   I’ve no idea what to expect, but here is an extract from Grace’s artistic statement, which says her own work explores  

“notions of what can be beautiful and where. How do we negotiate and influence our domestic and wider environments? How we interpret contemporary and historical ideas of beauty is being tested through a series of pieces whose surfaces crawl, bulge or sit awkwardly.”

And here are a couple of examples of her artwork.

With her image and lifestory inspiring those beyond the immediate Pre-Raphaelite fanbase, suddenly, it seems to me, Janey is acquiring the kind of cultural afterlife that Lizzie has so long enjoyed [or endured, in some cases].

*   *   *

I’ve also just received proofs for ROSSETTI’S OBSESSION, the forthcoming exhibition at Cartwright Hall in Bradford, itself another manifestation of romantic afterlives, opening in March.    

PETER GRIMES

Just a note on the set and costume designs for the revived ENO production of Britten’s opera  - yet another predominantly grey presentation, but, especially when viewed from on high, with striking visual allusion to Winifred Knights’ Deluge and L.S.Lowry’s figures wearing trilby hats and long raincoats.

We sit starving amidst our gold

On the face of it, neither the appearance nor the ideas of William Morris should appeal to the Now generation.  (Very) old, beardy, lefty – the attributes shout BORING.   As for floral wallpaper, ugh, how uncool is that?    Nothing should be less popular with the students of art, music and fashion who form today’s trenders.  So, as I mentioned before, it  surprises me that several leading and emerging artists like Grayson Perry, Jeremy Deller, David Mabb and (new to me) Kehinde Wiley should reference Morris in their recent work.  The first three are Brits, the fourth African-American, and at the Victoriana show at Guildhall I also spotted Brazilian-born, New Mexico resident Ligia Bouton’s delicate diptych The Adventures of William Morris Man in which our hero battles with robotic Owen Jones in comicbook style.

They mostly reference Morris’s political views as anarchic, anticapitalist precursors of Occupy and/or stuff-the-rich attitudes, and the tension between radical political views and the assumed English pastoralism of his designs energises the artworks.  Deller’s new installation at the William Morris Gallery yokes together further elements from stone-age axes to present-day prison art, and includes examples of Morris’s Socialist speeches and agitprop  juxtaposed with allusions to the dire situation for most Russians when the oligarchs carved up all economic assets in a capitalist carnival of exploitation.   In this clip, if still live, Deller succinctly outlines Morris’s impact on his thinking.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25808020

Wiley’s recent work is less overtly political, in the agit-prop sense, in its homage or appropriation of Morris’s floral designs.   Paintings based on photos of hip-hop Jamaicans whom the artist met on a visit to the island are set inside vividly manipulated versions of Morris wallpaper.  Given fanciful Anglo-aristocratic names that cast unnamed clubbers in the roles of the nobility, Wiley's montages aim to challenge all-white western portraiture.   According to a press interview:

“I’m in love with the tricks of coaxing paint into form, and making something that’s almost a Trojan horse.  Where it’s striking, it’s vibrant, and you think only later about some of the broader cultural or political implications, some of the power juxtapositions.  All those things are important but I don’t want to bore myself or anyone else for that matter, with making work that’s simply didactic.”

The decision to embed the sitters in multi-coloured Morris designs seems to be aimed at British audiences – the unsettling proximity of ‘traditional’ English design with assertive citizens of a former colony.  I hope Wiley is aware of William Morris’s anti-imperial, anti-colonial views; if not yet, maybe Jeremy Deller can assist………

Dragons and Daughters

Two other things I did yesterday: 

• get to see the almost-over exhibition of Chinese Painting at the V&A.  An art I find quite hard to appreciate, being so ignorant, but I was amazed and absorbed by the ten-metre-long scroll decorated with Nine Dragons surfing along on waves and winds, roaring and snarling as dragons do.    On the left in the display case illustrated above.  The artist is Chen Ron and the scroll, which is made up of joined sheets about 25cm wide, was drawn in and has survived from the thirteenth century.   My mind leapt to the dark stormclouds that have been barrelling in across Britain for the past couple of months, with hurricane gales, vasty seas, downpours and thunder rumbles, and I wondered if the meteorological phenomena are in fact driven by invisible dragons up in the sky…
  
• get to a performance of Handel’s oratorio Jephtha by Harry Christophers’ The Sixteen at the Barbican.  A horrible biblical story from some ancient BCE era in which a dutiful daughters like Iphigenia is almost killed by her father, here given a more or less happy resolution, and musically a clever balance of orchestra, soloists and choir that gave the whole piece a dramatic dispatch.

Comical however to see the concert announced thus on the illuminated info boards…

Self-Portraits

I spent yesterday presenting a the first week of a short course on Women Artists at the V&A, starting in the sixteenth century with Sofonisba Anguissola and moving on to Judith Leyster, Artemisia Gentileschi, Mary Beale -  not eras or artists I am closely familiar with, though much of their work is well known and as accomplished as that of many male contemporaries.    

Two pictures are new to me:  this enchanting portrait of an unidentified young woman by Antwerp-born Caterina van Hemmesan, painted around 1550 and now to be found in the Bowes Museum – cue for a return visit.  The chaste palette enhances the sitter’s sober yet alert expression.  She is fingering her wedding ring, so this is presumably a wedding portrait?  It’s notable for the pictorial device of the shadow on the wall behind the sitter, endowing the flat image with an illusion of depth and making her seem very immediate to us.

The other picture is Gentileschi’s supposed self-portrait with a lute, from about 1615.   Artists often used themselves as models, so it may not have been intended as a selfie, though it evidently is.  The depiction is beautifully sensuous, with skin on bosom and hands that seems to glow with warmth and touchability. The lutenist's expression is curiously guarded; one can interpret it is quizzical - what does her audience think of the music? or don't look at my tits, listen to my playing.  As it turns out, the work is being sold by Christies in New York on 29 January.