The Kissed Mouth

Turns out my father is Sherlock Holmes. In many ways I shouldn't have been surprised by this news but within the first few minutes of watching the new film Mr Holmes, I was convinced that Daddy was actually the Victorian era's greatest detective. It was the bees that gave it away...

Out at cinemas this week is the adaptation of Mitch Cullin's novel A Slight Trick of the Mind (handily retitled Mr Holmes for people who need to know what it's all about), concerning the old age of Sherlock Holmes as he lives in retirement on the south coast, keeping bees. He is having problems with his memory as he struggles to remember his last case that caused him to give up detection. The last case, shown in flashback just after the First World War, concerns a man, his wife and some strange behaviour concerning a glass musical instrument...

Mr Holmes attempts to make sense of the mysterious Mrs Kelmot

Meanwhile in 1947, the elderly and infirm detective is cared for by Mrs Munro (Laura Linney, with a slightly dodgy west country accent) and her son Roger, an inquisitive little boy with a taste for adventure and knowledge. Holmes attempts various ways to remember what happened with his final case and why his life is the way it is now.

My Dad has that book. It's uncanny.

That's all I can really tell you about the plot without giving anything away. Ian McKellen is astonishing and completely convincing as both a 60 year old and a man in his 90s. The way Sherlock Holmes is slipped into real life as a real person makes me revert to my child-self where I believed Sherlock Holmes was not fictional (I can still remember the day that my brother had to convince me otherwise. Worse than finding out about Father Christmas). The moment where Holmes goes to the cinema to watch Basil Rathbone (played by The Young Sherlock Holmes star Nicholas Rowe) play him solving the case he is struggling to remember, is wonderfully self-reflective.

Ian McKellen and Laura Linney

There are beautiful moments of cinematography where Holmes is satisfied about the order of things, reflected in the pattern of the cloisters and the repeating patterns in the park until it all goes wrong. There is a struggle in his mental health, reflected in the bees (order) and wasps (chaos), the bees perfect combs and twisted mass of the wasp nest. Will Sherlock and his bees triumph or will the wasps and their chaos overtake it all?

Holmes teaches Roger the basics of beekeeping...

As some of you will know I kept bees a few years back. My Dad has kept bees for the last 200 years and so honey is in my blood and I appreciated the wonderful way the bees appeared, the way Holmes handled the combs and the gentle care he took of the colonies. The scene where Holmes lifted the combs with his bare hands reminds me of my Dad who is utterly fearless when it comes to the bees.

Never too cold for sea-bathing...

If you are hoping for a whodunit or an Arthur Conan Doyle mystery, you're out of luck because it isn't that sort of film. It's a story about memory, understanding and connection with others. It is packed with stars and filled with questions, not all of which are answered. There are some beautiful touches and lots of clues which you have to look out for, especially in the three different versions of the same story that Holmes is endeavouring to remember. What I took away from the film was the necessity of friendship, companionship, understanding and the beauty of order as we get older. When chaos comes, remember it's not the bees fault. And also, why would anyone want to live in Portsmouth?

Mr Holmes is out now and the trailer can be seen here:

Forthose that know her photographs, and no doubt all here present, it will come as no surprise that Julia Margaret Cameron seemed to have selected her maids due to their looks rather than their ability. Even before she took up the art of photography in 1864, Mrs Cameron had taken into her household the two young women, Mary Ryan and Mary Hillier, who would later become her constant models. In both cases she seemed to delight in the fact that she had employed them for their beauty. After such an avante-garde beginning to a relationship, it could be believed that Mrs Cameron intended a different life path for her maids than one of domestic servitude but how far did she try and change their stars through her art, and with whom did she have the most success?

Mary Ryan (1848-1914)

Mary Hillier (1847-1936)

Of the two Marys, it would be easy to argue that Mary Ryan was Mrs Cameron’s triumph. Found begging with her mother on Putney Heath in 1859, 10 year old Mary Ryan’s beauty touched the heart of Mrs Cameron who secured employment for the mother, and took the child into her own home. When the Cameron’s moved to Freshwater, Mrs Ryan remained in London, possibly providing Mrs Cameron with the autonomy to raise Mary Ryan as she saw fit. When the playwright Henry Taylor visited in 1861 he found Mary taking lessons with the Cameron boys. Although Mary was fond of reading and learning, as Taylor asked ‘What will become of her? If she is to be a servant, I am afraid there is no such thing as a good servant who is fond of reading.’ However Mrs Cameron, being blessed with more hope than reasoncontinued to educate her parlour maid who was reported as ‘rather naughty’, which Taylor inferred was due to the confusion in her place. But still in the 1861 census Mary is listed merely as a servant and in Oscar Rejland’s photographs at Freshwater in 1863 she appears as a maid, cheerful in her work or as an Irish peasant.

Louisa Young & Mary Ryan (1863)
Oscar Rejlander

Irish and Isle of Wight Peasants (1863) Oscar Rejlander

In Mrs Cameron’s own photographs, Mary Ryan appears as a variety of heroines, unmarried beautiful maidens, The May Queen, Juliet, Queen Esther as well as reminders of her roots as in ‘The Irish Immigrant’ and ‘My Beggar Maid, Now 15!’ (left). Her use of ‘beggar maid’ would turn out to be prophetic. Taking Taylor’s assertion that Mrs Cameron saw no contradiction in Mary Ryan’s two states, it is unsurprising that she would aid her ‘Beggar Maid’ in finding a suitable King Cophetua. Rather than hide her parlour maid, Mrs Cameron sent Mary to London to almost be a part of an exhibition of her photographs, to write receipts and give information on the works. George Price Boyce, water-colourist and keeper of an invaluable dairy noticed her at French’s Gallery in 1865 in the way that George Price Boyce is wont to do with pretty girls. He was not the only one.

Prospero and Miranda (or Cordelia Kneeling at King Lear's Feet) (1865)

Henry Cotton, a child of the East India Company, like Mrs Cameron, was studying to join the Indian Civil Service when he saw Cordelia kneeling at the feet of King Lear (above). He fell in love. He bought every image of the beautiful young woman, took her hand-written receipt and kept it in his breast pocket next to his heart. Two years later after graduating, the wildly romantic young man with long hairtravelled to Dimbola Lodge in Freshwater and requested the maid’s hand in marriage. Well, that is the more dramatic and romantic version of the story, as told by Emily Tennyson. Cotton himself in his autobiography Indian and Home Memories gave a far more prosaic narrative of the meeting. He came across Mary at Little Holland House, which is possible but really just sounds more respectable. Obviously, Cotton’s version doesn’t mention she was the maid. Mrs Cameron celebrated this unconventional romance with a series of pictures and the couple were married in Freshwater in 1867. The poet Laureate, Alfred Tennyson placed a respectable seal on the occasion by lending the happy couple his carriage and his youngest son for the wedding.

Romeo and Juliet (Henry Cotton and Mary Ryan) (1867) Julia Margaret Cameron

An interesting side tale is that the love-blind groom took one look at the bridesmaid Kate Shepherd on his wedding day and announced that he had made a mistake and Kate was actually the model he had fallen in love with, not Mary Ryan. That smacks of poking fun at the whole Pattledom ethos of art and love above all and Mrs Cameron’s own eagerness and considerable effort to ensure a happy ending for her own Beggar Maid and any available King Cophetua.

Mary Ryan lived a life that reflected her mistress, becoming the colonial memsahib, living in India for seven years before returning with her children and living apart from her husband for periods of time. Her final reward was to become Lady Cotton in 1902, for her husband’s work campaigning for fair treatment and constitutional reforms for plantation workers in Assam where he was Chief Commissioner. When she died in 1914, she had climbed the social ladder and repaid Mrs Cameron’s faith and investment in her.

St Agnes (1864)
Julia Margaret Cameron

So what could Mary Hillier do to rival that? Possibly Mrs Cameron’s best known maid/model, Mary Hillier was similar picked by her employer on her looks. At 14, she was sent to Dimbola with a message and impressed by her looks, Mrs Cameron offered her a situation as a maid. For the next 13 years Island Mary provided her employer with assistance both in front and behind the lens. There are descriptions of how Mrs Cameron would show Mary off to her friends using various devices to exhibit her to the best advantage. As recorded by Wilfred Philip Ward in Men and Matters, Mrs Cameron behaved thus: ‘Mary do stand on that chair and pull down that high curtain’. Then turning to her friend, ‘Isn’t she perfect in that light, and in profile as you see her now?’’ (This really reminded me of the incident when Rossetti pointed out Fanny's beauty in rather florid ones to his friend as Fanny reclined on a couch. Fanny, unlike Mary, had no fear of telling him to pack it in). Mrs Cameron herself spoke in typically rapturous tones on the beauty of her ‘little maid’ in Annals of My Glasshouse: ‘in every manner of form has her face been reproduced, yet never has it been felt that the grace of the fashion of it has perished.’Mary sat regularly for images of the Madonna, earning her the nickname ‘Mary Madonna’, her patient expression repeated over and over as she cradled various babies and children in her teenage arms. Her beauty was also recognised by other artists in the Cameron circle. Coutts Lindsay apparently used her for Lady Godivaand G F Watts used her in Fair Daffodilsas well as modelling this Madonna scene after her from a photograph given to him by Mrs Cameron.

Charity (1898) G F Watts

Madonna and two children (1864) Julia Margaret Cameron

(I have tried tracing the Coutts Lindsay picture, yet it remains illusive. However, looking at G F Watts image of Godiva, I am struck by how much the composition resembles Cameron's Queen Esther, so possibly that is what Mary Hillier remembered, or simply that Watts took his composition for Godiva from a Cameron photograph.)

In typical Cameron fashion, ignoring any distinction of rank, Julia Margaret Cameron dressed her maid in the same dress as a lady, making Sappho no different from Lady Richie, the same distinctive dress appearing in both. It was not unusual for Mrs Cameron to drape her subjects with the same paisley shawl or pieces of jewellery, but it is unusual even by her standards to put a titled lady in the same dress as her maid for a straight portrait.

Sappho (1865) Julia Margaret Cameron

Lady Richie and her nieces (1868-72) Julia Margaret Cameron

I think it is a mark of affection between mistress and maid that Mary Hillier did not marry until after the Cameron’s returned to Ceylon in 1875. She married Thomas Gilbert, gardener to George Frederick Watts, and lived at Watt’s Freshwater home, The Briary, giving birth to at least two of her children there. Suitably, her first two children were named after the artists in her life, her daughter Julia and her son George Frederick. In later years, Mary revealed that she detested sitting for the photographs, but was willing to suffer in order to give others the pleasure of photographing her. This might explain why she refused to be photographed after Mrs Cameron left England, and it was no empty promise. There is even a sad space in her son George Frederick’s wedding photograph of 1918 where Mary should have been. Bearing in mind that George appears in First World War uniform and by that point in the War, Mary had already lost two other sons in the conflict, her refusal to appear in the image is remarkably poignant.

Mary Gilbert (1927) Ida S Perrin

She lost her eyesight in later life due to cataracts and possibly also the effects of silver nitrate, the photographic solution she spent so much of her early life in contact with. One final image of her exists, a painting of her at 80, by Ida Perrin, as a blind and still beautiful old lady, a celebrity in her corner of the Isle of Wight, well remembered through articles in the Isle of Wight County Press. In her obituary in 1936, it was recalled how G F Watts had referred to her image as ‘Quite Divine’ and how all who knew her loved her.

Each of the maids accomplished something that was a reflection of Julia Margaret Cameron’s photographs. Mary Ryan shook off her beggar roots and became the Lady, her education not going to waste as Henry Taylor had grimly predicted. She moved from the bottom to almost the top of the Victorian social scale, wife of a peer and an MP, so easily can be seen as the greatest success. However it is Mary Hillier we return to when we talk about Julia Margaret Cameron, hers is the image that we arguably think of as typifying Mrs Cameron’s art.

For I'm to be Queen of the May Mother Julia Margaret Cameron
(Mary Hillier second left back, Mary Ryan centre)

It could be argued that through her photographs Julia Margaret Cameron predicted the lives of her maids. In Mary Ryan she saw a woman whose origins were forgotten in the face of her beauty, whom she referred to as her real life ‘Beggar Maid’ awaiting her King Cophetua, elevated all the way to Lady Cotton, late of the colonies. Mary Hillier became the mother to many children and beloved Madonna to an entire community who cherished her and her memory. She was their link to the golden years in Freshwater, of Mrs Cameron, Watts, and Tennyson. In Mary Hillier, it is possible that Mrs Cameron in turn saw a cipher for Freshwater, the peace, security and nurturing sought by her circle, who remained golden even after they had gone.

As you will know if you follow my work, I am very Fanny-centric. Imagine my delight, fair reader, when I discovered there was a play about Fanny Cornforth, using her to view the life and work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the circle of women that inspired his art and filled his love life. Not only that, the same actress, Julia Munrow, plays all the roles of Fanny, Elizabeth Siddal and Jane Morris. How could I resist?

I got in contact with the playwright Joan Greening to ask her more...

Q. When and where did you first experience the Pre-Raphaelites?

I have been interested in art from a young age and I feel I have always been aware of the Pre-Raphaelites. I think it was originally Millais' Ophelia which made me take notice of the Pre-Raphaelites as I am also a Shakespeare fan. Once I had noticed the Brotherhood, I began to search out their paintings and became intrigued by their technique and obvious love of nature. I then discovered their personal lives was became fascinated with them all. I particularly like how they all inter-connect as a group.

Q. What drew you to Rossetti?

I wanted to write a one woman show for Julia who is an astoundingly good actress. I thought that a number of characters played by the same person would be different and intriguing. My thoughts then went to Rossetti who had a number of women in his life and his appalling treatment of Elizabeth Siddal. I could see a play that surrounded him, made him an awful/appealing off stage character and would give Julia enormous scope for her talent.

Q. Similarly, what drew you to Fanny Cornforth?

I chose to tell the story from Fanny's perspective because I have always liked her feisty character. I also believe she was devoted to him and he spoke about her at the end of his life. I find that very touching and heart breaking that she wasn't allowed to see him.

Q. What do you want people to take away from your play in terms of the dynamic between the painter and his muses?

I simply want people to enjoy the play and laugh and cry with Fanny. She has some very funny lines but the thrust of the play is very sad. The play suggests that Rossetti was a charismatic man who needed women to be his muses but was incapable of being faithful. Such was his appeal that women loved him no matter how he treated them.

Q. What do you make of any of the other plays/films/tv based on the Pre-Raphaelites and their love lives? Why do you think we find it so fascinating and focus so much on this aspect?

I have seen was the recent t.v. series which I thought was great fun but historically inaccurate and I particularly objected to the portrayal of Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. Rossetti was believable although far too good looking! I also saw the film Effie which I thought was very dull. A non-consummated marriage is a riveting subject but somehow the film never came to life. Each of the Pre-Raphaelites had a very interesting love-life. There were so many scandals in such a straight laced age. Complicated love lives are always far more interesting to write about than an ordinary marriage!

Julia Munrow in Rossetti's Women

As I mentioned, Julia Munrow plays the roles of all three of Rossetti's women, an ambitious and clever twist on the complicated love life where the women are often seen at odds with each other. I had the pleasure of asking Julia a few questions about being Fanny...

Q. Before the play, what (if anything) did you know about Fanny?

Before the play, I knew nothing about Fanny. I knew about Lizzie Siddal and had seen some of the TV series - but wasn't aware of Fanny's existence.

Q. What's it like playing all three muses?

It is a fantastic opportunity for an actress to stretch herself but by playing three totally different characters, particularly having to transform yourself in an instant from one to another without the help of costume or lighting changes. It is very physically and emotionally demanding. It is a gift for any actress.

Q. How did you prepare for the part?

Joan made me aware of many of the historical aspects of the three characters and to be honest it is all there in the play so it was a matter of emotionally connecting with the parts that were written.

Q. If you could go back and give Fanny one piece of advice, what would it be?

I think Fanny could give me some advice because she manages the balance between heart and head. Although she clearly loved Rossetti she didn't allow disappointments in love to overwhelm her. She also seemed to have a very sound financial sense and made sure she provided for herself in old age. I also love the way she throws herself into life.

Q. What's your favourite Fanny picture?

My favourite painting of Fanny is Lady Lilith.

Thanks to Joan and Julia for giving me their time and my very best wishes for the play. For more details on Joan's work look on her website here. Rossetti's Women opens 6 August at Venue 278 in Edinburgh, and for tickets call 0131 220 5911. I look forward to hearing further venues and will of course let you know as I'd certainly love to see Julia bring my heroine to life!

A highlight of this year will undoubtedly be the Victoria and Albert Museum's upcoming bicentennial exhibition of Julia Margaret Cameron's work, coming in the autumn. If you can't wait until then, you will be delighted to know that you can buy the catalogue now, splendidly entitled Julia Margaret Cameron: Photographs to electrify you with delight and startle the world...

@ Victoria & Albert Museum Courtesy MACK

The story of the exhibition and the catalogue is not only that of Cameron's excellent photography but the relationship it holds with the V&A. It is not only 200 years since Cameron's birth but also 150 years since her first museum exhibition, held at the South Kensington Museum (the V&A) in 1865. The museum was founded in 1852 using profits from the 1851 Great Exhibition and was intended to educate and inspire British artists, designers and manufacturers, first in Marlborough House, then after 1857 in South Kensington. The South Kensington Museum was the only museum to exhibit Julia Margaret Cameron in her lifetime but also the museum that most extensively collected her work. Further to this in 1868, Henry Cole, the museum's director, gave Cameron two rooms to use as a studio, making her the first artist in residence. This is the story of an artist and a collection, explored through letters, diaries and exploration of her art.

Annie (1864)
@ Victoria & Albert Museum Courtesy MACK

The book is wonderful, not only because of the information it contains but because of the design of it. The book is split between an opening essay explaining Cameron's craft and her relationship with the V&A and other photographers, through to her plates which stretch almost a hundred pages. There is then a catalogue of all the Cameron works in the V&A (which is an unexpected godsend for researchers) together with how they were acquired, then finally to Cameron's letters to Cole both in actual image and transcription.

After the Manner of the Elgin Marbles (1867)
@ Victoria & Albert Museum Courtesy MACK

The plates are split into Portraits, Madonna Groups and Fancy Subjects for Pictorial Effect, then sections entitled 'Electrify and Startle', 'Fortune as well as Fame', her work on Tennyson's Idylls of the King and finally 'Her Mistakes Were Her Successes', reflecting different aspects of her craft both in the way she would have described the photographs and in our modern appreciation of her experiments and happy accidents. Although she had a concern with earning money, which is usually overlooked when discussing her work, she does not seem to have compromised her vision or tempered her relentless pursuit of things and people that filled her work with passion.

One surprise of the catalogue is an otherwise little known photograph by Oscar Rejlander taken during his stay in Freshwater in 1863. This photograph of Mary Ryan and Mary Kellaway, two maids at Dimbola, was already well known...

Maids Drawing Water at Freshwater (1863-4) Oscar Rejlander

...the following had not been recognised as the same scene but from the other direction, with the house at the photographer's house. Now backgrounding the two maids is a glazed house, the 'glass house' of Julia Margaret Cameron's Annals of My Glass House which she was to make her studio.

The Idylls of the Village or The Idols of the Village (1863)
Oscar Rejlander with possible collaboration with Julia Margaret Cameron

When I received the catalogue I was immediately struck by the beautiful design of it. The cover is matt and free of text, just the beautiful photograph of Julia Stephen, mounted like a photograph. The ink throughout is sepia and there is a change in paper quality between the essays and appendix and the plates, making it easy to navigate quickly from section to section. Appendix 1 which contains thumbnail pictures of all the V&A collection of her pictures is ridiculously helpful to me as I compile a biography of Mary Hillier and I appreciated the fact that the catalogue is generally presented as a tool for study as well as a thing of beauty. Marta Weiss at the V&A and MACK are to be congratulated on an innovative and classy catalogue that examines Julia Margaret Cameron as not only a photographer but also a business woman and passionate artist. It does writer, publisher and subject credit.

Beatrice (1866)
@ Victoria & Albert Museum Courtesy MACK

For further details on the catalogue see MACK website (here) or the V&A shop (here).
Details for the exhibition which runs from 28th November can be found here.

It all started when I watched It Follows this week...

I am a sucker for a 'curse' film, where the likeable protagonist accidentally gets the attention of a grumpy entity, bent on nastiness. Films such as The Woman in Black, The Ring (in Japanese for purists, or the fairly decent remake if you are not feeling like subtitles) or Drag Me To Hell all have people stumbling into the bad books of ghosts who want to kill them. The reason I particularly liked It Follows is that the motive of the entity is never explained. There is no lost child, no awful childhood, it just exists and the heroine spends the entire movie either running away from it or attempting to kill it. When I considered that, it brought to mind this...

The Lady of Shalott (1888) John William Waterhouse

I have seen much written in the past on the nature of the Lady of Shalott's curse. Why was she cursed? Who cursed her? No doubt there is probably a Shalott Origins story somewhere, but on the whole we do not know the details of the curse, just its rule and the result of breaking that rule. 'The Lady of Shalott' is one of those poems that is at the heart of what we think of as 'Pre-Raphaelite' due to its perceived repetition and presence in the early years of the movement. In fact it is one of those subjects that seems to book-end the entire movement.

The Lady of Shalott (1857) Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The Lady of Shalott (1890-1905) William Holman Hunt

What was the attraction of Tennyson's poem? Taken at its very core it's a poem about a sudden and unexplained death. Both Rossetti and Hunt suffered the deaths of their wives, and such deaths were not uncommon. Tennyson himself lost his best friend, Arthur Hallam, taken so suddenly in 1833, the same year as the poem was published. So is Arthur Hallam the Lady of Shalott?

Bust of Arthur Hallam Francis Chantry

It is without doubt that the sudden death of Arthur Hallam had a profound effect and influence on Tennyson's poetry but as he presumably wrote 'The Lady of Shalott' well in advance of publication, it was unlikely to have cast its shadow over that particular verse. The theme is the same though, death that just comes for no good reason, whether it is looking out of a window or going on holiday to Vienna.

The Lady of Shalott William Maw Egley

The reason that It Follows surprised me was the lack of back story, something that also frustrates readers of 'The Lady of Shalott'. By denying the reader that knowledge, Tennyson firmly roots his poem in the past when science had not yet illuminated cause and effect. Whilst it is undeniably supernatural in nature, in the age of science the curse would be explained away, given a backstory and motivation. In the same way that the Discovery Channel run 'scientific' programmes explaining the Plagues of Egypt or Noah's Ark (thereby entirely missing the point of faith), we need to have everything, no matter how mystical, explained and rationalised. In horror movies I suppose it exists to reassure the viewer that with that knowledge they would outsmart the evil or at least vanquish it. If the Lady of Shalott knew the cause of her curse she would be able to appease the spirit for its terrible childhood and make off with Lancelot and his shiny thighs. Everyone would be happy. Tennyson gives no explanation, just the fact that there is a curse and you have to abide by the rules. So is it a woman problem?

"I am half sick of shadows" said the Lady of Shalott Sidney Harold Meteyard

At the heart of 'The Lady of Shalott' is a woman who broke the rules, so did Tennyson think women should know their place? That seems unlikely as I have never seen Tennyson as a particularly sexist writer, even by the norms of the nineteenth century. It doesn't seem very likely that the poem is about the misadventure of women who stray beyond their sphere and attempt to participate in the outside world and feel all sexy. Plenty of poems probably exist on that subject but 'The Lady of Shalott' isn't one of them, so what was he getting at?

The Lady of Shalott Henry Peach Robinson

The bare facts of the story are these: the woman lives in a tower. If she looks out of the window she will die. She has to leave the tower to complete this, it seems. It is the irresistible pull of the outside world that enacts the curse. She leaves the tower, gets in the boat, by the time she floats down to Camelot, she is dead. She doesn't die of lovesickness, or pine away like other doomed heroines, it is the act of living, or feeling alive that kills her.

The Lady of Shalott Elizabeth Siddal

I wonder if Elizabeth Siddal was thinking the same thing as me when she did the above drawing. She, like many women, had the experience of miscarriage. In some ways 'The Lady of Shalott' can be seen as a metaphor for still-birth, the child alive within the safety of the mother but then not, once out in the world. In times before the many and various tests we undergo now while pregnant, the outcome of pregnancy and birth were without backstory, without reason. What it lacked in explanation it made up for in danger and the whole process terrified and baffled the most reasonable of people. That's a little too specific though, for a man in his mid twenties. I doubt Tennyson, no matter how empathic I find his verse, wrote a metaphor for still-birth, but I do believe I'm in the right area.

The Lady of Shalott (c.1894) J W Waterhouse

When the Lady decides to participate in the outside world, it kills her. I think what Tennyson is showing us is the moment of birth to death in a blink of an eye. While in the tower, she is safe but she is unable to remain there, she is going to look and that will be it. The curse is life. Life is what kills us, which is entirely true, but the positivity or negativity of that statement depends on your attitude. Tennyson hands us a life in a heartbeat, gone before you even reaches your destination. The Lady brings with her the tapestry she has been working on, but to what end? She is evaluated by the crowd at Camelot but she is dead and so will never know what they said. Is Tennyson making a statement on how he will be remembered, how he will be weighed up at the end of his life? Is Tennyson saying that the curse is life? It is sobering to think of a young man seeing life as a scrabble to shove your achievements in a boat before the end, but that's what it amounts to. To think of life as the Curse that befalls us all makes you consider the state of mind of the poet, and one can only imagine how the death of his friend the same year it was published galvanised this view. To live is to walk towards death and oblivion, or in Tennyson's case, take a boat, it's quicker.

As the poem continues to have a strange resonance with us after all these years, possibly we all feel like that in the end.

I have a random memory of being very young and an elderly relative telling me seriously that while out in town I should be aware of the dangers of white slavery. Apparently, you're shopping one moment and the next you wake up in a harem. Whilst being equally racist and wishful thinking on the part of the relative (who I know had a thing about Omar Sharif), now I am a grown-up I see a lot of that mind-set in a genre of Victorian art. Who's for a bit of Turkish delight...?

After the Raid Edward Hale

The perils of nice white women being enslaved by rambunctious foreigners seems to cover quite a bit of history. Hale chose to start with Vikings as an excuse for some nudity (why would you need to abduct a clothed slave?) but a great part of Victorian art seemed to concentrate on the classical period...

A Roman Slave Market Jean Leon Gerome

Gerome seems to have made an entire career out of painting nudey women in slave auctions. All his works sit comfortably within the aesthetic framework of ancient times and the Romans who were literate and therefore perfectly alright.

The Slave Market in Roman Jean Leon Gerome

Sale of a Slave Girl in Rome (1884) Jean Leon Gerome

The last one is particularly disturbing but as everyone looks jolly it's bound to be fine. After all if you were to buy another human being obviously you'll worry about their teeth. Yikes. Anyway, the slave-girl images of Roman are just a titillating extension from other classical beauties from the likes of Leighton and Alma Tadema. They chose to barely drape their women in see-through gowns, whereas Gerome dispenses with the pretence of clothing. Not a lady-garden in sight, mark you, all our Roman slave girls are built like marble statues, possibly because that's what the artist used as a model. It's all classical therefore not at all sexy and very intellectual.

The Romans invented aqueducts and the Times New Roman font for goodness sake, and there is nothing sexy about either of them.

This however is another matter...

The Turkish Bath (1863) Jean-Auguste Ingres

The myth of the Arabian/Ottoman harem is decidedly sexual. The Victorians had a real lust (for want of a better word) for the notion of English (or European) women ending up in the exotic harem (complete with pool) of a chap no doubt in roomy trousers and probably a beard. Pornographic novels such as The Lustful Turk, published in 1828 but not widely available until the 1890s, and A Night in a Moorish Harem (1896) throw upstanding (ahem) members (sorry) of the British Isles into the nudey hell of a harem in some unspecified African/Turkish place, replete with floggings, all manner of sexual shenanigans and lots of concubines. Harems are often packed tighter than battery hens, if Ingres is anything to go by, and there is usually a pool of some description. A bit like Pontins then.

The Harem John Frederick Lewis

What I can gather about harems from art is that there are nice big windows with lots of dark woodwork cut in Moorish patterns, lots of billowing silk throws and pillows and little tables containing fruits and lovely ceramics. Well, that's what you get in a John Lewis harem. Very nice and it comes with a small deer/antelope.

The Bitter Draught of Slavery (1885) Ernest Normand

There is definitely a theme of the repression and conversely the nymphomania of lovely European women. Whilst in The Bitter Draught of Slavery, the new recruit to the harem seems very unhappy and traumatised to find herself in the palace, it doesn't seem to take very long for her to get to this state...

The White Slave (1888) Jean Lecomte du Nouy

All it takes is a comfy cushion, a glass of something alcoholic and some pre-peeled fruit and off come the clothes. Apparently this is also true of harems.

Odalisque (1858) Henri Pierre Picou

So what's going on? Why did the artists of Empire-conquering elites feel the need to perpetuate this myth? Apart from the occasional abduction of a camp follower from the colonial wars, this is the stuff of fantasy, so what was the point?

The Harem Beauty Adrien Henri Tanoux

Aesthetically speaking, it is an excuse to paint some beautiful patterns, glorious tiles, copper urns, glorious architecture and obviously, wonderfully commercial women. However offensive the ethos behind the images, the pictures are pleasing to the eye, full of beautiful people and things. They kindle fantasy; for an audience in rainy, grey London it must have seemed like paradise.

Odalisque Edward Henry Corbould

It could easily be dismissed as part and parcel of Empire, but is it an act of envy or fear? It would be easy to read it as expressions of fear, that the conqueror would fear reprisals be enacted upon the women, that land stolen would be retaken in the bodies of wives and daughters. This would be especially terrifying if the women were seen to enjoy it. The majority of the Odalisque/Harem scenes have the European women at total ease in their belly-dancing garb. Did the elite fear that the 'others' could never be completely conquered as they will always be seductive?

The Favourite Fernand Cormon

It's hard to tell the date of the scenes, so it's difficult to see if the artist was showing a contemporary or a historical scene. If the harems are historical, then were they being used as proof that colonialism was right as it brought order and underclothes to the all-too-relaxed foreigners. If the scenes were meant to be contemporary, as the literature seemed to suggest, then possibly they were seen as a reason why the colonies required a firm white hand at the controls. Left to their own devices in their own lands, foreigners are just a hookah pipe away from orgies, tigers and Turkish delight and that sort of thing will never do. For some reason.

Odalisque Constantin Font

Was it a comment on the nature of women? The Victorian period had its fair share of female travellers, making the most of expanded ways to travel abroad and be a tourist. Some of them even went alone! The horror. Add to this the question of female rights and roles and it might have been felt that women needed to be put in their place. A number of white slavery and harem stories and images can be put down to female foolishness, straying out alone, going where only men should go. The woman in the harem is a brutal reminder that life in a nice house in England with a nice husband who doesn't really bother you with "conjugal unpleasantness" (or "matters of the trouser" as it is also known) is all you should really dream of. Step outside that and you will be plunged into a hell of sex, heat, tiled pools and fresh fruit. I mean, what kind of existence is that?!

Odalisque Ferdinand Roybet

It has to be pointed out that apart from a couple of instances, the women in the harems don't look unhappy. What did that say about the appetites of women? It could be wondered if the male artists who produced these scenes were judging women whose unbridled sexual appetites were equal to the foreigners. Take a corset off a woman and she's rolling around on a fur holding a parrot before you know it. This double edged sword of both judgement and fear in the matter of female sexuality and the ability of others to understand and respond to it is ever present in the works of art, but I would suggest that the balance leans towards judgement. Women's sexuality needs to be controlled or else all manner of things happen including consensual polygamy and suggested lesbianism. Down with that sort of thing! We can't have women making that sort of (or any) decision for themselves!

The White Slave Trade (1895) Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida

The sad truth of white slavery is all too apparent these days, a reflection of the painting above where young women are shipped to a foreign country with ideas of a better life only to end up in prostitution. The rose-scented paradise of the harem were a reaction to our exploration of the world, the traditional misunderstanding of other cultures, tinged with prejudice and fear. The sexual enslavement of women were possibly a reaction to the behaviour of Colonial powers, a metaphor to what the western world was doing to others.

Bought for the Harem (1891) Alexander Russov

Either way, despite their beauty, the harem fantasy of nineteenth century art makes uncomfortable viewing: the unspecified Arabian/Moorish/Turkish harem owners are evil enslavers of women with unquenchable sexual appetites and all women once loosened from their corsets become nymphomaniacs. It's interesting to think that the white colonists could conqueror a hearty slice of the world but not their own sexual fears...

Sometimes when researching in old newspapers you are taken by surprise at the vehement response to a painting which nowadays seems tame. In 1879 one painting rocked the art world at its very foundations and made people question the very roots of Christianity, not to mention the nature of beauty, truth and faith. Brace yourselves, I'm about to show you that painting.

Are you braced?

Here we go then...

The Annunciation (1876-79) Edward Burne-Jones

To understand how this picture dominated the art news of Spring 1879, we must go back a few years to the birth of the Grosvenor Gallery...

The entrance of the Grosvenor Gallery, 1877

Founded in 1877, the Grosvenor Art Gallery was founded by artist Sir Coutts Lindsay and his (also artist) wife, Blanche, as an outlet for the art they thought needed to be seen. It became a focus for artists who did not fit with the Royal Academy, whose tastes became the epitome of aestheticism, as opposed to the traditional RA. The way the spring exhibitions were chosen caused much discussion. With the Royal Academy, a 'Hanging Committee' held the power to reject works submitted by artists, causing much heartbreak. At the Grosvenor there was no submission without invitation by Sir Coutts Lindsay, and if you got the invite then your picture would be on the wall. It was one man's taste and that was that. According to the Royal Cornwall Gazette, it encouraged any artist who were 'the refined embodiment of genius which will never condescend to submit its productions to the discretionary powers of fallible hanging committees' and who were interested in art for arts sake, not some rather unseemly scrabble for fame in a public competition which was what the RA had become, in their opinion.

Inside the west gallery in the Grosvenor Gallery, May 1877

So far, so good, but that is just the opinion of the Royal Cornwall Gazette. Possibly, the idea that one man could rival the establishment's idea of good taste was not to everyone's liking. Which brings me to May 1879...

The first reviews arrived around 2nd May and unlike the year before, which had been successful, these were not so glowing. The Leeds Mercury started the ball rolling: 'Sir Coutts Lindsay can hardly be congratulated on the collection of pictures which he has brought together for the Summer Exhibition at his gallery'. There was a profusion of 'positively bad work' and paintings that were only interesting because they were damn right weird. The pictures were full of 'soulless creatures who gaze vacantly from so many canvases' who only inspired the viewer to depression. The majority of the artists displaying works come in for criticism, from Alma Tadema and Lord Leighton to Whistler and Holman Hunt, but the final words are saved for Edward Burne-Jones and the five pictures he submitted to the exhibition. The Annunciation has 'all the peculiarities of the artist's style', and the Pygmalion series are shown in 'a thoroughly original manner, but not in a way to disarm criticism'.

Pygmalion and Galatea: The Godhead Fires (1878) Edward Burne-Jones

Although the Leeds Mercury took a fairly dim view of the content of the exhibition, others found much to praise. The weekly national paper, the Era published a rather more glowing review on 4th May. After criticising the 'elaborate system' pursued by the Royal Academy, they found Lindsay's way of working to be fair and consistent, allowing the public to see great art that they otherwise might not get to see. There was definitely a feeling that Lindsay was seen as 'one of the people', just a rich one who gets to show other people of taste the art they would like without any of the internal politicking of the rather more 'faceless' Royal Academy. Sir Coutts Lindsay was putting his name on the line by openly saying 'this is my taste, come and see' and many newspapers, especially in the regions seemed to appreciate this approach.

It wasn't all good news in the Era review. Pygmalion got the thumbs up for its 'remarkable power and originality' but The Annunciation was dismissed in one line - 'No.166, The Annunciation, must certainly be considered a failure'. There was no explanation, just that one line.

Punch's cartoon of an aesthetic poster (1881)

By 10th May, there had been enough reviews and publicity of the exhibition that a satirical poem was published in The Examiner, by the dramatist and critic Henry Savile Clarke. The rather creepy poem tells of how he is in love with an 18 year old girl who adores aestheticism. The narrator doesn't share the passion for art but fakes it for love of the lady: 'Her talk is of Morris's Lily, / and things that are "precious" and "sweet", / I feel it's consumedly silly, / But still I bend low at her feet.' There are mentions of living up to your china, and the Grosvenor Gallery, with Burne-Jones'Pygmalion hanging behind them as they view the paintings and he dreams of a 'soda-and-b'. There are definite shades of what would come in 1881 with Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience, with 'sage-green' clothes and blue china, when all the chap is after is the young lady: 'I always was very mimetic, / and so with my arm round her waist, / I feel I'm becoming aesthetic, / A person of taste!'

Although not a review per se, the poem shows how the attention to the exhibition also reflected people's attitude to aestheticism and the Grosvenor in general. Clarke's girl may only love the art 'because it's in fashion' rather than any actual appreciation of the art itself and is probably as big a faker as the narrator, a position that may well be extended to all the Grosvenor's clientele.

By 12th May, discussion had gathered pace and The Standard weighed in with their review which alluded to the situation: 'Mr Burne-Jones's work at the Grosvenor Gallery is far too thoughtful and individual to be dismissed with a few disparaging words, but it is also far too deficient in some of the most necessary qualities of noble art to be held, by a quite reasonable judgment, as worthy of unmodified ecstasy.' His work is filled with 'serious thought' and 'ordered beauty' but their concern was in his use of 'the worn and wasted type' of model he had used in his art and was present in the form of the Virgin (modelled for by Julia Stephen, niece of Julia Margaret Cameron) and the figure of Venus in the Pygmalion series. It seemed to be the first time a review mentioned the two figures specifically as being the problems in the works, but it certainly wasn't the last.

It really came to a head on 16th May. The Royal Cornwall Gazette gave the gallery and its exhibition a good review but that sentiment was not shared by the Pall Mall Gazette in their review that just concentrated on Watts and Burne-Jones and how rubbish they both were. The Annunciation was described as 'unquestionably faulty, and faulty in the highest degree', complaining that if the angel had come to declare that the Virgin was to give birth to the bring of 'ruin on the human race' then their miserable expressions would have been fitting. The piece attacked in no uncertain terms the fact that the news brought by the angel was of glory and honour rather than misery, and that was the fault of the Burne-Jones school who see 'joy, rightly considered is melancholy and glory despair'. They went on to say that Burne-Jones should be warned that his inability to show any other emotion than despair 'may damage his reputation' as they could not believe anyone would choose to show the Virgin Mary like that.

As for Pygmalion, their attack centred on the feet of Venus: 'It would do the rhapsodist critic good if he will scan that bit of drawing [the foot of Venus], recollecting that the great toe is not meant for a tinker's thumb; but that the whole foot - with those hideous nails imbedded in the flesh, and every line bearing testimony to congenital bad form distorted by tight boots - is the foot of the Goddess of Beauty.' In concluding, the writer states that you will find 'nothing so revoltingly bad as Venus's foot', although the rest is pretty awful.

The Horror!

This might have passed as just another bad review had it not been for the letters page of the Pall Mall Gazette. Four days after the review, there appeared a very odd letter from 'Q.T.', entitled 'A Challenge'. Describing himself as a gentleman in his 40s who has always gone about in ill-fitting shoes, he raised a wager that his 'pedal extremities' were more beautiful than Burne-Jones' Venus's feet. Going further he bet that any man off the street would have nicer feet than the goddess and he bet any amount of money up to £5,000. If he won, Q.T. offered to take his winnings in paintings from the Grosvenor, although obviously nothing by Burne-Jones. Hilarious indeed.

Three days later came another response, this time from 'S.C.' who suggests that rather than asking any random man off the street if their feet are nicer than Burne-Jones can paint, three foreign artists who are well known in England should be asked their opinion of Burne-Jones in general and The Annunciation in particular. The Pall Mall followed the letter with the response that no three artists could be found because 'Every Christian knows that the Annunciation ought not to be treated as a deplorable event, and no artistic training is necessary to perceive that Venus ought not to be represented with a foot that the least sensitive of kitchen-maids would be ashamed to reveal.'

The Pall Mall Gazette were mistaken as less than a week later just such a letter arrived from Alphonse Legros, William Blake Richmond and Sidney Colvin, three Slade Professors of Art, and well-known artists, and all willing to give their approval to Burne-Jones and his Annunciation which they felt to be 'of the very highest order both of imaginative and technical power'. You'd think that would be an end of it but obviously the Pall Mall Gazette could have the last word in response to the letter. They maintained that dozens of artists would be happy to come forward to disagree with the three Slade professors and anyway the professors didn't say in full that the Annunciation was a sad event and that Venus's feet should look like that so their letter was pointless. So there.

The letter from the Professors drew even more attention to the argument, as reported in the Evening Telegraph, the letter quoted in full without comment. Furthermore when Colvin wrote a longer piece explaining why exactly he felt Burne-Jones was justified in portraying the annunciation in whatever manner he wanted, the Pall Mall Gazette were quick to respond. All of a sudden expressing your opinion in full was akin to bullying, according to the PMG, and they literally quoted chapter and verse, stating that Burne-Jones reflected nothing that appeared in the Bible, just his 'same expression of woebegone weariness' and that Professor Colvin was nothing but 'disingenuous' to quote scripture. So there. Again.

A Private View (1883) William Powell Frith

If the whole puzzling scrap tells us anything then possibly it should be to not bother challenging a newspaper's opinion because they will always get the last word, or at least behave that they have. The ferocity of the correspondence does hint that the problem was about more than a sad virgin and a goddess' toe. Burne-Jones and the Grosvenor were seen as one and the same in a number of the reviews and herein lies the problem. Why bother attacking a man and his gallery just because you don't like the way he operates when you can dismiss his choices as faulty thereby calling into question the whole ethos of the Grosvenor? The Grosvenor was praised for its transparent selection process, either Lindsay liked you or he didn't, but in setting themselves up against the RA, either on purpose or just by association, , the Grosvenor was seen to present itself as the arbiter of taste. Fashion followed him which no doubt put shillings in the till but also attracted ridicule which would continue in the 1880s through Patience. In their review of the Royal Academy's exhibition The Graphic felt the need to preface it with an attack on the Grosvenor, calling it an arena of 'unwholesome passions'. With his painting of the crowds at a private view at a London art gallery, William Powell Frith wrote

"Beyond the desire of recording for posterity the aesthetic craze as regards dress, I wished to hit the folly of listening to self-elected critics in matters of taste, whether in dress or art. I therefore planned a group, consisting of a well-known apostle of the beautiful, with a herd of eager worshippers surrounding him."

He seems to be expressing the prevailing feeling that one man, a self-elected critic in the matter of taste, is only followed by the foolish (and mainly female, like Savile's young aesthetic maiden).

Interestingly, the gallery Frith chose to show in 1883 was the Royal Academy. Don't tell the Pall Mall Gazette...

You find me in the midst of the summer holidays, which means I am now working funny hours. Because we have the lovely Lily-Rose to look after, Mr Walker and I take it in turns to be at home, alternating our weeks in and out of work. As I normally work part-time, I extend my working week to full time and then take the next week off. It's rather complex and utterly knackering as I change my journey to work from a 45 minute drive (maximum) to 2 and a half hours each way, incorporating a 10 mile walk and hour long train journey. The walking loses its novelty after a couple of days but I like the train as it gives me time to think and write. It even has a faint air of Victorian romance about it. Well, sort of...

The Departure (1885) Cesar Pattein

There is a glamour that clings desperately to rail travel, earned in the days of steam (if you had a bit of money) where elegant women sat on rigorously upholstered seats and looked wistfully out of the window at the countryside. Sadly, in my little bit of railway I don't get to see much in the way of haystacks, smock-clad yokels or ploughs but I do see a bit of seaside as I hurtle into Portsmouth. Otherwise it is an unending line of B&Q, Fitness First and scrubby railway sidings. Maybe that is what lies behind the above lady's expression - 'Did I already pass that KFC? Where on earth am I? Did I doze off again?'

The Travelling Companions (1862) Augustus Egg

It's good to have a companion while travelling to poke you awake at the relevant station. If possible, travel with your doppleganger as by a nifty combination of hiding in the loo and keeping a look-out you can possibly get away with one ticket. I still maintain that The Travelling Companions is a picture of one woman at different points in her journey and her companions are her book and her picnic. Thinking about it though I'm not sure how effectively you would be able hide in that amount of skirt. A giant skirt is a good way of getting a double seat to yourself and a lot more elegant than a rucksack.

Scene in a Railway Carriage with a Man and Two Women (1872) Benjamin Vautier the Elder

See, this is the sort of nonsense that can happen if you don't get the seat to yourself. I've never actually had some bloke fall asleep on me, thank goodness although my worst railway encounter was much more awful. I got stuck in a train carriage with a contingent from a fascist organisation who told the conductor that I was smoking the dope that he could smell (the conductor rolled his eyes at me and mouthed 'I know, I know...') and shouted abuse at anyone who wasn't them. They then announced they were going to rip the carriage apart when the police arrived. It made the journey a little more bracing than I like, I can tell you. On the scale of awful, I'd rather have the Rossetti lookalike doze off against me.

To the Relatives (1891) Leonid Pasternak

This is a very sober scene of travel. I especially like how neatly packaged the woman in morning is compared to the flowing gown of her sister, or is it her wet nurse? Our lady in black is not looking best pleased at the trip to her family but her bereavement may well be the cause of her devestation rather than having to spend time with relatives. Probably.

Coming South: Perth Station (1895) George Earl

The Victorians loved a railway scene as it combined their twin passions of progress and judging people. All sorts of people could be on a railway platform from criminals to royalty giving ample scope for vignettes of human interest.

Going North: King's Cross Station, London (1893) George Earl

There is usually a fair amount of still-life, with the assortment of luggage. Earl seems quite keen on his dogs too, echoing their owners in anthropomorphic interplay. Or maybe he just liked dogs.

Cannon Street Station (1908) Algernon Talmage

This is a particularly beautiful picture, capturing the steam rising from the engines in the great glass arches of the roof. In the dim light, women in pastel Edwardian gowns hurry as best they can to board a train or meet a loved one. A cab waits patiently for a fare, its dim lamps making spots of light by the platform. All is blurry and atmospheric.

Farewell (1900) Robert Hillingford

As I talked about in my post about wives and girlfriends of military-types, the Victorians loved a scene of tragic parting. Handsome soldiers bid goodbye to their beloveds before boarding the TRAIN OF DOOM. 'I'll be back soon, my darling!' Yeah, right.

Farewell to the Light Brigade (1870) Robert Collinson

It's a bit previous for his wife to get her black clothes out but it's probably a good thing because we all know he is not coming back, just as surely as we know he will knock off his hat trying to get his head back in that window. He said to her 'I always wanted to travel first class!' and she replied 'Probably best to do it on the journey out then....'

The Departure, Second Class (1855) Abraham Solomon

The Victorian obsession with social mobility through hard work can be seen in railway pictures. This young man is going forth into the world to make his fortune and become a thoroughly upstanding, and more importantly wealthy, young man.

The Return, First Class (1855) Abraham Solomon

The difference between first and second class is marked but not as extreme as you'd think. Second class looks clean and honest but drab. The people look nice but there is a solemn understanding that this is not the jolly side of life. When our young hero comes back, the seats are richly studded, there are flowers and rosy cheeked maidens. He's become an officer, hence his sword on the right, and can talk to receptive fathers about his prospects and intentions. The man behind him in the first picture is also a sailor and so it could be argued that his rise to first class status was not guaranteed but he has applied himself to the opportunities available (possibly some of those listed in the posters on the back wall of the second class carriage) and now he can apply himself to the opportunity of the rosy cheeked girl in first class.

Waiting (1896) Gordon Coutts

The bit I don't like is waiting around on drafty platforms, or in the case of this week, sweaty platforms. This young lady is managing to look deliciously bored and stylish all at once as she waits for either a train or a loved one. I'm guessing it's a train as the suitcase next to her speaks of travel away on the rails behind her. Maybe she is waiting for someone to join her on her adventure?

The Return Home (1873) George Hicks

Far too much adventure has been had by these two who are coming home with bouquets of flowers. At least they are quiet because we have all been on a train with noisy kids. Some of us have been the parents of noisy kids on trains and that can been mortifying. Mercifully since the advent of Minecraft silence rules the Walker travelling party but when Lily was a loud and mobile toddler I remember losing her under the table only to have her appear again shoving floor-crisps into her mouth. The horror.

Train poster advertising the 5 hour train journey from Paris to Cabourg

Now this is more my idea of fun - semi-naked sea-bathing in Edwardian splendour. All this can be yours in around 5 hours! A lot of gentlemen have travelled to do a bit of swimming. Obviously the idea of bobbing around in the briny ocean is the only incentive that brought them to Cabourg.

Well, I have a summer of rail travel ahead of me so I will keep the glamour of Cabourg in mind, although the reality is somewhat more like this...

This is how glamorous 6.30am looks (not very)

Happy travelling!

I really need to be careful or I shall end up being known as the Mad Art Historian due to the amount of time I spend reading asylum records, but while artists and models continue to be mad, I shall be there to see what happens to them. Off I go to The Art of Bedlam: Richard Dadd at the Watts' Gallery in Compton...

Most people will know one thing about Richard Dadd - he killed his father after going bonkers in the East. If you know one picture by Dadd, it'll be this one...

The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke (1855-64)

All those among us that have Queen II can now start singing, as this is The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, a tiny little canvas packed full of details. A 'Fairy Feller' is posed with his axe to crack open a nut as various fairy-folk watch. The paint is almost three dimensional, the different layers separating the spaces, with the whole scene slightly obscured by the grasses in the front. I spent a fair amount of time with two ladies trying to find the tiny figures dancing on the brim of the hat of the bearded chap in the centre of the image. That alone nearly drove us mad.

Detail of The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke

This is such an intense picture, forcing you to get closer until all you can see is the odd little world. If ever a picture wanted to express the feeling of mental illness, this is a perfect example because it sucks you in and focuses you on nothing else. There are oddly grotesque little moments too as well as moments of beauty. Although this picture is very much connected with his insanity, it wasn't the first time he had attempted such a subject.

Puck (1841)

Before he embarked on the Eastern Tour with Thomas Phillips, Dadd was already painting fairies in this image of a slightly malevolent Puck. Not crammed full of the detail that would fill his post 1843 fairy images, it still is rather odd.

The Halt in the Desert (1842-5)

Thomas Phillips chose Dadd to accompany him on a tour as his draughtsman and to begin with the journey went well, as can be seen in pictures such as The Halt in the Desert. His watercoloured works are gentle and powdery rather than the more vivid works of Holman Hunt which I am more used to. I rather like the dreamlike quality of Dadd's desert nights and an ironic calm that infuses his scenes. As they were travelling home, Dadd became ill which was firstly ascribed to sunstroke but then it was clear that more was wrong. His parents removed him to the countryside on his return where he killed his father believing him to be the devil. Two of Dadd's siblings suffered from paranoid schizophrenia so it is possible that is what caused the crisis. Dadd was apprehended and taken to Bethlem psychiatric hospital (also known as Bedlam).

Bacchanalian Scene (1862)

If my research into Fanny Cornforth has taught me anything it's that confinement to an asylum does not necessarily result in cruelty, isolation and a medical oubliette. Once under the care of Bedlam, Dadd was encouraged to paint in a sort of occupational therapy or a way of explaining his emotions. Included in the exhibition are a set of extraordinarily thought-provoking works entitled Sketches to Illustrate the Passions which show everyday things that contribute to mental illness.

Deceit or Duplicity (1854)

Insignificance (1854)

Including subjects such as Grief, Insignificance and Hatred, each one is a fascinating study of things that drive us as people and if taken too far can result in madness in ourselves and those we influence. Interestingly the personifications of the passions are quiet, still and remarkably steady as if the madness has held them in place. Agony is chained and holding his head, tense and wide eyed, not shrieking or outwardly showing expression. In a way it is more disturbing that we cannot see the normal cries of pain, it's all gone beyond that. Insignificance, also known as Self-Contempt, shows a little man carrying a portfolio almost as large as he is, to a front door where the handle and bell are out of his reach. He scrapes his boots in readiness to enter a building it would be impossible for him to get entry to, a perfect expression of that paradox of people who feel an inferiority complex but often display superiority symptoms in compensation. Somehow the little man with his huge portfolio is both comic and irritating, ridiculous and sympathetic all at once. Does he really think he can enter the building?

Port Stragglin (1861)

The one thing that does strike you about a good deal of Dadd's work is the detail. In work like Port Stragglin it is hard to see everything, the minute points in the imaginary landscape, a rich innerland from Dadd's hospital home.

Contradiction: Oberon and Titania (1854-8)

Dadd painting Contradiction

Dadd's work in the hospitals was made possible by enlightened care from his doctors, resulting in his fairy pictures and many other works. The picture of him painting Contradictions shows him working on the tiny details, his distracted gaze reminding the viewer of his mental state.

Portrait of a Young Man (1853)

A very touching image from the exhibition is this, a portrait of his doctor William Charles Hood who was Physician -Superintendent at Bethlem and acquired Dadd's work, taking a special interest in the artist's work and well-being. Hood was remarkably young when he worked at Bethlem, under 30 years old in this picture, but he also died young too, in 1870.

Wandering Musicians (1878)

I didn't know much about Dadd before I saw this exhibition and now feel I know more than just fairies and madness. Whatever caused Dadd's suffering, his expression of it through art show an infinite world filled with both beauty and horror, violence and love. What is remarkable is the way his pictures draw you in, an intimate whispering of madness until it seems sane and reasonable. The fairy will crack open the nut, but then what will happen?

The Art of Bedlam is on until the 1 November and further details can be found here.

Victoria Olsen

When I moved from looking at Julia Margaret Cameron's photographs to wanting to know more about her life, the first biography I bought was Victoria Olsen's From Life: Julia Margaret Cameron and Victorian Photography. It remains one of my favourite books on the subject as it is written in an engaging manner with obvious attention to detail and wonderful research. Recently when I was searching through Amazon for yet more books, I discovered Victoria had written Wordblind: A Tale of Two Readers, a children's novel in Kindle form, and I loved it. It tells the story of two sisters, May and Annie, living on the Isle of Wight at the end of the nineteenth century. After the death of their mother, the two sisters have to find their place in society, but Annie is dyslexic or 'word blind'. I was so impressed by Victoria's work that I had to have a chat with her...

Q. When did you first come across Julia Margaret Cameron and what held your interest?

I first heard of Cameron during a college course I took on Victorian literature in the 1980s. The professor required us each to choose a related topic from a list, research it, and give an oral presentation to the class about it. I chose Cameron and Victorian photography because I’d always been interested in visual arts (I come from a family of artists and photographers, though I have no talent that way myself). I saw her work in Gernsheim’s classic monograph and was hooked….though Gernsheim’s book (published in 1948!) was very old-fashioned and sometimes patronized her. It made me think that there was much more to say about Cameron and her work.

Q. At what point did you decide to write your biography and why?

The Dream (1869)

After college I went to graduate school to get a Ph.D. in Englishliterature but I remained fascinated by the Victorians. I researched a dissertation on 19th century women’s contributions to newdefinitions of “culture” and I felt it was important to include fields besides writing. Luckily, my dissertation advisor was supportive and I ended up including a chapter on women painters andphotographers (Cameron and Clementina Hawarden). When I graduated and went on the job market, though, I was expecting myfirst child and there were no jobs in my field. I figured I’d spend some time home with the baby and revise the Cameron material into a full-length biography that would update the Gernsheim book…. It took eight years!

Q. One thing that fascinates me about Julia Margaret Cameron is her treatment of her friends, the lengths she went to, the devotion she showed to the men in her life. Do you have a favourite Cameron anecdote?

Sir John Herschel (1867)

There are so many good ones—I think my favourites are the ones where we get a sense of how she treated those Victorian celebrities she photographed. Like when she ruffled her friend and astronomer Sir John Herschel’s hair to get that halo effect. She was quite capable of scolding Tennyson, who was idolized by her peers. She treated those “geniuses” with both reverence and intimacy.

Q. Do you agree with Virginia Woolf’s assessment that she took photographs of ‘Famous Men and Fair Women’, or do you think there is more to her gender assessments than that?

Parting of Lancelot and
Queen Guinevere (1874)

I like Woolf’s assessment because it’s so literary – a perfectlysymmetrical alliterative phrase. But it’s not complete and I’m sure Woolf knew it.Much of Cameron’s work fitsinto neither category– the narrative works to illustrate Tennyson’s Idylls of the King being just one example—but there were also big exceptions within the portraits.For instance, Cameron was dear friends with Anne Thackeray Ritchie, daughter of William Makepeace and a famous woman author in her own right.Woolf grew up with “Aunt Annie” and knew Cameron’s portrait of her well so she knew that Cameron photographed “famous women” too.And, on the flip side, there’s the story from the end of Cameron’s life in Sri Lanka when she is supposed to have photographed her gardener because she was struck by the beauty of his back…

Q. What do you ascribe her continuing and expanding appeal to?

I think the photographs are still compelling and better understood now after decades of new scholarship, but it may be her life that continues to inspire contemporary audiences. Coming late to her career, feeling divided between work and family, battling “trolls” and “haters”—these are ongoing issues today too, especially for women.

Q. What led you to write Word Blind?

It was a confluence of factors: my interest and expertise with Victorian culture, but also my sympathy for those who didn’t easily find their place in it. Reading was so important to the culture and literacy was spreading – but what if you still couldn’t read? How does a culture – or a family—manage members who don’t fit in? And I grew obsessed with the story of Virginia Woolf’s half sister, Laura Stephen, who had some mental disabilities that led her to be institutionalized and ignored by the rest of the family (including Woolf). I wrote an essay about her here. But there wasn’t enough information to write Laura’s story, so I changed details and some issues and fictionalized it.

Q. What are you working on now?

I’m researching something similar, actually. I discovered that Jane Avril, the Moulin Rouge dancer and model for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters in turn of the century Paris, was once institutionalized in a mental hospital famous for its treatment of “hysterical” women. She wrote a memoir that suggested that she “cured” herself by transforming madness into art. That has been fascinating to me: what did she mean by that? how did her life and work reflect the major shifts occurring in art, psychology and gender relations at the time? I am still trying to figure that out, and my first essay on Jane should come out in the October issue of Open Letters Monthly.

I’m also turning WordBlind into an audiobook andFrom Lifeinto an e-book, so I can share those links with you when they’re out.

Q. Finally, do you have a favourite Cameron photo?

Hard to choose! But I love one of Cameron's own favourite photographs of her favourite niece, Julia Jackson (Virginia Woolf's mother).

It shows off many of Cameron’s great strengths—the dramatic lighting and shadow, the stillness of the pose, the intimacy of her relationship to her subjects. But it shows her careful composition too—all those balanced semi-circles make the photograph into a sort of cameo pendant. And then it’s beautiful in ways that are impossible to name or point to as well.Many thanks to Victoria for her time and answers. From Life: Julia Margaret Cameron and Victorian Photography is available here (UK) and here (US) and Wordblind (Kindle book) is available here (UK) or here (US).

This week I am delighted to report I had a dream come true. I became Julia Margaret Cameron. For a day. Well, sort of. On Friday I did a wet collodion process photography course at Dimbola Lodge, the Julia Margaret Cameron Museum...

Annie (1864) Julia Margaret Cameron

In December 1863, Julia Margaret Cameron's daughter and son in law gave her a present to occupy her. She was 48 years old, her husband was away at the family coffee estates in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and her children had grown up. It was felt that the enthusiastic Mrs Cameron needed something to absorb a little of her boundless energy. This came in the form of a camera. Despite claiming in her memoir Annals of My Glass House (1874/1889) that she began her career in photography 'with no knowledge of the art', she had spent some time with the Swedish phtographer Oscar Gustave Rejlander in 1863, and her brother-in-law was the amateur photographer Lord Somers. What is true is that Julia's first solo success in the art of photography was an image of a local girl, Annie Philpot. This marked not only the success in producing the plate but also of printing a photograph from it. Having experienced the excitement and frustration of producing a wet collodion plate, I now understand her delight...

Plate One: The Doomed Polar explorer, or Toby's Mate

Plate Two: A Ghost of Lissa

So, my friends, here is my day at Dimbola Lodge. I was taught how to do this magical process by John Walker, a jolly fine teacher indeed. The weather was at first very cold and misty, and the light was diffused and weak. When we set up the studio space, the exposure needed seemed to be around two minutes. We grabbed a chap to sit for us and set up the scene before going to coat the plate. When we came to expose the plate and capture the image, the sun came out, brief and strong, over-exposing the plate and causing the image to become ghost-like and bleached. The same happened again when the lovely Lissa sat for the second plate. At this point a fair amount of fiddling with shades happened and the exposure time was halved. The result was startlingly better...

Plate Three: The Lovely Lissa

(Please excuse the shine off the glass plate, it's really hard not to get a reflection)

Anyway, as you can see, the reduction in the exposure makes the image suddenly appear. Feeling more confident, John and I moved the camera nearer and the lovely Lissa was patient enough to put up with me for a bit longer.

Victorian photographer in his darkroom

Now the technical bit: First thing to do when taking photographs in this way is to clean your plate. Polish, polish, polish until it squeaks and sparkles. Then the plate is delicately balanced on the fingertips of your right-hand while a cotton bud coated in egg white is whisked around the edges. This stops the collodion mixture from running off. Collodion, a wicked mixture of very toxic chemicals including ether, is then poured onto the centre and the plate delicately tipped to cover the surface, like coating a baking tray with oil. The excess is shaken off into a bottle. This bit is smelly indeed. The wet plate is then immersed into a bath of silver nitrate, to sensitise it to light, for three minutes. With a minute to go, the lights in the dark room are turned off, leaving only the red lights on, so that your eyes can get used to the darkness. When the three minutes are up, the plate is lifted out, the silver nitrate wiped from the back of the plate and the sensitive plate placed into wooden holder, kept dark by a wooden slide until exposure.

Plate camera (minus lens) - not pocket-sized but very gorgeous

The setting of the picture had been established before the plate was prepared. Having a quick check that no-one had moved while sneakily checking their mobile phone, the wooden plate holder is then placed into the camera. A cover is placed over the lens at the front (we used a bowler hat as a lens cap). The dark slide is taken from the plate holder and when ready, the cover is removed from the lens. After a minute (or however long exposure is needed for) the lens cap is swiftly replaced and the dark slide slid back in to seal up the plate holder. That box is removed and taken down to the darkroom immediately.

The plate is removed from the holder and held sensitive side up. Developer is quickly poured over the image and the image magically appears. This is the bit that defeated me and I always missed a small patch. You have to quickly and evenly pour a medicine cup of the liquid down one edge while tilting the plate in semi-darkness. Then the washing begins. Jugs of water are poured over the plate then it is immersed in a bath of water, then another bath of developing fluid after which it is safe to turn on the light. The plate is then washed again and finally left to dry on a rack.

When the plate is dry, varnish can be poured over the image (much like the collodion is poured) and left near strong heat to dry. In our case we used a plate warmer. Julia used a spirit lamp, which seeing how flammable everything involved is, makes it a miracle that nothing appalling occurred. Added to this she used cyanide as a fixing agent, which due to the risks involved, you can now replace with something less deadly. Cyanide gives a warmer amber glow to the resultant image but the modern alternative is less death-laden, which has to be a good thing. It is suggested that Julia's use of cyanide, which inevitably ends up on your skin, may have shortened her life. I wore gloves and stuck to the flammable but less certain-death chemicals. Wash your hands, wear gloves, lick nothing and you'll be fine.

So finally I got the hang of it, after a fashion and the last plate of the day was a moment of utter joy when the developer revealed it...

Lissa, my very first success in photography...

As you can see, I managed to miss part of Lissa's right arm with the developer, but her lovely face came out perfectly. I could not have been more delighted, relieved and exhausted. After varnishing the plate my day was complete. As a souvenir of my marvellous day, I now have a set of wonderful glass plate negatives which look like the above when placed against a black piece of card, but appear as negatives when lifted up...

Lissa in negative

I felt like I had peeked into a part of Julia's life and walked in her shoes, if only for a few hours. The whole process was consuming and involved even with modern conveniences like running water so goodness knows how much time, energy and effort went into producing Julia's pictures. However, when the results were as perfect as her masterpieces, I cannot think of a more rewarding employment of time.

My heartfelt thanks go to the staff of Dimbola Lodge, especially John Walker and the lovely Lissa. If you too want to have a go at wet collodion photography, contact the museum (see the website here).

Once upon a time there was an old lady who lived on the south coast of England. She had a secret, which as it turned out wasn't much of a secret no matter how hard she tried.

Mrs Reginald Hargreaves

When the old lady died, her ashes were buried by the war memorial that held the names of two of her three sons. On her gravestone her secret was revealed...

Alice Hargreaves, or Alice Liddell as she is more famously known, died in 1934, 72 years after the writing of a story that would make her immortal. When she was an old lady she became famous again, her photograph filling the papers as the world found out what had happened when the magical little girl had grown up. Once more her face was the subject of interest and record, just like when she was a little girl.

Perhaps then we have started at the wrong end of the tale.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in Oxford. Her name was Alice...

Alice Pleasance Liddell (c.1860) Lewis Carroll

Plenty has been written about little Alice, her sisters Lorina and Edith and a boat trip they took with a serious young man called Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (also better known as Lewis Carroll). Dodgson was a friend of Alice's older brother Harry and Lorina, but when Harry went up to school, younger sisters Alice and Edith joined Lorina on her outings with the young man. Dodgson wrote the story of Alice's adventures underground as a way of entertaining the girls on trips and in the tales he created a version of Alice who is curious, questioning, brave, obstinate and caught between trying to leave and trying to see more.

The Beggar Maid (1858) Lewis Carroll

When awkward Dodgson became Lewis Carroll, author and photographer he transformed himself in the same way as he transformed his most famous subject. Under his lens, Alice is a beggar maid, a ragged creature of pity. In other photos, she is also a plush cat on a cushion with her equally silky sisters, as far from the beggar maid as you can imagine...

Edith, Lorina and Alice Liddell (1858)

Slipping by most people's notice was always Lorina, eldest sister and foremost friend of the young author/photographer. When Dodgson was expelled from the Liddell family circle, a very twentieth century interpretation was placed upon it. To our modern eye, some of the photographs look decidedly iffy: a young half-naked girl looking challengingly towards the camera, but are defended by many as being typical of contemporary art, coupled with knowledge that the mother was present when the majority of the pictures were being taken. I say the majority for a reason, because there exists a very NSFW image of Lorina which is now argued to be the cause of the rift between the Liddells and Dodgson. It was featured in the recent documentary on Dodgson and can be seen online and is of a very naked teenage Lorina and has no pretense of art at all.

Alice as The May Queen

Lorina (c.1860)

It is interesting to note that Alice is often playing a part in Dodgson's photographs but Lorina just sits there as the subject of that picture. It's almost as if Lorina does not need to play a part, she is the subject he wishes to take the picture of. Alice, however, was dressed up, transformed, posed, a range of characters including the most enduring, that of 'Alice' which she was to be reminded of for the rest of her life.

The Sisters (Edith, Lorina and Alice Liddell) (1864) William Blake Richmond

Away from Dodgson and his interpretation of the sisters and Alice in particular, the Liddell girls found others who wished to capture their beauty. Around the time of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, artist William Blake Richmond showed the sisters in a similar triangular arrangement to the above photo, with Lorina as the pinnacle. Although the two youngest still appear quite innocent and childlike, Lorina had begun to look more knowing and grown up. It is unsurprising that Mrs Liddell, nicknamed 'the Kingfisher' after her desire to wed her girls to royalty, would want to separate her daughters from the poor young man who spent so much time with them. Improper intentions or not, young Mr Dodgson did not have good enough prospects for Mrs Liddell. The final picture he took of Alice is rather a melancholic piece...

Alice Liddell (1870)

At 18 and a marriageable age, Alice had to say goodbye to her childhood friend and concentrate on her future. The notion that Dodgson was cast out for evermore isn't quite true but he did separate from the family for 6 months after which his relationship with the Liddell parents was cooler. He and Alice must have remained on good terms as Dodgson acted as godfather to her second son. He didn't take any more photographs of her though, that mantle was taken up by another.

When the Liddell family moved from Oxford to the Isle of Wight in the early 1870s, they rented Whitecliff House, not far from Dimbola Lodge. Naturally they caught the attention of Julia Margaret Cameron who was ever vigilant for new models. In the Liddell sisters she found young ladies of experience...

King Lear Allotting His Kingdom to his Three Daughters (1872) Julia Maragret Cameron

All three girl, from the left Lorina, Edith and Alice, surround Julia's husband, Charles Hay Cameron. His dark drapery and age contrasts with their youth and beauty, and they appear satellites around his presence. It's unusual to see the girls posed with another person, no longer so insular and separate.

Pomona (1872) Julia Margaret Cameron

Cameron also took some startling solo pictures of Alice. Pomona has echoes of Dodgson's beggar maid, a mirror image of the pose taken by a woman rather than a girl. Her expression is one of challenge as she nestles in the tendrils of the garden.

Alethea (1872) J M Cameron

From the same session, Cameron references her own work, this time "Call I Follow, I Follow, Let Me Die!" of 1867, with the female figure in profile, her hair fanning out behind her. Rather than being a goddess like Pomona, Alethea refers only to 'truth', interestingly looking away.

St Agnes (1872) J M Cameron

In this pair of images, Cameron portrays Alice as St Agnes, patron saint of chastity, gardeners, and girls, amongst other things. Rather than being posed with a lamb, Cameron chose the other attribute, a palm, as no doubt it kept stiller than lifestock. My favourite has to be Ceres, goddess of the harvest, fertility and motherhood. She is a beautiful plant in the wild tumble of nature, the white flash of her flesh echoed in the sweep of grain crop against her shoulder. Alice makes a fine model for Cameron, with her strong defiant features a perfect addition to Cameron's other images of young, handsome women.

Ceres (1872) J M Cameron

Even before her marriage in 1880 to the cricketer Reginald Hargreaves, the public photographs ceased. The early and sudden death of Edith in June 1876 traumatized the family and drew the sisters together in grief. I don't think it's a coincidence that the remaining sisters could not find the will to be the same as they had been. When they had posed, it was often as a trio, even if there were subsequent solo images. Now that triangle had been broken, the ones left behind did not assume the role of muses without the one who had vanished from view. Alice Hargreaves (nee Liddell) would always be little Alice, tumbling down a rabbit hole on a boating trip with her beloved sisters. Alice, Edith and Lorina Liddell were each immortalised (to differing degrees) by Dodgson and Cameron, as a trio of sisters made extraordinary by the inspiration they lent to others, but it is arguably a mistake to imagine that the images we see are mere portraits of the girls. Just as Carroll's Alice is not Alice Liddell, then the little girls in the photographs are a complex mixture of surface and meaning that is dangerous to confuse. Maybe in understanding that it becomes clear why Mrs Reginald Hargreaves sought to separate herself from the images and text that drew on her as inspiration. She was Alice no more.

But then maybe she never had been.

This weekend is the fourth birthday of The Kissed Mouth blog! Goodness me, where has the time gone? It's been a busy old year as well, so here is my retrospective (posh word for 'clips show') of the last twelve months...

May 2014
So in May last year I had a bit of a think about whether all of Rossetti's gorgeous women were just versions of himself (which sounds very strange when I say it out loud...), I had a look at some pirates, had a bit of a potter in the garden, flaunted a smidge of public nudity with Lady Godiva, but my image has to be from my massive post about Tennyson and Pre-Raphaelite art...

Elaine Julia Margaret Cameron

I've spent a lot of the last year deep in research on Cameron and her work, not to mention her models, which has been a delight. It's fed into the novel I've been working on, and will also help with the paper I'm writing for the Julia Margaret Cameron conference this summer. This image featuring the beautiful May Prinsep, is one of the most complete of Cameron's photos, in my opinion. It balances her ability to capture the beauty of her subject plus having just the right amount of setting to transport you. It's incredible to think this was taken in her hen house, with only a few rugs and props. Just beautiful.

June
At the beginning of June, I spent a mad day pursuing Tennyson around the Isle of Wight (let's ignore the fact he's been dead for over a century, these things aren't important in a relationship), wrote a sad piece on the beautiful Sophie Gray, reviewed The Pre-Raphaelite Seamstress, 'Stand There!' She Shouted, and That Summer and wrote a piece on Ellen Terry, child bride and legendary actress. Terry is one of those characters who defies all attempts to pigeonhole her: she was a child bride in a doomed marriage but escapes with dignity and good will to her husband. She was an actress, a mother, and a woman who gave us a defining portrayal of Lady Macbeth. My image of the month, sadly, has to be this one...

Isabella and the Pot of Basil (1867) William Holman Hunt

Delaware chose to sell Isabella and the Pot of Basil at auction and it made half of the bottom of its asking price. With no reserve, this beautiful work of art, which they had hope would make upwards of £10M, made £2.5M. It cause howls of outrage from the Pre-Raphaelite community and made people worry about what Delaware would do next. My worry was that they would sell parts of the collection that came to them via Fanny Cornforth. It drew attention to the fact that works in public collections don't necessarily belong to the public when push comes to shove. That is a sobering thought indeed.

July
This month I reviewed Elizabeth, The Virgin Queen and the Men Who Loved Her, did two posts on fairy tales, with imagery from Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, and felt all summer-y with a post about beautiful paintings of women who aren't sweating at all. I also travelled up to Hoylandswaine and saw their mural in all its glory. My image for the month has to be this gem...

The Wounded Cavalier William Shakespeare Burton

I already loved this painting but it is now central to a scene in my forthcoming novel, so I have a very special place in my heart for it. Without giving too much away, while recreating this scene for a photograph, a few truths are revealed to the participants. I can't wait for you to read it! Hopefully I'll bring it to you at the end of the year...

August
In the long, hot month of August I brought you some ladies lounging around doing nothing (myself included), the universal truth that no-one likes a biter, the steampunk madness of Dr Geof, and went on holiday to Cornwall, where my image of the month comes from...

On the Cornish Coast (1880) John Brett

Just the vividness of the colours takes me back to the wonderful week I had, visiting Jamaica Inn, going to Penlee House Art Gallery and eating far too many pasties (I regret nothing). Cornwall is a special place with an artistic pedigree that is eviable. Everything looks beautiful and everywhere is full of paintings of the sea. And pasties. My Lord, I did eat a lot of pasties.

September
This month I was still going on about pasties (and Cornish miners), the Effie Gray movie, and worried about the outcome of the Scottish referendum (we stayed together! Hurrah!). I visited the Celtic Revival decorated church in the New Forest (which reminds me, I need to take my Dad to visit it) and reviewed The Lost Pre-Raphaelite (which if you haven't read yet, do so immediately). One of my favourite posts I've done this year has to be the one I did on knitting...

The Purple Stocking J J Shannon

Looking back at this post this painting is still one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The halo of the metal plate, her concentration as she knits the stocking, it all adds up to a wonderful, delicate portrait of quiet industry. I bet she's never knitted a novelty Christmas hat.

October
This month I wrote a poem based on The Depths of the Sea by Edward Burne-Jones and I went to the opening of the exhibition about Rossetti's images of Jane Morris, as well as the opening of Dangerous Women. I also reviewed the game based on Strawberry Thief (that's right, a video game, I'm hip and down with the kids. Well sort of), as well as talking about Rossetti's images of his models sleeping. Being a right cryer, I enjoyed doing a post about fellow-sobbers, from which I bring you this one...

The Restitution (1901) Remy Cogghe

I love the green of her dress and the gold of her hair, plus the mystery around the figures: why is she crying? What is the priest doing with the keys? I do love a problem picture, a picture that tells a story, that begs interpretation, that spins a tale for you to imagine.

November
With Blogvent fast approaching, I tackled images of praying and conversely got seduced into having some illicit liaisons (such larks!). The anniversary of the start of the Great War was remembered in a post about the Boer War and how it foreshadowed the conflict that was to come. I also reviewed the gorgeous children's book Time and the Tapestry. Many of you joined me in the utter frivolous naughiness of the work of Vittorio Reggianini...

The Interruption Vittorio Reggianini

With so much satin as to render all the participants a slip-risk, Reggianini did countless gorgeous ladies flirting, giggling, passing notes and falling under available handsome men. Nice work if you can get it...

December
Ah Blogvent, the annual madness...I have been challenged to do an entire month of Muff references this year and rename it 'Muffvent'. For goodness sake. Mind you, I absolutely will do that. I also got to see the wonderful Victorian Obsession exhibition at Leighton House and I can still smell that rose room. I love that the gallery took experiencing the picture to a different sensory level and would be delighted to see more experimenting with this enhancing of the picture experience. My suggestion would be to have a Reggianini retrospective with handsome satin-clad gentlemen for me to swoon under. I regret nothing.

Anyway, of all the Blogvent images, I have to pick this one...

The Snow Maidens (1913) Henrietta Rae

This boob-tastic snow scene raises some questions about health and safety and frostbite. I love snowdrops too, but I can't say I've been tempted to sit amongst them nude. Tulips however are another matter. And they are in my front garden.

January
In the new year I wrote a post on images of night and a saucy little number on poor Andromeda, the dragon-snack and bondage queen. I examined an artist's attitude to self portraits (thank you, Lovis Corinth, I think you will stay with me a while and not in a good way) and reviewed the catalogue for the Art & Soul exhibition. Jolly good fun was had with John Collier, whose art is never dull...

Clytemnestra (1914) John Collier

An interesting artist, Collier was both establishment and bonkers avant garde. His works included images of famous beardy men and puzzle pictures that do indeed puzzle. The above image was banned because it was too shocking to show the knife-and-bristols combo. I rather like her skirt, do you think the knife comes with it?

February
Looking back at February, I covered some of my favourite subjects. I did a whole weekend devoted to illustrating Tennyson's poems, a subject very dear to my heart since my Masters thesis all those years ago. I also reviewed the novel Afterimage and the Liberating Fashion exhibition. I talked about Fair Rosamund and the trouble with love potions, but the most comments I got came because of this fellow...

The Moon Nymph Luis Falero

So. Much. Nudity. I'm sure I caused some of my gentlemen readers to keel over because of how shocking it all was. Scandalous! Disgraceful! Jolly pretty, tho'....

March
The year was behaving itself quite well up until this point. March came in very pleasantly with a review of Robert Stephen Parry's splendid new novel The Hours Before, followed by some jolly posts on the wives and girlfriends of military types. I visited three exhibitions in London, Silver and Salt, Sculpture Victorious, and my favourite, the John Singer Sargent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Then this happened...

Chichester Cemetery, Plot 133/32

When I discovered the truth behind Fanny Cornforth's final years it was the end of a very long chapter for me. Fanny and I have been together for twenty years and I have lost count the number of times I have talked about her, given people information about her, passed people copies of her letters and her exhibition catalogue, all of which I had sought out in endless hours of research all done in my own time. Fanny enabled me to meet the most wonderful people, some of whom I count as my closest friends and she is the reason I started this blog four years ago. I'm so glad I could share my discoveries with you because as long as I have been with Fanny, I have wanted to share her life with others. I love seeing that other people want to research her, that others write blog posts and articles on her. She is my favourite stunner, the patron saint of overlooked women and the more people who love her, the happier I am.

April
After I made you all cry in March, I brought you a review of the exhibition of the year so far, Mucha: In Quest of Beauty at the Russell-Cotes in Bournemouth. It's on all summer, get there if you possibly can, you won't regret it. I also went off to Lincoln and pursued Alfred Lord Tennyson a bit more (he loves it really), and looked at the visual life of Alice Liddell. My image of this month has to be this one...

Lissa, My First Success

I got to emulate Julia Margaret Cameron and swish around Dimbola Lodge taking and developing glass plates. It was a wonderful experience and made me unnecessarily overexcited about the Julia Margaret Cameron bicentennial conference in July and the V&A exhibition in the autumn. Not only that, but I now have a deeper understanding of what it's like to be a Victorian photographer which will come in handy with my new novel We Are Villains All, published later this year. Set in the quiet market town home of poet Maxwell Wainwright, someone has a reason for revenge. The arrival of photographer Brough Fawley brings everyone's emotions into focus and unleashes a vengeful spirit that will bring tragedy to everyone...

Well, I'm going to be giving a talk at Mrs Middleton's Shop in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight on Saturday and then I'm writing a load of articles on Fanny Cornforth. After that I'm giving a paper on the maids of Dimbola Lodge at the conference. It's going to be a very long summer. Thank you for reading this, thank you for being with me for the last four years because I'd be awfully lonely without you all. I have a lovely double-post planned for the first weekend of May, so see you next week...

Welcome to a weekend of posts about a beautiful woman, which is always a good thing. Hers is the face that gazes out of many of Julia Margaret Cameron's photographs, and her life is like a page out of who's who. This weekend I will be talking to you about the wonderful May Prinsep...

Elaine (1874) Julia Margaret Cameron

Any of you who have studied Victorian art or society will have come across the name 'Prinsep'. The family had reach and influence of exciting proportion and anyone who was anyone found their way to their homes and tables. May, born Mary Emily Prinsep, was the daughter of Charles Prinsep, standing counsel to the East India Company and Judge Advocate General of India. Born in Khidirpur (Kidderpore) in Kolkata (Calcutta) in 1853, she was one of eight children, six of whom survived infanthood.


The Prinsep children: (from left) Annie, May, Harry, Jim and Louisa (Charlie is missing) (from Henry Prinsep's Empire by Malcolm Allbrook)

Connected closely with the presence of England in India and the growth, spread and success of the East India Company, the family lived in Belvedere House in Kolkata, here shown in a painting by May's uncle William Prinsep...

Belvedere House (1838) William Prinsep

May's mother, Louisa, was the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Lewis White of the Bengal Army. 1855 saw the birth of youngest Prinsep child, James (also known as Jim), followed by Louisa's death. Probably connected to this, Charles suffered a debilitating stroke, causing the family to return to England. By the 1861 census, the family are settled in the comfortable town of Walton on Thames in Surrey. Charles and four of his children lived on Church Road (just near the Aldi, which is handy). Eldest brother Charles John (Charlie) had returned before his family to attend school in Brighton, then back to India with the 19th Hussars. Left paralysed by his stroke, Charles senior's health continued to decline and he died in 1864. At that point the children went to live with their plentiful relatives, May making the journey to live with her Uncle Henry Thoby Prinsep and Aunt Sara at Little Holland House...

Little Holland House in the 1860s
Home to the Prinseps until its demolition in 1871

Henry Thoby Prinsep, younger brother to Charles, had also been in India, working in the legal system and the East India Company until his return to England in 1843. By the end of the 1840s, he and his family had moved into Little Holland House, the dower house of Holland House in Kensington, London. Uncle Henry was married to Sara Monckton Pattle (sister to Julia Margaret Cameron) and among their children was the painter Valentine Prinsep. May became a member of the Little Holland Household and became known as 'the vision of beauty' (according to Mary Seton Watts in The Annals of an Artist's Life) as can ably be seen in her cousin's paintings of her...

May Prinsep (1868) Valentine Prinsep

May Prinsep and her Persian Cat Valentine Prinsep

George Frederic Watts had taken up residence at Little Holland House in 1850 as part of the ever-growing Prinsep household, his life dedicated to his art under the maternal care of Sara Prinsep. Mary Seton Watts recalled that while staying there, Watts worked with 'arduous devotion' to his painting, his only break being a daily ride which he took for his health and his companion was more often than not May. May's own devotion to Watts began in this time and it is unsurprising that her attachment to him, so soon after the death of her father, took a lifelong paternal slant. He also used her as a model in a handful of works from this period...

May Prinsep (c.1867) G F Watts

Prayer (1869) G F Watts

There will be more of Watts in tomorrow's post...

Being such a large yet close-knit family, it seems almost inevitable that May would find herself in Freshwater Bay, at the home of Julia Margaret Cameron.

The Neopolitan (1866) Julia Margaret Cameron

Spending several of her summers on the Wight, May quickly became part of Cameron's artistic vision, appearing in scores of her pictures for the next ten years. Alongside the faces of her maids and neighbours, Cameron imagines May as a beauty of historic measure, in photograph after photograph...

Christabel (1866) J M Cameron

Beatrice (1866) J M Cameron

May (1869) J M Cameron

In 1870, Cameron took a series of photos of May one of which was entitled Pre-Raphaelite Study...

Pre-Raphaelite Study (1870) J M Cameron

Whilst it is likely that Cameron was influenced by various artists in the making of her Pre-Raphaelite Study, I agree with Graham Ovenden (amongst many) who suggest that the engraving of William Holman Hunt's Isabella and the Pot of Basil (left) in 1869 seems the most overt influence over the pose held by May in this picture. It was believed to be a snub for Rossetti in some way as he refused to meet or pose for the photographer, but more likely it was just straightforward praise and inspiration from another artist and a very popular print of the moment. Cameron also knew Hunt, having taken his picture in 1864, dressed in his Eastern garb.

William Holman Hunt (1864) Julia Margaret Cameron

You could track the visits made by May by her occurrence in Cameron's work, all through the beginning of the 1870s. George du Maurier (cartoonist and author) described a visit to the Wight at the beginning of the 1870s when he met a young stockbroker, also on holiday: '...a very good looking chap of 40 with loads of tin - He has hired a yacht of 64 tons and is going to take us cruising about the island'. That 'good looking chap' was Andrew Kinsman Hichens, who may have been already acquainted with May and her household from London but it was no coincidence that he was in Freshwater at the same time as she was. He was brought in to pose for Julia Margaret Cameron in a suitably romantic fashion for a photograph entitled Gareth and Lynette. This was her aunt's way of heralding a marriage as May and Andrew were married at All Saint's church in Freshwater on 10th November 1874...

Gareth and Lynette (1874)

It is an interesting subject to have as a wedding piece for the couple, taken from Idylls of the King and I wonder how much could be read into the fact that Lynette is quite a difficult character until she realises the true worth of Gareth? Anyway, the couple were married and less than a year later the Camerons move away from the Isle of Wight, back to Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka). Andrew and May lived in London and Compton, a small village outside Guildford in Surrey, but that is not the end of her story by any stretch.

Join me tomorrow for part two...

So yesterday we got as far as May Prinsep's marriage to Andrew Hichens in 1874 and the Cameron's move back to Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in 1875. Andrew wrote to May's brother Harry that he considered the Cameron's move to be 'total madness', but then the family finances were stretched to breaking and they had to make a move. It is certain that they were greatly missed and sadly never to return, Julia dying in 1879 and her husband in 1880.

The Ulster (1874) G F Watts

Andrew Hichens continued to work in Hichens, Harrison & Co (est. 1803) in Austinfriars, London's oldest independent brokerage and investment firm. The couple's London home was 27 Chester Street, Knightsbridge and despite the demolition of Little Holland House in 1871, it seems likely that the new centre for the old Prinsep circle was New Little Holland House on Melbury Road, where Watts had a new house and studio built in 1876. The land abutted that of Frederic, Lord Leighton's house and it might have been there that May met Leighton, sitting for this portrait in 1885...

Mrs Andrew Hichens (May Prinsep) (1885) Frederic Leighton

The Hichens not only kept a house in London but also Monkshatch in Compton, near Guildford, Surrey.

Monkshatch, Compton, Surrey (demolished 1950s)

Mary Seton Watts described the house as standing high yet sheltered by a chalk cliff from the north and east winds. The chalk behind reflected back sunlight into the home and made it an idyllic place to live. May and Andrew used the house at weekends and holidays, spending most of their time in London, so when G F Watts' health failed, the coupled offered him the use of the house in which to recuperate. Andrew had become as attached to Watts as his wife, writing in a very emotional letter to the artist that 'you need not be told how entirely dear you are to us, and how very nearly all that concerns you touches us.' When Watts married for the second time, to Mary Seton in 1886, their first stop after the ceremony was to lunch with May and Andrew in Chester Street.

It is undoubted how deeply May and Andrew cared for Watts, 'the beloved little man' as they referred to him. When the Watts moved into Monkshatch, they turned the living room into a space Watts could paint in, Andrew remarking 'I told you I built that studio for you'. The Library was theirs to be alone in, but if they wanted company they could roll back the dividing panel and watch Andrew and May at dinner. Watts remarked to his wife on one such evening 'I wonder if any other roof in England covers four happier people.' When Mr and Mrs Watts finally moved out, they went only a short distance, building a house in the village, called Limnerslease.

May at the window at Limnerslease (1880s/90s)

The parental figures in her life slowly vanished as Henry Thoby Prinsep died in 1878, followed by Aunt Sara in 1887. Watts died in 1904 and two years later Andrew died at Monkshatch on 27th August 1906. He was cremated and his ashes interred at the beautiful cemetery that surrounds the Watts Chapel.

Two years later May's brother paid a visit from Australia and it was the first time he had seen May since 1866. Harry Prinsep (1844-1922) had visited his father's estate in Australia (also called Belvedere after the estate in Bengal) whilst on his 'grand Tour' after schooling and fell in love with the land and a woman. Even on the other side of the world he had run into old friends. Having met the Tennyson family while staying with family in England, he became firm friends once more with Hallam Tennyson, son of the Poet Laureate, while Hallam was serving as Governor of South Australia (1899-1903), then Governor General of Australia (1903-4).

Hallam Tennyson (1896) Alexander Bassano

In 1918, younger brother Jim Prinsep wrote to Harry : 'It's a profound secret...you'll be able to swagger a bit by referring casually to 'my brother-in-law, who was formerly Governor-General'. What Jim was alluding to was the marriage of May to Hallam in July of that year. Both were free to marry but the reason for the secrecy may well have been because of the events which had preceded the marriage. Hallam had been married to Audrey Boyle in 1884, inheriting his father's title on the poet's death in 1892. They had three sons, Lionel, Alfred and Harold, all of whom served in the First World War. Harold died in 1916, aged 19, when his ship, the Viking, hit a sea-mine in the English Channel. Possibly due to the affect of this tragic loss, Audrey died in December of the same year. In March 1918, Alfred died in action at the Somme. Even though he had been a widow for two years, it is unsurprising that May and Hallam wished to get married quietly in the midst of such sadness. They were wed at South Stoneham Church, Southampton, on 27th July 1918.

South Stoneham Church, Swaythling, Southampton

As Lady May Tennyson, she kept Monkshatch in Surrey, but also lived on the Isle of Wight at the Tennyson family home, Farringford. She became a benefactor for local causes, helping to set up a local cottage hospital, a cause dear to Julia Margaret Cameron's heart during her time in Freshwater. In 1925, May donated £800 to purchase an ambulance manned by volunteers and administered by Miss Waistell and Miss Life, members of the Red Cross...

Miss Waistell and Lady May Tennyson 1925
(image from Lincs to the Past website)

In 1928, Hallam died at Farringford. May moved to the Dower House at Glenbrook St Francis, overlooking Freshwater Bay. Dower House is the house nearer the sea in the image below. Here she established a library of improving books.

She died 19th July 1931. Hallam is buried in the family tomb at St Mary's Church at Freshwater, alongside his mother and first wife. On the wall of the church is a plaque to May...

Tennyson tomb, overlooking the River Yar, Freshwater
Not far along the row are the graves of Henry and Sara Prinsep

Plaque to May inside St Mary's Church

May was cremated and her ashes returned to Compton where she shares her final resting places with Andrew Hichens...

Ashes interred at Watts Memorial Chapel cemetery, Compton, nr Guildford

Detail of above

So ends the story of a beautiful woman, much loved and remembered by the Tennyson Memorial Ambulance, still running today (they renew the model regularly, its number plate VDL1). The title of this piece comes from an article by Blanche Warre Cornish in 'Personal Memories of Tennyson' (published in the London Mercury, 1921-22). Warre-Cornish remembered the poet laureate, walking through Freshwater on a sunny day, a verse or rhyme for each friend or child he passed: 'Good Morning May, / May you never be June for the ever-loved May, once May Prinsep, as she stood in the green porch of Mrs Cameron's door.'

All Her Paths Are Peace (1866) Julia Margaret Cameron

It seems right that a woman who held so much affection for both her family, her adopted family and the people of her community should herself be remembered with love.

To find out more about May's brother Harry, Malcolm Allbrook's Henry Prinsep Empire is free to download here.

If you have ever had the pleasure/misfortune to study the Pre-Raphaelites at University level, you probably came across the fact that the Pre-Raphaelites were desperately unfashionable for most of the twentieth century. I encountered such phrases as 'artistic cul-de-sac' and 'popularist, chocolate box art' which didn't deter me one little bit but did make me wonder what on earth was going on. This may well be a phenomena that afflicts British universities, as it seems that the Pre-Raphs have always been valued abroad far more than they are at home. Either way, it has been an interest of mine for the last few years to see how their reputation fluctuated over the years between their deaths and the Great Revival of the 1960s and 70s. Today's post is a little survey of this, via the reputation of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as seen through the lens of the local press of Great Britain...


A very twentieth century Rossetti

By the time Oliver Reed donned the floppy bowtie (above) in Ken Russell's Pre-Raphaelite biopic Dante's Inferno (1967), a lot of water had passed under the posthumous-reputation bridge. Turning back to the beginning of the century, just as the last of the brotherhood had died, Rossetti was coming in for close scrutiny due to the work of Thomas Hall Caine...

Rossetti pacing as Hall Caine wrote (1894)

Hall Caine had made quite an industry out of his Rossetti memories. The above illustration come from a book of stories by well-known writers of the period, such as Kipling and Rider Haggard, of their life experiences. Hall Caine's is predictably about his time with Rossetti which was ironically brief as compared with the amount of time he spent subsequently milking it. When he published The Prodigal Son (1904) it was met with complaints. One incident in the novel had the hero place a manuscript of poems in the his beloved's coffin, then digging her up for them some years later. I wonder where he got that idea. The Lancashire Post referred to it as a 'lapse from good taste' and the Shields' Daily Mail said it was 'interesting without a doubt, but we don't think admirers of Rossetti will be under any sense of gratitude to him for writing it.' These strike me as being polite ways of calling the odious Hall Caine a grave robber, which is ironic really...

Rossetti paints Elizabeth Siddal (from Look and Learn)

Possibly thanks to Hall Caine, an interest in Rossetti and his loves appeared in the newspapers quite frequently and Elizabeth Siddal's name was always spoke of with reverence. The Burlington Magazine published five previously unseen pictures of Elizabeth by Rossetti in June 1903, and this also added interest into her life, often giving it the prefix 'tragic'. One thing that struck me was how confused the reports are as to which model they are talking about. For example, this quote from the Shields' Daily Gazette of 1904 about Elizabeth:

'We are all familiar with the woman's face and figure which play so greater part in Rossetti's later and least conspicuously artistic work - her dark golden hair, her languorous pose, her full lips and Grecian brow, and sad eyes, testifying to the burden rather than the joy of life.'

That to me sounds like they are describing Alexa Wilding, especially as they place her at the 'later' part of his life. Still, there was a doomed romance about the pair and that was popular in newspapers, so the sad stories of Lizzie and Gabriel continued.

Dante's Dream (1871) D G Rossetti

On the whole, the press loved the Pre-Raphs and Rossetti in particular. When the massive canvas Dante Dream became cracked and bowing in its frame, a panicked piece appeared in the Dundee Evening Telegraph (May 1905) about the 'imperiled' picture. In the marvellously-titled Cheltenham Looker-On of 1905, the writer says that to the 'severest' audience, Rossetti's pictures might have seemed 'a trifle luscious' but to call them improper was ridiculous. It seems the Edwardians were game for a bit of lusciousness...

Fazio's Mistress (1863) D G Rossetti

When the Tate purchased George Rae's collection of Pre-Raphaelite art in 1916 (including Fazio's Mistress, above), there were calls for it to be put on immediate display. The Liverpool Echo of 1916 reported that Rae's collection should be displayed in the National Gallery if the Tate was not able to house it. The Tate was closed in 1916, but as George Rae had been a Liverpudlian, it was seen as a matter of local pride that the works be on show : 'The pictures represent Rossetti's powers at their prime and are essential to any comprehensive study of his art.' In times of war, it's interesting to see how strongly people felt about that, and how the local newspaper felt it to be essential.


Rossetti being amazed by Elizabeth's loveliness, or something (from Look and Learn)

Debate over Rossetti's love-life continued. In the Bath Chronicle of 1913, it was delightfully stated that 'Miss Siddal possessed all the qualities that were needed to make a good wife', which I'm sure brought her great comfort. However, 'artistic men rarely made the best husbands. They were not calm enough.' Yes, I'm sure that was the problem. Interestingly, in the Gloucester Chronicle of 1914, the description of the ideal Rossetti face was that of Mrs William Morris.

'Strangely enough, the great painter's ideal, which he found at last in one woman's face, was that towards which the mysterious trend of human countenance was moving through the ages.'

The piece concluded that the 'Rossetti' face had become the pinnacle of beauty and was typically English and modern. During times of war nothing is more attractive than a pouty pair of lips...

Douglas Malcolm

Possibly my favourite Rossetti mention occurred in reporting of the sensational murder of Count de Borch (say that quickly) by the everso English Lieutenant Douglas Malcolm. The erstwhile Dorothy Malcolm, wife of the above had been carrying on with the dastardly foreigner while her brave hubby had been fighting for King and Country. In the Dundee People's Journal of the summer of 1917, Dorothy was described as having 'a Rossetti face and neck as cold as chiseled marble, lips of vivid scarlet and dark, deep eyes veiled by long lashes'. Malcolm discovered the affair when home on leave, challenged the beastly foreigner to a dual (which the coward did not turn up to!) and then just went round and shot him four times. Hurrah! The jury found him guilty only of justifiable homicide due to self-defence, which is marvellous.

The Seed of David (1856) D G Rossetti

In the 1920s, Rossetti celebrated his centenary. Unfortunately he was long dead by that point so he didn't enjoy it as much as you'd expect. William Kerr, writing in the Gloucester Journal on the 12th May 1928, hit the nail on the head in terms of how reputations shift. Please excuse the long quote, but I find this fascinating...

'There is one great difference between birth-centenaries and death-centenaries. The death-centenary of a great artist or a man of letters sees him a classic, with his due place in the cannon of classics. The birth centenary finds him at the nadir of his influence, if not of his reputation. For a master in the sphere of the imagination has three generations of readers, spectators, "subjects". The first, his contemporaries, adore or hate him from a level of frankly critical contemporary equality: the second, his much younger contemporaries, his posthumous disciples, adore him quite uncritically, as not only a master, but the last and most significant of masters. The third generation find it a duty and a pleasure to pull down the false gods - its fathers - and set up in its place the new true gods. As a generation is roughly thirty years, and an artist's influence begins about his thirtieth year, his birth-centenary falls in the hey-day of that third generation, and the celebration has something of the gruesome interest of an exhumation.'

Kerr believed on balance that Elizabeth Siddal had been the true muse and her presence had heralded his period of genius - 'The Rossetti one would remember with love is the Rossetti of the fifties'. Elsewhere Rossetti's centenary was a chance for people to weigh up his contribution to art and poetry. In the front page article in the Hull Daily Mail on the 12th May, the writer remarked that 'in both sides of his art Rossetti fell short of the highest' and speculated if he had applied himself wholly to one discipline he might have achieved genius. They conclude by admitting 'it would be ungrateful to grumble, since Rossetti has left us so much of beauty'.

So many of his contemporaries were of course dead at this point but The Yorkshire Post reported on a picture unveiled for the centenary by Arthur Foord Hughes, painter and son of the Pre-Raphaelite Arthur Hughes. Mr Hughes now in his later years recounted how he had modelled as a baby for Rossetti (possibly for The Seed of David) and how Ruskin almost sat on him. True story.

With the publication of The Wife of Rossetti by Violet Hunt in 1932, further interest in the love life of Rossetti was ignited. The Lincolnshire Echo of November 1934 ran a piece under the headline 'Rossetti and his Elizabeth' - 'She was sweet seventeen and a milliner's assistant. He was a young artist out with his mother who was choosing a bonnet.' Well, before you complain, the piece goes on to say that's how Walter Deverell met Elizabeth, not Rossetti. Rossetti and Elizabeth's courtship was the subject of Frances Winwar's Poor Splendid Wings (1933-4) which inspired various articles in the newspapers. Love the cover. Many thanks to Stephanie Piña for telling me that the cover contains the statement to the effect that 'gossip holds no place here'. yes, Violent Hunt, we're looking at you.

There was also a play about Rossetti at The People's Theatre in 1935 that was so scandalous that William Michael Rossetti's descendants complained and it never opened. The director of the theatre, Nancy Price gave a statement saying that the unnamed descendent did not wish the life of Rossetti to receive any more publicity, but I suspect there might have been something about shovels and graves mentioned.

I don't believe it is the same Rossetti-related play as 'The Merciless Lady' of 1934, which the above photograph is a still from. I suspect 'The Merciless Lady' was as bad as it looks (observe the horror of Lady Lilith, and the amount of make-up everyone is wearing) and it seemed a good idea to ask for a ban on all future Rossetti-themed plays.

The Second World War put a hiatus on Pre-Raphaelite gossip. A brief mention in The Western Morning News of the Pre-Raphaelites in an exhibition of 1941 questions their relevance during the Blitz. By the time of the centenary exhibition in the Tate for the Pre-Raphaelite in 1948, the tiny piece is nothing more than a dozen lines. The currency of Rossetti's style of beauty can be seen in the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Mercury review of the film The River of 1952, describing the heroine as 'a Pre-Raphaelite beauty' (I'm guessing that's her up there with the pompom flower). Two crosswords of the 1950s use Rossetti as their hints (24 across: Like Rossetti's damosel, 6 down: She had three in her hand (Rossetti)) but on the whole the mentions just stop. There is little in the way of good or bad, they just slip from common mention in the press, giving the impression which must have been mainstream in academic work by this point that they just weren't relevant. How far we seem to have come from this point can be illustrated by a review of an exhibition in 1952 of the Hamilton Bequest at the Arbroath Art Gallery. The reviewer complains that the more famous pictures are examples of great artists on bad days and the Rossetti picture is so bad it 'lets the Pre-Raphaelites down with a thud'. The picture on show that disappointed the writer was this one...

Regina Cordium (1866)

I can't imagine anyone feeling let down by this beautiful picture but by 1952 it was seen as disappointing. The neglect of the Pre-Raphaelites is evident in the silence that surrounds them in the press at this time and it is a marked difference to the media clammer nowadays to say how good/bad they are (witnessed at the time of the most recent Tate exhibition in 2012). For Burne-Jones, things seem to take a different path and his later reputation is often tied to press feeling about his nephew Stanley Baldwin. For Rossetti, there is a great deal of interest in the first half of the century - acknowledgements of his failings, defending him against the disclosures of Hall Caine and endlessly playing the love story between him and Elizabeth Siddal as a dodgy, drugged up Romeo and Juliet. All in all though, there is a fondness for the man who provided a good story, which in the end is not the worst way to be remembered.

Roll on the revival...

There are artists whose paintings you will recognise but when you come to look into their lives, there is surprisingly little information available. You may find a couple of entries in artist dictionaries, a Wikipedia entry and that will be it. About a week ago I featured this painting over on my Facebook page (come join me there, it's delightful and filled with gossip)...

The Letter (1900-1920) Annie Louisa Swynnerton

Gorgeous! Someone asked me if she had really only lived 20 years, but that is the date range of the picture (to add to the confusion it was actually shown at the Royal Academy posthumously in 1934). Annie in fact lived a long and happy life and I'll try and do her justice here...

Annie Louisa Robinson was born 26th February 1844 in a central area of Manchester. Her birth place is often given as Hulme, but within a few years her parents seemed to have moved to Chorlton-on-Medlock and then Greenheys. Her father, Francis (1815-1889) was a solicitor and the family seemed to have been Methodists, attending the non-conformist chapels in the area. It might have been in her childhood that Annie met the non-conformist minister William Gaskell, husband of the author Mrs Gaskell, who she painted in 1879.

William Gaskell (1879)

Of the six Robinson daughters, at least three of them worked as artists. Annie and her sisters Emily and Julia were all artists and all founder members of the Manchester Society of Women Painters, which I'll come to in a minute. One of the other sisters, Adela, married an artist engraver called John Brownlie, so it seems that artistic matters were valued in the Robinson household, enough to influence the life-choices of the sisters.

The Dreamer (1887)

According to The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928, during a period of financial difficulty, Annie started to sell her watercolours for money, but judging by the course of Annie's life over the following years, either the period was short or her painting sales were extraordinary successful. After attending the Manchester School of Art from 1871, where she won a gold prize and a scholarship for an oil and watercolour painting, she moved to Rome to study. Annie stayed in Rome with fellow Manchester artist Susan Isabel Dacre (known as Isabel) from 1874 to 1876 after which the pair moved to Paris where they studied at the Academie Julien. A portrait of Isabel dating from this time was given by the sitter to Manchester Art Gallery in 1932...

(Susan) Isabel Dacre (1880)

On their return from Paris, Annie and Isabel, together with other local artists formed the Society of Women Painters to provide a place and facilities for the members to work together and study from life. Apparently in those days you had to leave Manchester to see a naked man. Anyway, the Society saw it as their duty to disseminate the principles of true art among the students of the art schools. They had rooms in Barton House, Deansgate where classes were held in elementary drawing, drawing from the antique and drawing and painting from living models. Isabel Dacre was the president, Annie served as secretary, her sister Emily was treasurer and other members included E Gertrude Thomson, Eleanor S Wood, Jane Atkinson and Julia Pollitt (nee Robinson, Annie and Emily's sister). The Society held annual exhibitions which were described in the local press as 'one of the most pleasing events in the artistic year in Manchester.'

Tryst or A Salford Lass (1880)

In 1880 Annie exhibited The Tryst, described in the press as a remarkable picture. It was immediately bought by Henry Boddington jnr (of the brewing family) who gave it to the Salford art gallery. Interestingly, I couldn't find too much information on the artistic career of her sisters, but whereas Annie's work received praise in every instance I found it mentioned, very little is ever said about either Emily or Julia. One of the few mentions I found was in the 1880 review in the Manchester papers describing Emily's picture Scene from Esmond as not accurate to the source material, although it did not elaborate what the problems were.

Joseph Swynnerton

Whilst in Rome, Miss Dacre and Miss Robinson made the acquaintance of Joseph Swynnerton, sculptor. Swynnerton had been attending art school, the Academy of St Luke, since 1869. In the 1882 Manchester Society of Women Painters exhibition, Isabel exhibited a three-quarter length portrait of Swynnerton. In the summer of 1883, Annie and Swynnerton married and returned to Rome where they lived until the year of his death, 1910. The couple do not seemed to have stayed exclusively in Italy, however, and Annie's career continued steadily back in England. In 1883 she showed various paintings in exhibitions, including Oleander, described in the press as 'a perfect gem'...

Oleander (1883)

During this period both Annie and Isabel Dacre became active in the suffrage campaign. In 1889, Annie signed the Declaration in favour of women's suffrage and in 1897 she signed the claim for women's suffrage. During this period she also continued to catch the eye of reviewers, her paintings travelling world wide. Her painting Florence Nightingale at Scutari was sent over to the Women's Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, as well as regularly exhibiting in the Royal Academy exhibitions and the Royal Scottish Academy, as well as the Royal Glasgow Institute, continuing her work with the Society of Women Artists and many others. In 1895, Annie was only the second woman ever invited to sit upon the hanging committee of the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition.

Cupid and Psyche (1890)

One of her most famous paintings, Cupid and Psyche, was first exhibited at the Walker Gallery in 1891. It was described in the local papers as robust, showing thorough and straightforward workmanship: 'the work shows such research of plastic beauty, the drawing so firm, the head and limbs so well modelled, that they give one the idea of being the work of a sculptor.' It might be that the reviewer is hinting at the influence of her husband, but even today the unruly curve of the wings and awkward beauty of the pair still captures the imagination.

The Glow Worm

Annie was influenced and supported by G F Watts and Edward Burne-Jones, and she tackled figurative and allegorical subjects. I find her style clearer and less impressionistic than Watts but his influence can be clearly seen in works such as Mater Triumphalis...

Mater Triumphalis (1892)

The Edwardian period brought more success and after her husband's death in 1910, Annie seems to have lived more in London than abroad. Her painting Oreads of 1907 was acquired by John Singer Sargent, a great admirer of her work and he helped her to become the first elected ARA (Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser being founder members) in 1922. Annie also headed the section of Chelsea artists in the coronation procession of George V in 1911, organised by the women's suffrage societies.

The Sense of Sight (1895)

The picture that seems to have secured her place in the halls of the greats is The Sense of Sight, a painting showing an angel who has found heaven on earth in everything she sees (possibly as a reflection of how Annie felt in her role as a visual artist). In his 1905 book Women Painters of the World, Walter Shaw Sparrow reproduced the picture in monochrome (red).

Mrs Florence H Musgrave

Annie appeared in reviews of the Royal Academy and other exhibitions after the First World War, usually in unreservedly approving terms. In a 1929 exhibition of Aberdeen Artists' Society, one reviewer noted - 'Among the strangers (ie the non-Scots)... we liked better the work of Cadell, David Foggie and Annie Swynnerton.'

New Risen Hope

In the wonderfully disappointed review of the 1924 Royal Academy exhibition in the Western Daily Press, entitled 'Not Exactly Brilliant', the reviewer praised the painting New Risen Hope, which had been selected to be purchased for the nation via the Chantry Bequest, one of three of her works that would be purchased in her lifetime.

Dame Millicent Fawcett (1930)

Another to be purchased, in 1930, was her portrait of feminist and suffragist Millicent Fawcett, which was described in the art press as 'full of character and as fine a piece of colour as anything in the exhibition.' Laura Knight, the next woman artist to become ARA after Annie, met Annie in her old age and remembered her as a formidable and eccentric woman who had done much for the status of women artists. Gladys Storey in her book Dickens and Daughter (1939) remembered Annie a little less euphemistically: 'She was a talented artist and an accomplished woman, though scarcely one of whom it could be said she possessed a charm of matter. Indeed, by maintaining the courage of her convictions she was at times embarrassingly outspoken.'

The artist at her easel

Annie's eyesight failed her in old age. She moved down to a house called 'Sicilia' in South Hayling on the south coast of England in 1930, preferring the air and sunshine to her London home. She died there on 24 October 1934, leaving a studio full of 170 pictures, all but 12 of them unfinished and unframed. When this collection was sold the following year they made £601 which is just short of £40,000 in today's money.

Annie Swynnerton's Grave, St Mary's Church, South Hayling

To conclude, I always like to find a way to bring my research home to me and with Annie it was fairly straightforward. Last Tuesday my daughter and I drove along the coast to Hayling Island and found Annie's grave. In the quiet graveyard, overlooked by a 'Light of the World' stained glass window, is Annie Swynnerton's grave, marked by a large plain stone. The inscription reads

'I have known love and the light of the sun.'

What more can you ask for?

I find it very interesting how certain people are lost in time. A poet for example can just be forgotten, whereas another flourishes, despite being celebrated in their own time. It is particularly curious when the poet is related to someone else who remains in the cultural consciousness. Today's post is about just such a person. This is the life of Christina Catherine Fraser Tytler...

Mrs Edward Liddell (Christina Catherine Fraser Tytler) (1877) Mary Seton Fraser Tytler

Now, before we start, let me just mention her name and its variations. She is alternately known as 'Christina' and 'Christiana' and sometimes there is a hyphen in her surname. For the sake of consistency I am sticking with Christina, but I'll explain Christiana later. I'll leave the hyphen out, although it seems to be something the family used or dropped as they felt like it. Right, on with the story...

While doing the research for this post I was reminded of the life of another lovely young woman, May Prinsep, to whom Christina and her family had links. Christina was born 13 February 1848 in Bombay, India, the second daughter of Charles and Etheldred Fraser Tytler. Charles worked in the East India Company's Madras Civil Service and was an associate of Thoby Prinsep. When Etheldred died after giving birth to Mary Seton Fraser Tytler in 1849, Charles sent Christina, her older sister Etheldred and baby Mary back to live with their grandparents William and Margaret Fraser Tytler in Aldourie Castle on the shores of Lock Ness...

Well played, Aldourie Castle publicity chaps, well played...

The girls spent a decade growing up in the Highlands before their father retired and returned to his native Scotland with his second wife Harriet, in 1861. They brought their sons Charles (1854-77), Edward (1856-1918) and William (1861-1935) as well as sister Eleanor (or Nelly) (1855-1909). Another half sister Eva (1857-1859) had died in infancy in India. Charles moved his wife and all of the children to a new home, Sanquhar, in Forres.

Sanquhar House (also known as Burdsyard)

Fraser Tytler family and friends outside Sanquhar, 1865

Although the family had land and decent connections, they were not wealthy and so it fell to the sisters to make good marriages. Etheldred never married, dying a spinster barely a year after her half-brother Edward, in 1919, both at their grandparents' castle by Loch Ness. Christina and Mary had other things but love on their mind. Christina wanted to be a writer and her sister, an artist, but the usual round for girls of their class continued. On Wednesday 23 Mary 1866, Christina was brought to St James' Palace in London and there presented to the Princess of Wales in the Queen's Drawing Room as one of many debutantes coming out into society. Making their way in society seemed inevitably to lead the Fraser Tytler girls to Freshwater...

Christiana Fraser-Tytler (1864-5) Julia Margaret Cameron

Christina and Etheldred (known as Ethel) went to stay in Freshwater and obviously fell into the hands of Julia Margaret Cameron. The photograph of Christina (or 'Christiana' as Julia called her) shows a beautiful young woman in a meditative pose. When the sisters visited London in 1867 they visited Little Holland House and met G F Watts. Christina and Ethel returned to Freshwater in 1868 and brought Mary and Nelly with them, again calling at Dimbola Lodge...

The Rosebud Garden of Girls (June 1868) Julia Margaret Cameron
(Nelly, Mary, Christina, and Ethel - unknown girl in foreground)

The Rosebud Garden of Girls (June 1868)
(Nelly, Christina, Mary and Ethel)

The Three Sisters / Peace, Love and Faith (1868) Julia Margaret Cameron
(Christina, Nelly and Ethel)

On 20 June 1868, the sisters visited Dimbola in Freshwater and Cameron photographed them in images inspired by Tennyson's Maud. Each sister is representing a flower:

The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near;'

And the white rose weeps, 'She is late;'

The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear;'

And the lily whispers, 'I wait...'

The sisters are bowed together like flowers, their similar faces emphasising their sisterhood. I love The Three Sisters as it most clearly highlights the age difference between Ethel and Nelly, a decade between them, but also the deep love between them all, Mary not in the edited shot, but her sleeve seen on the far right. The poet and diarist William Allingham visited Dimbola on the day of the photograph and remembered the Fraser Tytler sisters - 'Meet girls going up the stairs in fancy dresses, Mrs C. has been photographing a group, and appears carrying glass negative in her collodionised hands. 'Magnificent! To focus them all in one picture, such an effort!'' When the poet Henry Longfellow met the Fraser Tytler girls in July 1868 he declared 'It was worthwhile coming to England to see such young ladies.'

Sweet Violet and Other Stories (1868-9) illustration by Mary Fraser Tytler

In December of 1868, Christina published her first book, Sweet Violet and Other Stories, which contained 6 illustrations by her sister Mary (who remained anonymous using her initials, M. F-T). It was published as part of the 'Christmas books' section, intended as gift-books for girls and young ladies. The Edinburgh Evening Courant reviewed it well, commenting that Christina 'has no inconsiderable power of portrait painting and for drawing suitable distinctions of character. We feel most readers will feel compelled to fall in love with "Sweet Violet".' In one of the adverts for the book Christina is listed as 'Christiana' which I would have thought was a spelling mistake, but in the photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron she is also often listed as Christiana. I can only guess that it was either an affectionate variation or an effort to make her name more poetic at the beginning of her career.

It was around this time that Christina met and fell in love with Edward Liddell, a vicar (to become Canon of Durham Cathedral) to whom she became engaged.

Christina Fraser Tytler (1870) Mary Fraser Tytler

Edward fell gravely ill in April 1870 and almost died. It would be almost 18 months until he was well enough to marry Christina, on 26 September 1871 at St John's Church, Forres. They were married by the Bishop of Moray and Ross and the church was filled by local people and gentry. Edward was related to the Liddells of Oxford but also to the Duke of Wellington's family (his mother was a Wellesley) and so the guests included lords, ladies, a countess and a member of parliament.

Christina Liddell (nee Fraser Tytler) (September 1871) Mary Fraser Tytler

As a respectable married woman, Christina continued with her career, publishing novels Jasmine Leigh (1871), Mistress Judith (1875), Jonathan (1876) and poetry collections Songs in Minor Keys (1884) and Songs of the Twilight Hours (1909), as well as appearing in different publications such as Good Words for the Young, the Good Words Annual and the Sunday Magazine. She is sometimes listed as 'C. C. Fraser-Tytler' and sometimes as 'Mrs Edward Liddell', as well as simply 'Fraser Tytler'

Note that she also played with the name 'Fraser Tytler' avoiding the woman-novelist stigma

Marriage suited her - a family friend Francis Jenkinson wrote in a letter home that he had seen Christina in March 1879 looking 'so plump and well, you would hardly have known her.' Christina wrote on religious subjects, much of her poetry using Christian themes and tone which may explain why her work is not better known today. It is obvious that she found a great deal of comfort in her faith, channelling such traditional Victorian subjects as art through a Christian eye. For example, in 'Love and Art', a male narrator tries to understand the woman he loves by beseeching a poet, a painter and a composer to replicate her in their art form but nothing could match the wonder of God's creation, the woman herself. In a very Tennysonian poem, 'Crossing the River', published in Songs in Minor Keys, Christina considers how it would be to cross the river that separated the living from the dead:

Ah, could we follow where they go

And pierce the holy shade they find,

One grief were ours - to stay behind!

One hope - to join the Blest Unseen -

To plant our steps where theirs have been,

And find no river flows between!

George and Mary Watts at Limnerslease, Compton

Of all her siblings, Christina seems to have been especially close to Mary, and to her husband George Frederick Watts, whom she had met prior to Mary's meeting with him. Watts admired Christina's poetry, writing that he envied her gift of words - 'Words won't come to me! If I try to come at them they seem to fly over the waste and I only see a whisking tail!'. In Emilie Barrington's G F Watts Reminiscences (1905) she quoted a letter he wrote in 1886 that he felt Christina's poems had 'a waft of sweet air in them'. It might have been this closeness that brought Christina and Edward to move to Puttenham, a neighbouring village to Compton, after his retirement. They lived out the remainder of their lives in Birdshanger, which miraculously still stands today (you know my track record with people's houses) and I got to linger outside their massive gates and hedge on a recent visit up to the Watts Gallery...

I lowered property values just by my presence...

Edward died in 1914 and Christina in 1927, Christina leaving almost £6,000 to her sister Mary (equivalent to £300,000 in today's money). Both of them are buried in a grave just outside the memorial to George and Mary at the Compton Cemetery...

Edward Liddell - Priest (and his dates)
and his wife Christina Catherine (and her dates)

Christina's work is not well known now and not many copies of the original books seem available to buy, at least not at an acceptable price. You can download a lot of her work for free however - Jonathan is available here,Songs in Minor Keys is here, plus others can be found through the Hathi Trust Digital Library. I hope to return to the subject of Christina and her sisters later in the autumn...

As you know, my new novel We Are Villains All will be thrust upon you in December, so brace yourselves. As I have pretty much finished all my work on it, just tinkering with covers and doing final amendments, my thoughts turned to what comes next. It has been on my mind quite a bit since I finished the final draft of Villains back in the summer, but I think today I can add a new tab to the top of the page. My next publication will be a return to non-fiction, to biography and to the life of an artist's model. My next book will be a biography of Mary Hillier, maid and model to Julia Margaret Cameron.

Call, I Follow, I Follow, Let Me Die! (1867) Julia Margaret Cameron

In light of this announcement, I thought I would bring you an interesting little story I came across in my research. It is the story of a casual waiter, a silver spoon, and the testamony of a maid...

Lymington, Hampshire - 19th century

On Monday 17th March 1873, a young gentleman called Henry Church was arrested in Lymington for hawking without a license. This means that he was selling goods on the street, often by calling out or bantering with passers-by. Sergeant Rodaway of Lymington apprehended the miscrient, but it seems that he had been tipped off by a silversmith and watchmaker of the town, George Marriott. Marriott had been sold a silver teaspoon, which weighed a mere 1/2 ounze, for a couple of shillings. The silversmith had obviously felt something was amiss as he had alerted the police, possibly because the teaspoon was crested. That crest was of Julia Margaret Cameron's family. The charge of hawking without a license was withdrawn and a more serious one of theft was placed upon Henry Church who was transported over to Yarmouth, to the tender care of Superintendent Stephenson of the Isle of Wight Constabulary...

Matters moved quickly and on 26th March, Church found himself at the County bench, on the Wight, in a session that covered theft of hay (one day's imprisonment), theft of sugar (6 weeks hard labour) and non-vacination of a child (£1 fine). When it came to Henry Church and the theft of the teaspoon, the court called Mary Hillier, maid to the Cameron household at Dimbola Lodge, Freshwater, as their star witness...

Sappho (1865) Julia Margaret Cameron

Mary Hillier testafied that Church had sometimes worked at Dimbola as a waiter, presumably when Mrs Cameron had a house full of guests. He had been at the house on 10th March and she had seen him go into the pantry where the spoons were kept, but it was not until 17th when she had noticed the spoon was missing. It was one of 12, and when the police showed her the spoon that Church had sold to Marriott, she identified that as being Mrs Cameron's missing teaspoon.

Dimbola Lodge (1871) unknown photographer

Without any doubt, the court found him guilty and sentenced Church to two months hard labour.

I found this story facinating because it reveals a little of Victorian life behind the excitement and creativity of the photographs. The Camerons ran a chaotic household, but one that was warm, friendly and welcoming. It seems both unsurprising and disgusting that someone would take advantage of the trust that was placed in them to steal such a trifle. It also struck me that Mary Hillier was in a difficult position herself as she was ultimately in charge of the silver spoons and had she not been trusted implictely by her mistress then she too might have fallen under suspicion. She stood up and testified on behalf of Mrs Cameron (called the 'prosecutrix' in the newspaper reports, what a wonderful word) and got the spoon back, which is an interesting piece of back story for the Madonna of Freshwater.

Madonna and Two Children (1864) Julia Margaret Cameron

For more information on my biography of Mary Hillier see the above tab and I will keep you posted as to my progress!

You cannot be a fan of Pre-Raphaelite art without, at some point, noticing that one hair colour seems rather prevalent. Whether you say 'russet' or 'Titian' or just plain 'ginger', the one hair colour that seems to be forever linked to Pre-Raphaelite art, rightly or wrongly, is red...

The 'natural history' of red hair is the subject of a brand spanking new book by Jacky Colliss Harvey, which I was sent as a jolly review pressie. The front, as you can see is emblazoned with La Ghirlandata, reflecting the thread of the book that explores the cultural significance of red hair, but that is not all. Starting 50,000 years ago, Harvey traces the origins and spread of russet tresses across the globe with the origins of man and the migration of the first tribes from Africa. The recessive gene and its behaviour is the subject for the first fascinating chapters, showing how the characteristic can appear full strength, or in part, or in freckles, and predominantly in northern Europe. Early on Harvey mentions albinism (which again I have an interest in) and there are links in the physical development and issues due to photosensitivity which I found very relevant to the Walker Household (which numbers one albino, one redhead and one chestnut glaze). It's not only that which Harvey touches on; she also mentions things believed about redheads in history, from witchcraft, mind-reading and all manner of other magical powers. I have informed Mr Walker that with his magical powers and Lily's mind-reading, we should go on the road...

The heavenly Joan Holloway from Mad Men

The cultural side of the book runs from Jesus to Joan Holloway covering all points in between. The allure of a red-headed woman (and the conversant repel of a red-headed man) seems heavily linked with sin, temptation and temper. One splendid quote runs 'God gives a woman red hair for the same reason he gives a wasp stripes.' Lovely.

...the 'redde-headed' queen

Elizabeth I...

The description of 'red' hair comes from Elizabethan time, according to Harvey, when the term 'redde-headed' was coined in Thomas Cooper's Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae. The bright tresses of the queen gave way to a fashion for the colour, but stories of her temper and caprice were wide-spread and enduring. Her independence, stubbornly holding out against attacks from abroad and at home, not to mention her unmarried status all added to the Virgin Queen's reputation and her red hair was just a part of that character.

The Biblical redheads, Judas and Mary Magdalene, find their full expression in art, as covered in the chapters on red hair in art. This is obviously where we all come in, as the Pre-Raphaelites get a thorough going over as well as Whistler and Courbet. Rather than concentrating on that well known ginger, Elizabeth Siddal, Harvey follows the life and career of Alexa Wilding...

La Bella Mano (1875) Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Harvey states Alexa's hair was somewhere between copper and marigold, which is an interesting claim. On the whole I feel that Rossetti had a mono-mania about hair colour and everyone got rouged up, even poor brunette Jane on occasions. Anyway, along with Alexa, Harvey looks at Jo Hiffernan...

Symphony in White No.1: The White Girl James McNeill Whistler

Jo, the beautiful Irish girl, was mistress to Whistler, and then model and mistress to Gustav Courbet, notoriously sitting (or should that be reclining) for L'Origine du Monde...

Look, I'm not posting a picture of The Origins of the World on here.
If you are of stout moral persuasion, google it
and then have a stiff drink and remember you're English.
Here instead is a lovely picture of a pussy
and not the sort that will get you an adults-only rating.

Anyway, there is a very interesting discussion of the lady-garden in The Origins of the World, which is very determinedly not red, and is very, very dark. If Jo was a natural redhead that is not her lower levels, and in fact the woman's head portrait that was recently matched to The Origins seems to bear this out. Sorry Miss Hiffernan, that's not your bits and pieces.

Detail of Beethoven Frieze (1901) Gustav Klimt

In Gustav Klimt's Beethoven Frieze he characterizes the blonde woman as Debauchery, the brunette as Intemperance and the redhead as Lust. This connection of red hair with sex is arguably what linked Jo Hiffernan with such an explicit image, and lingers still in figures such as Jessica Rabbit, referencing back to the ever-russet-y Mary Magdalene. By contrast Harvey brings us up to date with heroines full of grit and determination, such as The X-Files' Agent Scully and Disney's Merida from Brave. The duality of the redhead, both horribly fallen and steadfastly upright will rage on, no doubt.

Beata Beatrix (1864-70) Dante Gabriel Rossetti

To conclude, if you want a book about the meaning of red hair in Pre-Raphaelite art, then this probably isn't the book for you as that is only one part of what is on offer here. However if you are after a full and fascinating account of the origins and cultural meanings of being a bit of a ginger, then you will be both impressed and entertained. The subject spans ethnography, geography and science, all the way to art and pop cultural and is always understandable and thoughtful.

For the record, I always found red haired men very attractive. As Mr Walker knows well.

To buy Red: A Natural History of the Redhead visit Amazon UK (here) or US (here) or visit your local bookshop...

Review: Mr Holmes

Mary, Mary, Maids of Tennyson’s Isle: Julia Margaret Cameron’s Marys and Her Fantasy Made Reality

Rossetti's Women by Joan Greening

Review: Julia Margaret Cameron by Marta Weiss

That's Shalott

Harem-Scarem...

The Scandalous Spring of 'Seventy Nine...

All Aboard!

Review: The Art of Bedlam

From Life: Interview with Victoria Olsen

Becoming Julia

Photographing Alice (and Ina and Edith)

Kiss Me, I'm Four!

May Prinsep, My Princess

Good Morning May, May You Never Be June

Rossetti's Reputation in the 20th Century

Annie Louisa Swynnerton

The Other Fraser Tytler Girl...

The Curious Case of the Silver Spoon

Review: Red: A Natural History of the Redhead