FINE ARTS. ARCHITECTURAL DRAWINGS IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY (2)

Carlos concludes his 1838 review with comments on designs for secular buildings. On the whole he finds a little more to like here,although he has some cutting remarks about the "Cast Iron Necropolis". The Westminster Bridge, Deptford and Greenwich Railway, for which John Davis Paine created elaborate drawings, was never constructed, and other contemporary reports confirm it was never likely to have been.

 There are but few designs in Grecian architecture; among which the most important are the following :—

William Wilkins' East India College, Haileybury. The building was 30 years old when Carlos saw  the architect's drawing at the Royal Academy.

Downing College as intended by Wilkins. Construction had actually begun in 1807 and proceeded fitfully.

View of the Principal Front of Downing College, Cambridge, now in Progress. W.Wilkins, R.A. View of the East India College, built at Haileybury. W. Wilkins, R.A.-—These drawings appear to be placed in juxta position, to show how far an exceedingly common-placed design can be varied to suit two buildings, a very favourite process with modern architects. The second is the parent design; a long line of front broken by three porticoes, one in the centre of the design, the others in the wings— equidistant from the centre. The same arrangement appears in the Cambridge College, except that two lateral porticoes appertain to separate piles of buildings, and so far are in better taste. Neither of the porticoes, however, occupies its right place at the extremity of the building, but all are placed against the side—the common fault of a modern Grecian example.

In street architecture the following design is marked with originality.
1198. D'Oyley's Warehouse, 346. Strand, corner of New Wellington Street, now re-building.  S. Beazley.—The style of the decorations is that of the age of Louis XIV. upon the whole a bad school to follow, but in the present instance it is very well adapted to an extensive shop and warehouse.

Lewis Vuillamy's new  facade for the Royal Institution, as drawn by TH Shepherd.

 1119. View in Albemarle Street of the new Front of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. L. Vuiliamy.—A clever adaptation of the principal elevation of the Dogana at Rome to an older building: the principal variation from the original is in the division of the pilasters in the attic.

1098. An Attempt at a Polychromic Restoration of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates. C. Vickers.—The principal restorations consist of the golden tripod raised on the beautiful finial which crowns the tholus, the volutes of which are strengthened by golden dolphins resting on the marble scrolls which still exist on the monument. Colour is applied to the frieze, and has a very pleasing effect.

1753. Sketch of a Design for a Cast Iron Necropolis, adapted for Churchyards or other Cemeteries. J. Gaudy, A.—We mistook it for a retort house, in some extensive gas works; packing the undistinguished dead in cast-iron pipes and laying them one upon another in rows, and those of more importance in vats and boilers, would create ludicrous sensations, and give rise to any but proper feelings.

1105. Westminster and Greenwich Railway, View of the Terminus adjacent to the foot of Westminster Bridge, Surrey side. J. D. Paine.
1218. Westminster and Greenwich Railway. View of the Bridge crossing the Kent Road near New Cross. J. D. Paine. .—We are pretty well acquainted with both these localities, and are now writing in the latter, yet have never seen either of these objects. Why is language employed to give to structures, whose erection is extremely problematical, the appearance of a present existence?

In the old English domestic style of architecture, the following designs are the most attractive:—

William Donthorn's Great Hall at Highcliffe. Photo via  Chrischurch History Society..

1068. Entrance Hall at High Cliffe, now erected for the Right Hon. Lord Stuart de Rothsay. W. J. Donthorn.
1103. Interior of the Great Hall forming part of a Gentleman's residence in Surrey, erecting under the Superintendence of B. Ferrey. — The above are specimens of the timber roofed halls of our old mansions: the roof of the first named consists of arched beams of oak, but more light and slender than ancient timber work; the hall is embellished with a large window of stained glass and paintings on the walls. The second example is a portion of the same design which appeared in last year's exhibition; it possesses more decidedly the character of an old hall, the principals are larger, and the smaller beams between them marked by the ornamental detail, usually met with in such situations; the windows are of the Tudor description, and the hall is furnished with an oriel. The architect does not state in what part of Surrey it is to be erected.

Kingsworthy rectory by John Chessell Buckler

JC Buckler's Costessey (also spelt Cossey) Hall, Norfolk.

1070. The Rectory House, Kingsworthy, Hampshire. J. Buckler.
1074. Cossey Hall, Norfolk. J. Buckler. —The rectory house is a pleasing structure of red brick in the Tudor style of architecture; the chimnies and gables are introduced where they are required; they form, it is true, ornamental accessories, but are not merely ornaments without utility. Cossey Hall appears in one of the many points of view, in which this very picturesque mansion shows itself to so much advantage, the view comprises the magnificent oriel windows, the great tower, and the chapel. Both these structures are highly creditable to Mr. J. C. Buckler, from whose designs, with the exception of the chapel at Cossey, both structures were erected.

FINE ARTS. ARCHITECTURAL DRAWINGS IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY. (1)

The first half of an article from The Gentleman's Magazine.  for July 1838. The writer is unnamed, but was clearly the magazine's regular corespondent, Edward James Carlos.  In general, Carlos prefers Gothic church designs to classical ones, but is frustrated by the low quality and superficial styling of the "pointed" designs presented at the academy. The catty remarks on Inwood  and Clifton' church in  Islington are particularly delightful.

Of the churches listed, those at Bury, Hereford, Islington and Honiton survive. Brookes' work at Dorking was considerably altered  later in the 19th century, and the buildings at Blackheath and Whitechapel have been demolished. Newman's design for Southwark was never built, the job going instead to Pugin.

This is a portion of the annual exhibition which has never received from the council of the academy the attention which the subjects demand: either the designs sent in are deficient in numbers, or a want of judgment must have influenced the selection of those which are exhibited. This fault was very apparent in the former gallery; it is not remedied in the present. The room appropriated to the architectural drawings is not sufficiently large to display them to advantage, and even the brief space which is allotted is still incroached upon by another class of subjects. 

CR Cockerell's tribute to Wren

 If any designs have been rejected, it would be a curious speculation to endeavour to ascertain the causes which led to such a step; for among those which are exhibited we notice some which had better have been left out — puffs for railways, which will never be heard of out of the share-market, and the fittings-up of rooms by paper-hangers, neither of which description of designs have any business in the exhibition, however useful they may be as advertisements. We give priority, both on account of its originality and artist-like character, to a fine drawing by Mr. C. R. Cockerell, R. A. entitled,

1111. Tribute to the memory of Sir Christopher Wren, being a collection of his principal works.—The principal, if not all the known works of the great master, are brought together and grouped in a pyramidal form with great taste and skill. The summit of the eminence is crowned with the grand masterpiece of Wren, St. Paul's; on one side, the towers and intended spire of Westminster just show themselves; below the cathedral, Greenwich and Chelsea are exhibited as examples of palatial architecture, and the observatory seen in the distance of the domestic class; the vast collection of London spires spring up in the foreground and middle distance, each with its proper elevation, and every one distinctly marked in detail; the interior of a church or two in section, the Oxford Theatre, and the dome of the Physicians' College, are also shown: the entire composition forming one of the most splendid architectural groups imaginable. The well-known epitaph forms an appropriate motto; and the whole is worthy of the deepest regard, not only as a collection of fine architectural objects, but as a just tribute to a wonderful exercise of human genius. What would be the feelings of a stranger to Wren and London when he witnesses this aggregation of beautiful objects, to be told that the whole were the production of one individual ?—What powers of mind must that man have possessed—what an inexhaustible fund of imagination must have been at his command? We hope Mr. Cockerell will not omit to engrave this design. 

In ecclesiastical architecture, there are many subjects; but the majority do not rise above common-place. Of this class the following are examples:  

1063. View of the Catholic Church of St. Edmund at Bury. C. Day.
1199. The Catholic Church of St. Francis Xavier, Broad-street, Hereford. C. Day.—A plain unbroken body or nave, with a recess on the principal front, in which is placed two columns, is the leading feature of each design: the first is Ionic, the second Doric; both are of Grecian architecture. In the second design, a cupola peeps above the roof, an excessively correct addition to a Grecian portico: the cross alone marks the character of the edifice ; remove the sacred symbol, and the design will suit any other description of building for which it may be needed—an assembly or auction-room, a court house, or a mechanics' institution. —Why was not the Pointed style used? 

St Mark, Whitechapel, Wyatt and Brandon's "church  on the Tenter-ground". Demolished 1927. Image source and more information here.

 1084. The new Church erecting on the Tenter-ground for the Metropolis Church fund, by Wyatt and Brandon.—A plain structure with a diminutive spire set on a square tower. The chief fault is an attempt to produce more than the means of the architects allowed.

Inwood and Clifton's St Stephen, Canonbury. Photo by John Salmon via Geograph

1157. New Gothic Church as approved by the Metropolitan Church Commissioners, and now commencing in the New North Road, Islington, from the designs and under the superintendance of Messrs. W.and H. W. Inwood.—W. Inwood, H. W. Inwood, and E. N. Clifton.—An exceedingly bald elevation, showing a square naked wall for its principal front, in three divisions, the centre being carried up to form a tower. And what a concentration of talent is necessary to raise this pile! We here witness three architects conjoined in building a brick wall: a century ago one was deemed sufficient to design and execute a cathedral.

Christ Church, Cheltenham. The name of the architect was actually Jearrad.

 1249. Model of Christ Church, Alstone, now building in the parish of Cheltenham. R. W. and C. Jerraud.—An attempt at Gothic architecture; a genuine meeting-house set off with a stock of pinnacles. It would be desirable to know the mode by which joint-stock productions in architecture are created. Are the designs individual!? the work of more than one hand? Or does the plurality of names merely denote a partnership in trade? 

James William  Wild's  Holy Trinity, Blackheath Hill.  Demolished 1954. Image: British Library.

1085. Design selected by the Committee for the New Church to be erected on Blackheath Hill. J. W. Wild.— This is a lancet  Gothic church, the east end polygonal, situated between two towers crowned with spires; to be grand, such a design should be executed on a large scale, and with a greater degree of expense than is likely to be allowed to a church built by subscription. The design is foreign: towers in such a situation are exceedingly rare in England, and the ridge ornaments seen on the roof are in this country confined to a solitary example.

1196. The New Parish Church of St. Martin, Dorking, Surrey. W.M. Brookes. —One of those structures which seems to make the antiquary the more keenly regret the loss of the older church. So much of the preceding structure as exists tends to give an ecclesiastical appearance to the pile, but the tower and transepts are marred by the long ugly body with a slated roof, which serves as the nave.

1221. Sketch of the Roman Catholic Church, proposed to be erected in St. George's Fields. J. Newman.—A cruciform design in the lancet style, with a central tower and spire; it appears to possess character in the general design, but the sketch does not show the detail sufficiently. 

Charles Fowler's church of S Paul at Honiton

1226. The Church just erected at Honiton. C. Fowler.—A Norman design, but too lofty in its proportions: a plain spire is intended, but it is not yet completed.

How To Look Like An Artist

Photo: Rijksmuseum. High definition version available here.

Particularly splendid pastel self-portrait by Abraham Hulk Snr's teacher, Jean Augustin Daiwaille (1786-1850).

A list of artists of the Hulk family

Self-portrait byy Araham Hulk Senior (1813-1897)

This list is an attempt to clarify the  bewildering range of names and conflicting dates given for the artists of the Hulk family. It has been checked against Familysearch where possible, and  in a couple of places with Dutch newspapers available online. In the main, it ties in quite neatly with the information given on the RKD database for the Dutch born members of the family, with one or two additions.  It seems that  a certain amount of confusion comes from some of Abraham Hulk Junior's children adding an "e" to their surname sometime around the First World War. Several of the family went by both Dutch and English variants of their names.

First generation:
* Abraham Hulk Senior. Born Shoreditch, London, 1813, son of Hendrik Hulk, a Dutch merchant. Lived in England from 1870, but died at Zevenaar  in 1897.
* Johannes Frederik Hulk. Abraham Snr's younger brother. Born Amsterdam 1829, died Haarlem 1911.

Second generation:
* Hendrik Hulk. Son of Abraham Hulk Snr. Born Amsterdam 1842. Died in Haarlem in 1937 at the age of 94. A brief obituary in Dutch here.
* Abraham Hulk Junior. Son of Abraham Hulk Snr. Born Amsterdam 1843, died Eastry, Kent 1919.
* William Frederick. Son of Abraham Hulk Snr. Born Amsterdam 1852. lived much of his life in Shere, Surrey, and died at Guildford  in 1921.
* John Frederick / Johannes Frederik. Son of the older Johannes Frederik. Born Amsterdam 1855, died Vreeland 1913. By the end of his life the English form of his name was used even in Dutch sources.

Third generation:
* Frederick Martines Hulk. Born St Pancras, London, 1876. Son of Abraham Hulk Junior. Graduate of St Catherine's College, Cambridge, Died Wycombe, Buckinghamshire,  5 June, 1950, described as "late of Deal, Kent",. Signed his work "F. Martines  Hulk".
* William Claude Hulk. Born St Pancras, London, 1876. Son of Abraham Hulk Junior.  Died Lambeth 1955. I'm guessing that he was the painter of the many works signed "Claude Hulke"; I can't find any trace of anyone else who might have done them.
* Henry Dollond Hulk. Born Brixton 1885. Son of Abraham Hulk Junior. Died Dover 1968. Signed his work "H. Dollond-Hulke"
* Frederick William Leicester Hulk. Son of William Frederick Hulk. Born St Pancras 1881. Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1898. Recorded at Frinton, Essex, in the 1911 census.

H Dollond Hulke

I came across this watercolour, signed H. Dollond-Hulke in a charity shop.  He's an artist whose  landscapes and coastal scenes  show up in  auction catalogues occasionally. Sometimes the "Dollond" is misread as "Hollond" or "Holland", because of the curious "D" of his signature. His works rarely seem to raise much interest and perhaps this is understandable: they often seem curiously empty, devoid of people or architecture. Over the last hundred years or so plenty of people have made made an aesthetic out of the curiously empty, but its not immediately obvious that this was Dollond-Hulke's intention.  A big red-brown cliff  on the right, with a series of headlands rapidly receding into blueness. Half-a dozen-seagulls hang in the air above the breaking surf.  The composition is a bit naive, but  it's nicely enough  painted.

H Dollond-Hulke doesn't show up on the genealogy websites, but Henry Dollond Hulk - without the terminal "e" - does. He was born in Brixton in 1885, the son of Abraham Hulk  and his wife Blanche, née Werninck. Abraham, born in Amsterdam in 1844,  was a member of a large Anglo-Dutch family of artists who pursued their careers in both Britain and the Netherlands. His father, also called Abraham,  was a marine painter, but Abraham Jnr also painted landscapes.

Henry's family moved around quite a lot - they were in Willesden in 1891, Nottinghamshire in 1901 and Henley in 1911. Henry D Hulk is recorded under that name in the census of 1911, with his profession given as "painter (artist)".  By the time of their deaths, Henry, his three brothers and an unmarried sister were all recorded as "Hulke".  Perhaps the "e" was added during the First World War in an attempt to give the name a less Germanic look (though to me the effect is quite the opposite). He was presumably  the Henry D Hulke who died in Dover, aged 83, in 1968.

His  brother  Frederick Martinus signed his work "F. Martinus Hulk".  I suspect that  the  painter who signed  "Claude Hulke" was another brother, William Claude (1878 - 1955).

Virtuosi, we have eight years to find this painting!

E.D.  Leahy drawn by JP Davis 1830.

In 1824 the Somerset House Gazette reviewed Edward Daniel Leahy's painting  "Catching the Expression", shown at the British Institution that year. Like most of the artists work it has, alas, slipped into obscurity.

We know not whether this admirable record of an artist's study, is that of young Edwin Landseer's, or young Edward Leahy's, as both their portraits are introduced; but, as this picture is well worthy of preservation, we can fancy some group of virtuosi, some two hundred years hence, peering through their glasses at these two old English masters. We delight to hold a morning gossip in tne confusionary of a painter, up to our knees in portfolios, broken casts, lay-figures, velvet cushioned chairs, without a chair to sit upon, amidst the arcana  of art. All these trophies of present study, however, will he regarded the more, anno domini two thousand and twenty-four, as they will  then savour of dry antiquity. Here we have another instance of the advantage resulting from careful finishing. This apparently playful effusion of the talent of Mr. Leahy, is a work taken up in earnest. It is an excellent effort of an aspiring young artist, and its merit is acknowledged. We are gratified to find, that a gentleman of taste has purchased this picture for the sum of one hundred guineas. Merit does not always remain unrewarded.

The New Annual Register, though less informed. had a few more details:

 "Catching the Expression," is, in parts, a clever and pleasing little work. It represents a young artist's study, probably that of the artist himself, E. D. Leahy, who is watching intently while another youth is setting a little dog at a cat, and "catching the expression" of the scene. The portraits are very cleverly executed, and include considerable individuality of character; and the colouring, though in an agreeable tone, is harmonious and consistent with itself; the animals are very indifferently expressed, and are quite inferior to the rest of the picture. 

Hopefully the virtuosi of  anno domini two thousand and twenty-four will nicer to cats.

Portrait by Richard Evans identified (almost)

A major commission by Richard Evans,  his portrait of Admiral Sir Edward William Campbell Rich Owen  (1771 – 1849), first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1827,  has been rediscovered. Actually it had been hiding unattributed  in plain sight in the collection of the museum  in Evans' native  Shrewsbury,  under  the title of  "Portrait of a Naval Gentleman".

Admiral Edward Owen by Richard Evans

Admiral Owen  was born in Newfoundland in 1771, the son of a Welsh Naval officer called William Owen, who has an unusually clear and interesting Wikipedia entry:

Captain William Owen (1737–1778), born in Glan Severn, Montgomeryshire, Wales, of a family of Welsh gentry. He was youngest son of David Owen of Cefn Hafod, Montgomeryshire. He was a member of the Royal Navy and lost his right arm from a wound suffered during the Seven Years' War off Pondicherry when supporting the British East India Company forces in 1760. Not content with the half pension he was receiving, he served as an impress officer. After the war, Owen contacted a former fellow officer, Lord William Campbell, who had recently been appointed governor of Nova Scotia. Late in 1766, Owen travelled with Campbell to Halifax. The following year, as payment for his work in aid of Campbell, he was awarded a large parcel of land. The grant, which included three of his nephews as grantees, was Passamaquoddy Outer Island in Passamaquoddy Bay. In 1770, Owen renamed the island Campobello Island after Lord Campbell; he also took into account the Italian meaning, "fair field", of the new name.

In England, Owen spent some time in Shrewsbury, where he was sworn a freeman of borough on 5th October 1764, and, by then a Captain in the navy, served as Mayor in 1775-76, following which he returned to service in India.  Owen was killed, accidentally,  in Madras, India while carrying dispatches from India to England.

 Owen left on his death two surviving natural sons via Sarah Haslam (latter named Sarah Bagshaw). His eldest son was Edward William Campbell Rich Owen and his younger son was William Fitzwilliam Owen. The latter became sole owner of Campobello Island in 1835 and settled there.

Although Admiral Owen's father was mayor of Shrewsbury, his own connections to the town were rather slight, as William Owen set up Sarah Haslam and his sons in a house near Manchester. A detailed outline of Edward Owens's life can be found on the  History of Parliament website.

Nevertheless, Shrewsbury thought it worthwhile to honour him with a civic portrait. It is mentioned in Henry Pidgeon's " Memorials of Shrewsbury" (1837), amongst a list the paintings due to be installed in the new Guild Hall:

The following portraits, presented to the late corporation, will decorate the walls of the new building : —King Charles I. Charles II. William III. George I. George II. George III. Queen Charlotte, Admiral Benbow (a native of Shrewsbury), the Right Hon. Lord Hill (by Sir William Beechy), and Admiral Owen (by R. Evans, Esq. a towns man). The two latter portraits possess life and spirit in their execution, and are justly esteemed most faithful resemblances of these illustrious heroes and fellow-citizens.

The portraits of Benbow and Hill are both in the collection of the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, so it would make sense to look for Evans' depiction  of Owen there. And the museum's "Portait of a Naval Gentleman" - shown wearing what certainly looks like the regalia of a Knight of the Order of the Bath - seems the only possible candidate

Despite good cirumstantial evidence for the identification of the painting, one slight problem remains: the naval gentleman doesn't look much like the one painting of Owen in the public domain, painted by HW Pickersgill in the year before the admiral's death. In this he looks very pale and worn, in contrast to the massive rubicund figure shown in the portrait at Shewsbury.

Admiral Owen byHW Pickersgill

Fortunately, though, there is a much closer resemblance to an engraving of him as a much younger man, used as the frontispiece of  the first volume of Abraham Crawford's "Reminiscences of a naval officer, during the late war"  (1851). He is only named in an illegible scrawled facsimile signature, and detached from the book this depiction of Owen would be completely unidentifiable. His identity is, though,  confirmed by the declaration  on the title page that memoirs are "embellished with portraits of Admirals Sir Edward Owen and Sir Benjamin Hallowell Carew". The engraving of Carew forms the frontispiece of the second volume and there are no other illustrations.

Crawford gives an extensive biography of Owen, which  includes some reminiscences of his striking physical appearance. He remembers from his first meeting:

My new Captain was a man somewhat turned of thirty, with light hair and a fair complexion; having an open and cheerful countenance, with bright blue eyes that bespoke at once intelligence and good-nature. His figure was tall and commanding, with a frame of vast power and strength, exhibiting in his person the semblance of one of those Saxon Thanes who led his followers to the conquest of Britain.

Of the period during which the portrait was painted, Crawford  writes:

When the Lord High Admiral resigned his office, in 1828, Sir Edward Owen became one of the Board of Admiralty which was then formed, with Lord Melville at its head; and in December of the same year he was appointed Commander-in-Chief on the East India station. On my return from the West Indies, in the spring of 1829, I found him at Spithead with his flag on board the 'Southampton,' on the eve of starting for his destination. I immediately got a boat, and went on board to see my old and valued chief I found him, as he always was, kind and affable, and glad to see an old shipmate; and I rejoiced to see that though he had grown much stouter, and years had rounded his person, they had not dimmed the lustre of his eye, nor damped the ardour of his vigorous and ever-active mind.

This bulk is tactfully indicated in Evans's painting.

So why the "almost" in the title of this post? Well, the painting's title on Art UK, and presumably in the museum's records, has recently been changed to "Sir Edward Owen Fisher Hamilton (1854–1944), KCB (?) ". Oh well.

Archer James Oliver: Putting his mother on a pedestal.

A lot of artists must have painted pictures of their mothers. They're available, for a start.  A self portrait with your mother, that's a  much rarer thing. But here we have the once-fashionable, but pretty-much forgotten painter Archer James Oliver painting himself painting his mother, Anna Maria. It's a studio scene, of course, but there's something just very slightly religious about the set up as  well.

Oliver was born in 1774, and christened on October 3rd of that year, at St Mary's church in Whitechapel. He was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools at the age of 16. From there he had a career that seems to have been  successful for the most part, but is curiously hard to trace.

He exhibited a large number of works at  the Royal Academy showing 210 paintings in all. The first, in 1791 was a self portrait, and his second, the next year, was  a "portrait of a gentleman", apparently a Mr King. His address in these first two years is given as 65 Long Acre. He then moved round the corner to 80 St Martin's Lane, submitting various portraits, whose exact subjects are mostly unrecorded. An exception is that one  of himself and his mother from  1794. It turned up at auction in Paris just over a year ago

By 1803 he was benefiting from aristocratic patronage, showing  a "Portrait of --------- Howard, Esq., of Arundel, representing William de Albini, an English Baron of the beginning of the thirteenth century; to be executed in stained glass, for a window in Arundel Castle" and "A portrait of His Grace, the Duke of Norfolk, representing Robert Fitzwalter, an English Baron of the beginning of the thirteenth century", also destined to be copied onto glass. This is a window from the same series, though I'm not sure if it's after one of Oliver's paintings. Still, they would have been very much along these lines.

The subject of  another Academy exhibit caught my attention too. In 1813 he showed a "Portrait of Sir Paul Baghott, Proxy for Lord Strangford, K.B. at the installation of Knights of the Bath, June 1, 1812, in King Henry the Seventh's Chapel, Westminster." It's hard to imagine it's not this picture of Baghott hanging unattributed in the museum at Stroud:

Ordinary Madness: The life of Frederick Newenham

The life of Frederick Newenham (1897-59) has everything you  could want in the story of an artist, except perhaps genius.

Newenham's origins have, perhaps intentionally, been veiled in mystery. Even the current Oxford Dictionary of Biography makes no effort to clarify his birth, merely paraphrasing the entry in Walter Strickland's 1913 Dictionary of Irish Artists, which says he came from a Cork family, and was somehow related to Robert O'Callaghan Newenham, a naval officer and watercolourist .Perhaps the obscurity of his  identity played some part in the bizarre claims he made towards the end of his life.

A possible clue to the truth comes in the 1851 census returns,  according to which Frederick Newenham was born in Ellesmere, Shropshire in 1807. This would indicate that he was the son of Thomas Newenham of Coolmore, County Cork, known as a writer on Irish subjects, and briefly a member of the Irish parliament, who moved to England in around 1800, and was living in Ellesmere at the time of Frederick's birth. Thomas Newenham was married to Mary Ann Hoare, who died in Cork in 1828. Frederick, unlike Thomas's older children, does not appear in the exhaustive geanealogy of the Hoare family, published in the 1870s, so it appears that Fredrick must have been Thomas' son by another woman. Thomas also had two daughters, both born in Shropshire, Sarah and Isabella. Their mother's name is given as Ann in the record of Isabella's birth. The sisters, and the mysterious Ann, later moved to Cheltenham,  which is where, probably not coincidentally, Thomas Newenham died  in 1834.

Other than his place of birth, I can't find any other records explicitly linking Frederick Newenham to Thomas, Ann, Isabella, and Sarah, so for now his parentage must remain conjectural. According to Strickland he  moved to London  at an early age.  He probably arrived before 1828, when he married Emma Wesley, the daughter of the composer Samuel Wesley (1757-1834), at St Mary's Church, Lambeth. They went on to have at least seven children together. By 1830 he had moved around quite a bit, as a notice of that year in the London Gazette  (never a good sign) demonstrates:

Newenham, Frederick, formerly of Foley-Place, then of No. 131, New Bond-Street and Vauxhall-Bridge-Road, all in Middlesex, then of Stonegate, in the City of York, then of Vauxhall-Bridge-Road aforesaid, then of Sloane-Terrace, Chelsea, Middlesex aforesaid, then of No. 76, Dame-Street, in the City of Dublin, then of No. 20, Dame-Street aforesaid, then of No. 79, Newman-Street, Oxford-Street, and late of No. 5, Villiers-Street, Strand, both in Middlesex aforesaid, Portrait-Painter, Modeller, and Dealer in Pictures.

Strickland doesn't make any mention of his artistic training, but tells us that he became a fashionable painter of  ladies'  portraits. The names of his  male subjects are, however rather easier to trace. They included several people connected with the railways: Francis Pratt Barlow, Thomas Brassey, William Chaplin, and and an engineer called Ross, possibly  Stephenson's assistant Alexander Mackenzie Ross, or his brother Hugh. The portraits of Chaplin and Brassey were both published as mezzotints.

Thomas Brassey

In the early 1840s  Queen Victoria and Prince Albert sat for him when he painted their portraits for the Junior United Services club.  Some paintings of  long-haired pubescent boys, representing historical subjects -  Dick Whittington, the young Milton and the young Newton, all with a rather similar look -  seem to have achieved some popularity as engravings.

Engraving after Newenham's Dick Whittington

  He also published a print of his eldest son George Sandford Wesley Newenham, under the title of "The Infant  Wesley". There were some  narrative historical subjects, often on a large scale, but if   Cromwell Dictating to Milton (1850) is anything to go by, rather simply composed.

Cromwell dictating to Milton (1850)

His career seems a fairly solid one, producing accomplished, if rather limited works, but things were less stable beneath the surface. He filed for bankruptcy in 1844. He was fined £5 for an assault on a bus conductor in 1849.  He was imprisoned for debt in 1855. And then one day in  1856 he went into the shop of a Mr Graves and  acted in a way so odd and  threatening that he ended up at Marlborough Street Magistrates Court,  facing proceedings for commital to a lunatic asylum. Here's a contemporary report:

A day or two ago Mr. Newenham went into Mr. Graves shop, and used such threats as led Mr. Graves to believe that some mischief would result in Mr. Newenham being at large. An application, it was understood, was made to Bethlehem Hospital, but there were difficulties in the way which prevented the authorities from receiving him. The asylum at Peckham was then applied to, and arrangements were made for sending him there. The delusion under which Mr. Newenham labours appears to be of a very singular character. One of his mania is, that he conceives himself to be the first historical painter in the world; another, that he has discovered the way to pay off the national debt; and a third that he is the Prince Imperial of Austria. The following letter among other epistles to high personages, was directed to Lord Palmerston:

72, Newman-street, the 16th day of April.
Beloved and most respected Lord, - I believe I possess the means of clearing off the national debt at one fell swoop. I know not as yet of the means I may possess of doing so, but will convey the precise position I am in in a week froun this, when I will communicate with you through the Emperor of Austria.
My dear and most respected Lord, your truly humble servant,
FREDERICK NEWENHAM,
Prince Imperial of Austria.
The Viscount Palmerston.

When brought to this court Mr. Balderston and Mr. Tucker, the late and present district surgeons, were called on to pronounce upon the state of his mind. Mr. Newenham, who appeared with a smiling countenance, and conversed freely and with seeming rationality, expressed his desire to make his plan for paying off the national debt publicly known, as that would serve to convince the world that he was in possession of his rational faculties. Mr. Newenham having been encouraged to explain himself said - Belonging as he did to the House of Hapsburg, and born as his registry would prove in the year ten thousand and two, his hereditary revenues as Prince of Prussia amounted to a million a year, or thereabouts -- he could not speak as to a pound or two more or less. This revenue lie proposed to allow to accumulate for 100 years at compound interest, and this, according to his calculation, would produce such a sum as would enable him to pay off the national debt slap, and leave him a trifle or so of a few hundred millions to devote to other patriotic purposes. He hoped the explanation he had now given would sufficiently show the state of his intellects. The medical gentlemen having given their certificates, Mr. Bingham made the usual order, and Mr. Newenham was removed in the company of two lunatic asylum keepers. 

Newenham did eventually make it to the Royal Bethlehem Hospital -"Bedlam" - where he died on 21 March 1859.

There are only two paintings by identified as by Newenham in British  public collections: Cromwell dictating his letter in Stockport, and a painting of the 17th-century speaker of the Commons Francis Rous, in the Houses of Parliament,  copied from Rous' portrait at Eton College. According to the ONDB his "Princes  in the Tower" was at Salford until  destroyed  as irrepairable in the 1950s.

Francis Rous, after an original at Eton

 

Incarceration

I don't know if all universities have one of these:

Postcard, circa 1910, of the 'Carcer' (student prison)  at Heidelberg University.

Heaven must be missing a portrait painter

Looking up John Prescott Knight in the old DNB, I found a reference to his enthusiasm for the teachings of the Scottish preacher Edward Irving, and the fact that he held "high office" in Irving's Catholic Apostolic church. The author is coy about naming his exact rank, but all is revealed in the memoirs of the Punch writer and farceur Sir Francis Burnand.  

It seems a strange thing to say, but 'tis true nevertheless, that I once had my portrait painted by an Angel. This is an absolute fact. The reader may think that the painter's name was Angel or that it was by M. Angeli, which would be "angels." No. This is how it came about.

Among the many artistic friends of my Uncle Theophilus was John Prescott Knight, R.A., secretary to the Royal Academy, and portrait painter whenever he got the chance of a sitter. I suppose in early days he had done some good work, and had some influential friends on the Academy Council, or otherwise how he could ever have been elected Academician it is difficult, judging from such works of art as I have seen of his, to imagine. My good-natured uncle thought he "owed him a turn," and so gave him the commission to paint my portrait .

J. Prescott Knight was an " Irvingite," that is a follower of the Irving who in the early part (I believe) of the nineteenth century professed to be " inspired," and with his followers to have received the gift of "prophesying with tongues." The Irvingites, when under divine inspiration, spoke as the Spirit moved them, and their unintelligible utterances were translated by other spiritually gifted Irvingites. The Irvingites, or members of the "Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church" (most Londoners know the fine building in Gordon Square), were governed by "Angels," and little Knight was "an Angel." In private life I have no doubt he was as excellent a man as he was upright and honourable in his public capacity. He might have been occasionally inspired as an ''Angel'' but very rarely as an artist.

''We"' meaning the Irvingites, he said to me while at work on the picture — " we have restored the Order that was lost in the Roman Church and in the whole Christian world"

" What is that ? " I inquired.

"The Apostles" he replied, painting away quite methodically. "You have bishops, priests, deacons, and so forth; but where are your apostles ? "

I looked as wise as I could, and confined myself to echoing his inquiry. "Ah! where are the apostles?" I asked.

Then he began his exposition of Irvingite doctrine, from which I only gathered that he, personally, appeared entirely satisfied with his own explanation. He ignored the Pope as succeeding to the "prerogatives of St Peter," but saw no sort of difficulty in accepting the teaching of Irving, Angel, preacher, and member of Parliament. I was there to be painted, not to be lectured, and still less to be led into a theological argument. So, though it might have been "pain and grief to me," yet I held my tongue, and I rather think that he congratulated himself on having either secured a convert to his Irvingite creed, or on having silenced me as a Catholic. He evidently saw the Catholic Church as he saw me, that is, from his own point of view, and he painted me as he thought he saw me, the result being a figure intended for a portrait of myself, bearing as much resemblance to the original as did his ideas of the Catholic Church to the Catholic Church itself.

A more notable artistic figure  was less enthusiastic about Irving. AWN Pugin's mother was also a follower, and regularly took the nascent Goth to hear him preach. It was as a  reaction  against this style of worship, that Pugin, according to his friend Benjamin Ferrey, turned to the ritual and colour of Roman Catholicism.

[Sources: Francis Bernand: Records and Reminiscences, volume 2; Benjamin Ferrey: Recollections of A.N. Welby.Pugin, and his Father Augustus Pugin ]

The Head of an Academician

Self portrait by John Prescott Knight

I knew  that Richard Evans (see earlier post) had stopped showing at the Royal Academy following an argument over the hanging - or non-hanging - of his pictures at the Summer Exhibition. I didn't, however, realise that he actually came to blows over the matter, or rather to one single and decisive blow, which he admininstered to the head of the secretary of the Academy, John Prescott Knight. William Powell Frith tells  the story in his autobiography. His racial stereotyping is somewhat misplaced,  Evans having been born,  as far as I know, in Shrewsbury.  The incident actually occured  in April 1849.

A Welshman named Evans, a portrait-painter of merit, had been a pretty constant exhibitor for some years. He assisted Sir Thomas Lawrence, many of whose columns and background-curtains he is said to have painted. I have been told, but I cannot vouch for the truth of it, that all Welshmen are choleric; anyway, Evans was, and when he found that not a single portrait by him was allowed to appear in the exhibition of (about) 1846, he armed himself with a thick stick and took his way to Trafalgar Square, where we were then located.

"Where," said the furious Welshman to the porter, " is your blanked Hanging Committee ?"

"The Hanging Committee, sir ?" said the affrighted porter ; " the gentlemen — the members, sir, are all in the galleries varnishing the pictures, sir."

" Bring one or two of 'em down here," said Evans, as he stood in the hall grasping his cudgel; "fetch 'em, sir, fetch 'em ! I should like the whole lot."

"Oh! it's against orders, sir, I couldn't do that; but here comes Mr. Knight the secretary; perhaps he will do for you ?"

" Do for me?" muttered Evans, as he ground his teeth. " I'm more likely to do for him."

Knight approached :

" What is it ?" said he. " What's the matter ? Ah, good-morning, Mr. Evans."

"Good what! Good-morning — a precious good-morning this for me ; but perhaps you've had nothing to do with this infamous — now, Mr. Secretary, I insist — I want to know all about this! I will see the Hanging Committee or some of 'em. They have turned out my portraits, and I want to — I will know why they did it!"

Evans was a big man; Knight was a little one, but with a courage beyond his size, for he said:

"I can give you every information, Mr. Evans; I was one of the Hanging Committee, and the reason your portraits were rejected exists in the pictures themselves; we did not give them places because we did not think them deserving of  — "

Knight remembered nothing between the utterance of the above and his return to consciousness, when he found himself on the porter's bed, with a large lump upon his head, which one of the porters was tenderly bathing with a mixture effective in all cases of blows or bruises, while sympathetic R.A.'s stood around him. The assassin had disappeared, leaving a heavy cudgel — snapped in two — awful evidence of what the porter called his "wiolence."

How well I remember the whole affair! I was quietly working at my picture, when a member rushing past me, said: "Come along, Frith, come along! somebody has murdered the secretary!" — a startling announcement in the halls devoted to the arts of peace.

Poor Knight looked very rueful, and little consoled by our vows of vengeance — legal vengeance. We would have the wretch before a magistrate; he would get six months' imprisonment at least, without the option of a fine. Or, if the secretary preferred another method of punishment, we would get Baker, the model, who was a pugilist, to thrash Evans within an inch of his Welsh life; or an action should be brought, free of expense to the sufferer — an action for assault and battery: a verdict with a thousand pounds damages would be certain.

Eventually, much to my disappointment, a civil action was brought, with a result so inadequate in our estimation, that we were persuaded that the presiding judge's portrait had been amongst the rejected. One of the Council said he recollected the picture coming before him — he knew the face in a moment; it was a good likeness, though a bad picture, etc., etc. I don't think any of us believed our friend, we thought him mistaken; but there was no mistake about the value a British jury placed upon the head of a Royal Academician. For the sum of twenty pounds — or it might have been twenty-five — any evil-disposed person may indulge himself in breaking the head of anyone amongst the forty whenever he pleases; but, as I have no wish to deceive any rejected one inclined to revenge himself, I have to remind him that though twenty pounds was the price of the amusement forty years ago, it might be more expensive now; but I don't think the heads have risen in value, so the difference of cost is scarcely worth consideration.

Frith was writing in the 1880s. More contemporary accounts give a rather different story, implying that it was indeed, Knight, rather than the whole hanging committee, who was the target of  Evans'  wrath, and that the violence was something of an afterthought. 

Götzenberger in England

Franz Jakob Götzenberger, generally known in Germany as Jakob Götzenberger, was born in Heidelberg in 1802. He trained as an artist in Dusseldorf, where he was a pupil of Peter Cornelius. In his time, Cornelius was name to conjure with, a promoter of grand schemes of public frescoes; imagine a Benjamin Robert Haydon who got his way. Whether people ever  actually liked his works is open to question, but they were, for a while at least, certainly impressed by them.

It was with a project initiated by Cornelius - for four murals in the "Aula" or lecture hall at Bonn University - that Götzenberger's career really got underway. He only assisted with the first of the frescoes - each of which represented one of the faculties of the university, in elaborate allegorical compositions inspired by Raphael's "School of Athens". He was however, largely responsible for the other three, Cornelius and most of his acolytes having settled in Munich by the time they came to be painted. Götzenberger continued working in the "Aula" until 1836.

The Bonn murals were destroyed during the Second World War, but two other schemes  - in the private chapel of a newly built mansion at Nierstein, and the loggia of the pump room at Baden-Baden (1844) - survive. I might return to these in another post.

Der Grafensprung from Götzenberger's Baden-Baden murals

At some time in the 1840s things went wrong for Götzenberger in Germany, though I can't find any explicit mentions of what happened. Resigning  his position  as court painter at Mannheim,  he moved to England,, setting himself up in a a studio at 46 Berners Street in London. His name starts to become a little fluid: he is usually referred to as "Herr Gotzenberg", with or without an umlaut; he showed as "F. Gotzenberg" at the Royal Academy, and is presumably the "Francis Gotzenberg of Baden"  who beacame a British citizen in 1859.

Götzenberger had been to England before, and had met William Blake in early 1827, with their mutual friend Henry Crabb Robinson acting as interpeter.

A couple of reviews indicate a generally positive response to him in his new country. In September 1855 the Art Journal paid a visit to Gotzenberg's studio. and liked what it saw:

We noticed some time ago an exhibition of cartoons and other works of art, which were exhibited in the rooms of the Reunion des Arts in Harley Street. Of these works we spoke in the high terms of commendation which they merit, and which we feel to be justified on a second opportunity with which wo have been favoured, of seeing them at the residence of the artist, No. 46, Berners Street. These works—historical and poetical—remind us of what we have so often expressed a wish to see more cultivated among ourselves; that is a high tone of decorative art. Many years have now elapsed, but we do not feel that in the way of popularising didactic art, anything has been done by the Westminster Exhibition. Herr Gotzenberg was one of the favourite pupils of Cornelius, with whom he worked, and subsequently received the appointment of principal painter to one of the German Courts. We have seen a series of works which he has lately executed for Mr. Morrison; the subjects are from Dante, some of the most striking scenes from the Divina Commedia; graceful, spirited, and full of the mystic poetry of the prince of the Italian poets".

In the following  February   The Spectator  informed its readers that:

Readers who take an interest in the German phase of art development may add something to their knowlege of it if they gain access to the studio of Herr Götzenberg, a pupil, as we understand, of Cornelius, at present resident in Berners Street. The employment of this artist on considerable series of frescoes in Bonn and Baden bears witness to the estimation in which he is held in his own country; and the cartoons of these works to be seen in the studio will show the Englishman what standing he occupies among the creditable disciples of a school to which the most adverse cannot deny the virtues of thought and study. The chief cartoon represents , in ideal reunion, after the fashion of Delaroche's Hemicyle in Paris, saints and great churchmen, and includes several earnestly elaborated heads. In England,  Herr Götzenberg, doing as the English do, not without scorn doubtless from German high art,  has painted some subjects of a very different class – interiors from Oxford, Leicester and other places. In these works, his tone of colour assimilates to our own; and he exhibits in a high degree the qualities which go to the painting of a good interior, – truthful and pleasant light and shade, figures introduced with natural appropriateness, and portrait-like truth of rendering.

The "Westminster Exhibition" referred  to by the Art Journal had been held in Westminster Hall, to choose artists to decorate the new Houses of Parliament, built following the destruction by fire of the Old Palace of Westminster in 1834.  Peter Cornelius himself was asked over from  Germany to advise. This should have been the great opportunity for artists in Britain to press the cause of grand public schemes of art. As it was, the whole thing fell a bit flat. Nothing shown was capable of  creating a new enthusiasm  for high-minded decoration and Götzenberger only seems to have done three decorative schemes in Britain: one is at Bridgewater House in Britain  London (which did not please its architect, Charles Barry), and another, consisting of four panels showing scenes from the Ballad of Chevy Chase,is  in the guard room at Alnwick Castle. This was done at the very end of Götzenberger's time in Britain; indeed some of the German potted biographies say that he completed the cartoons following his move to Lucerne in around 1863. The contract for the paintings, naming the artist as "Francis. Gotzenberg" was auctioned a few years ago.

The Dante panels for Mr Morrison, mentioned in the Art Journal,  are less well documented. The most obvious identification of Morrison is as the art collector James Morrison, one-time owner of the remains of William Beckford's Fonthill  who later set himself up at Basildon Park near Reading. This seems to be to be correct. I had to turn to Wikipedia for information, but it seems soundly sourced from the National Trust guide to  Basildon Park. It turns out that Morrison replaced some grisaille paintings in the dining room there  with coloured scenes from Dante - the artist is not named anywhere, but in the light of the Art Journal's comments, they seem almost certainly to have been by Götzenberger. The entire decor of  the room was removed and sold in 1929. It was exported to the United States, where it was used to furnish what became known as the "Basildon Room" at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. An old postcard describes the paintings as "attributed to  Angelika Kauffmann".

Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Full details and permissions here.

I can find traces of three interiors of the type mentioned by the "Spectator". One with contemporary figures, catalogued on the BBC/PCF "Your Paintings" site  as "Conversation Piece, Henry Foulkes, Thomas Briscoe and William Dyke by Jakob Götzenberger" is in the collection of Jesus College. Mention of another Oxford subject, this time  with a historical theme, "Charles I in Divinity School, Oxford" turns up on auction record sites. The third, catalogued as "The Mayor and Town Council of Leicester in the Mayor's Rooms" by "Gotzenburg", and now in Leicester Town Hall, is another Civil War subject: the Royalist mayor and councillors are rushing to take up their weapons to ward off the besieging Parliamentarians.

"Conversation Piece, Henry Foulkes, Thomas Briscoe and William Dyke"  in the collection of Jesus College Oxford

The Mayor and Town Council of Leicester in the Mayor's Rooms" by "Gotzenburg",  in Leicester Town Hall.

[References: Henry Crabb Robinson Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, etc. (1922);  BBC Your Paintings, articles  in The Spectator and Art Journal.  The attributions of the Leicester and Basildon Park/ Waldorf  Astoria paintings are my own deductions]

Bad News from the East

Society of Universal Good Will. This institution has ceased to exist.

(from: A General History of the County of Norfolk, 1829 )

Merry Christmas, War's Not Over

 

This intriguing lithographed bookplate is pasted onto the flyleaf of a copy of the artist A.S. Hartrick's 1939 autobiography A Painter's Pilgrimage Through Fifty Years. According to the inscription it was given by someone called Betty to Ivy G. Day and Gwendoline R. Harris, exactly 70 years ago, at Christmas 1943.

Inside: a well-lit room, books, cheerful prints on the walls, clean-lined modern furniture, sanctuary. Outside: desolation, the blackened ruins of the bombed city.

Lives of the Artists No.2: Edward Chatfield

Benjamin Robert Haydon, about whom enough has probably been written,  had several pupils, of whom Charles Lock Eastlake and the brothers Edwin and Charles Landseer were the most successful. Others have disappeared almost without trace,  though they may not have gone entirely unnoticed in their own time.

Edward Chatfield was  born  in 1800, the son of a distiller from Croydon.  Impressed by some paintings by Haydon, he obtained an introduction to the artist, who agreed to take him on as a pupil. His training with Haydon  included a course in anatomy, and close study of two of Haydon's special enthusiasms: the "Elgin Marbles" and the Raphael Cartoons. Although Haydon provided his tuition free, the master-pupil relationship would eventually cost Chatfield a considerable sum, as he had unwisely guaranteed  some bills for the man described by  Henry Vizetelly as "the unthrifty painter of colossal canvasses", and had to pay up when Haydon was arrested for debt in 1823. However he remained attached to Haydon, whom he often, rather oddly, referred to as "father".

Following the abrupt end of his training, he embarked on a career that mixed portrait painting - presumably for the money - with more  ambitious historical subjects. His works seem to have sunk into almost complete obscurity. There aren't any paintings - at least not recognised as such - in British public collections, and a simple internet search  turns up only a few prints after his works.

In 1825 he painted a deputation of Huron chiefs, who had came to London  in order to present their grievances to  George IV. Charles Hullmandell made lithographs of the pictures:

Three Chiefs of the Huron Indians Residing at La Jeune Lorette, Near Quebec, in their National Costume. Lithograph by Charles Hullmandel, after a painting by Edward Chatfield (1825). Image: National Gallery of Canada

Nicolas Vincent Tsawenhohi. Lithograph by Charles Hullmandel, after a painting by Edward Chatfield (1825). Image: Wikimedia Commons.

His painting The Otter's Cairn—a Scene in the Island of Islay,  with portraits, painted for "Campbell M.P. of Islay" and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1834, was, though,  in a Christie's sale in Edinburgh in 2008. Oddly enough it was catalogued as "Circle of George Sanders (1774-1846)", but if the description of the painting as "The Islay Otter Hunt with numerous figures, including Walter Frederick Campbell (1798-1855), and his son John Francis Campbell (1822-1885)" wasn't enough to confirm an attribution to Chatfield, the catalogue entry notes that an indistinct inscription on the stretcher,  reading "An otter hunt in Islay painted by Cha[tfield?] in Islay/Portrait of ..... Campbell of Islay...."

This is how The Sporting Magazine reviewed it:

Otter Hunting will lose none of its attractions by Mr. Chatfield's delineation of it—he has been very happy in selecting his points, which tell with considerable effect. The listening attitude of some, and the wary countenances of others while awaiting the dislodgment of the enemy from his retreat, is cleverly imagined, and the whole is heightened by the Highland costume of some of the party.

Other exhibited paintings by Chatfield included The Death of Moses, shown at the British Institution in 1823, and recorded at the time of his death at Salters' Hall, in the City of London;   Penelope's Grief over the Bow of Ulysses ( 1824), La Petite Espiegle (1825), The Death of Locke (1833); The Battle of Killiecrankie (1836)  and  Ophelia (1837), as well as various portraits. Are we missing much by not knowing these paintings? The Gentleman's Magazine was ambivalent about his achievement:

As an artist, Mr. Chatfield had never succeeded in doing perfect justice to the powers which he really possessed. His taste was formed upon a thorough understanding of all that was loftiest in art— but his hand, judging by his exhibited pictures, could not accomplish the tasks which he would have set it. His unceasing and feverish ambition to realise his pure views of art—to trace the forms which he saw in visions, peopled with the shapes and colours of the Old Masters whom he venerated —to pourtray the beauty, and work out the truth which lie felt so acutely—may have had its effect among the causes of his premature death. 

In other words, he was a victim of Haydon's high-mindedness. There isn't much more. He wrote articles  on art for various magazines under the pseudonym "Echion". In his last piece, ''On Poetic Painting and Sculpture'' for the ''Monthly Magazine" he criticised the works of Henry Fuseli in terms that, to the modern reader, might seem like an argument for dullness in art:  "The fantastic, the eccentric, the grotesque, the unnatural, the horrible, may all put in their claims to the title of Poetic, and some portion of the true Hippocrene may mingle with all; but a matured taste rejects from any affinity with the genuine fountain of the Muses, whatsoever is inconsistent with fine sense or propriety of character".

In Greek mythology Echion was, in the words of Lempriére's Classical Dictionary, the standard  reference work of the time and favourite reading of Haydon's friend John Keats, "one of those men who sprung from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus. He was one of the five who survived the fate of his brothers and assisted Cadmus in building the city of Thebes."  Chatfield's life was less epic. In 38 years it took him from Croydon to Bloomsbury, where he died at the house of his friend, the wood engraver Orrin Smith, with whom he had lived for several years, in   January 1839.

[[Sources: Obituaries in the Aldine Magazine and
the Gentleman's Magazine; Chatfield's entry in the Dictionary of National Biography; Henry Vizetelly Glances Back Through Seventy Years; The Sporting Magazine; The Monthly Magazine; Lempriére's Dictionary.]

Last Supper in Ponders End

There is, of course, no reason that the altarpiece from the high altar of Santa Croce in Florence, or at least significant  bits of it shouldn't end up in Ponders End.

The altarpiece, painted by the Sienese artist Ugolino da Nerio at sometime in the 1320s was brought to England by William Young Ottley. He's generally described  basically as a "collector" though he made a large amount of money out of dealing in art; he sold a collection of old master drawings to his friend Thomas Lawrence,  President of the Royal Academy and enthusiastic spender of money he didn't have, for £8,000.  Ottley had spent some years in Italy and taken advantage of the chaos caused by the Napoleonic wars to  gather a considerable art collection. The altarpiece was removed from the high altar in the 1560s to make way for a ciborium designed by Giorgio Vasari. In 1785 it is recorded in the friars' dormitory at Santa Croce, but by 1810, when the monastery was suppressed it had already gone, most of the parts sold to Ottley. 

Following his return to England, Ottley he sold all the later paintings he'd acquired in Italy, but hung on to the early ones, including the Santa Croce panels, including the central image of the madonna and child, which is now lost.

In 1847, following Ottley's death, his collection was offered at auction. Most of the Santa Croce panels were unsold, but were auctioned again in 1850. Six  of the seven panels of the predella - the strip of scenes from along the  bottom of the altarpiece, and four other panels from a higher level, each showing two saints  were bought by a clergyman called John  Fuller.Russell. The incumbent (even more technically the "perpetual curate) of the church of St James Enfield Highway, just up the road from Ponders End, Russell was a member of the high church Ecclesiological Society, which he'd joined  as an undergraduate at Cambridge (where he read law), when it was still called  the Cambridge Camden Society. His high church tendencies seem to be a reaction against his background; his father was a Congregationalist minister, who went by the name of Thomas Russell, although his surname was originally Clout, and  John Fuller Russell was only baptised into the Church of England while he was a student. The Ecclesiological Society, was  a group of Anglicans dedicated to the revival of ancient - that is pre-Reformation -  styles of art, architecture, ritual and music in the church of England. Pugin, or at least his rhetoric was an important early influence on their aesthetic outlook, but they were disappointed with the  buildings he actually put up, which they severely criticised in their spendidly outspoken  magazine "Ecclesiologist". There were, in any case, always equivocal about Roman Catholicism.

There isn't actually a great deal about painting in the "Ecclesiologist", but early Renaissance art was one of Russell's great enthusiasms. When the German art historian Gustav Waagen visited Russell in Ponders End, he found the walls of Eagle House "so richly adorned with specimens of the 14th century, that the spectator feels as if transported to a chapel at Siena or Florence." Eagle House was near the corner of South Street and the High Street, just opposite where Tesco's is now.

In 1856 Russell became the rector of Greenhithe in Kent, and had increased his collection significantly by the time Waagen visited him there a few years later, new acquisitions including the "Diptych of Jeanne de France" then believed to be by Hans Memling (now in the Musée Condé in Chantilly). He was rector of Greenhithe for the rest of his life, but also had a London house, in Ormonde Terace, Regent's Park, where he died. I don't know how he afforded his collection; there's no indication of family wealth, and its hard to imagine his salary from the church was that great. Perhaps, if you were careful and had a good eye, collecting the kind of things he liked actually wasn't that expensive.

Russell's collection of paintings was auctioned in April 1885. The Santa Croce paintings went their various ways. Several of the predella panels are in the National Gallery in London: The Arrest of Christ, "The Way to Calvary" and the "Depostion". The gallery also owns the "Resurection", which was not in Russell's collection. The "Last Supper" is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the "Flagellation" and "Entombment" are in Berlin. 

[Sources: DNB entries for Ottley and Russell; Familysearch; Waagen;"The Ecclesiologist"; John Pope Hennessey "Italian Paintings from the Robert Lehman Collection"; Stuff I made up.]