During a nationwide ‘back to basics’ campaign by the government of Winston Churchill [cf. maiden Parliament speech] McGill was investigated for obscenity. ibid.
The seventy-nine-year-old artist pleaded guilty to obscenity and was fined £50. Thousands of his cards were then ordered to be destroyed. ibid.
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. The Victorian age was one of soaring ambition. Technological wonder. And awesome grandeur. As well as ugliness. Squalor. And misery on an unprecedented scale. The Victorians knew life was changing faster than ever before. And they recorded that change in paintings that were the cinema of their day. Jeremy Paxman, The Victorians I: Painting the Town: Their Story in Pictures, BBC 2009
They had invented the modern city. ibid.
At the end of a hard day’s labour a bowl of gruel. ibid.
The Thames became an open sewer. The newspapers dubbed the crisis the Great Stink. ibid.
Six million houses were built during Victoria’s reign. ibid.
The Suburb was a brilliant invention. ibid.
Victoria and Albert’s was a genuine loving marriage. Jeremy Paxman, The Victorians II: Home Sweet Home
Keeping a mistress wasn’t unusual. In William Holman Hunt’s scandalous picture The Awakening Conscious a man canoodles with his mistress in their love nest. ibid.
In London in 1857 it is estimated there is one prostitute for every twenty-five men. And many of their clients were married. Sexually transmitted diseases were rife. ibid.
Sherry, Sir: William Powell Frith. ibid. painting of content servants
There were some whose place would never be comfortable. ibid.
The Governess: Richard Redgrave. ibid. painting of sad servant
An Anxious Hour: Fanny Farmer. ibid. painting of dying child
Young Frederick Asleep at Last: George Elgar Hicks. ibid.
The Doctor: Luke Fildes. ibid. doctor by bed of dying child
Hushed: Frank Holl. ibid.
In reality children had never been more vulnerable. This was the great age of epidemic: tuberculosis, scarlet fever and typhoid killed thousands of children every year. No amount of money or prayer could keep death from the door. ibid.
She was what the Victorians called a baby farmer ... In the case of Amelia Dyer she never kept. Over the space of thirty years she took in more than fifty babies and she killed them all. ibid.
Found Drowned by G F Watts is an almost religion vision of the fallen woman. Stretched out like a martyr to Victorian morality ... Her body is bathed in a warm light. Set against a cold uncaring world. A single light shines down on her ... It’s title was taken from a regular column in The Times newspaper which listed the number of women who had thrown themselves into the Thames. ibid.
The Outcast: Richard Redgrave. ibid.
In Past and Present Augustus Leopold Egg shows a wife prostrated before her husband begging for forgiveness ... In his hand he holds a letter he has intercepted from his wife’s lover. ibid.
Two more paintings accompany the main picture ... The sins of the mother have been visited on the next generation. In the final painting the destitute mother lies huddled alone under an arch cradling the illegitimate child that is the product of her affair. ibid.
For a woman it was all too often a prison. Painters showed the Victorian wife bound by law, by convention, by religious teaching. Even by the clothes she wore. ibid.
May 1st 1851 ... Hyde Park London: from the Earth rose a vast glittering Crystal Palace made of glass and cast iron ... It took the world’s breath away ... One picture captured the significance of that day: The First of May 1851 Franz Winterhalter. Jeremy Paxman, The Victorians III: Having It All
Sheffield was Steel City. At the time of the Great Exhibition it produced half the quantity of steel produced in the entire world ... Five million tons in 1900. ibid.
Industry of the Tyne: William Bell Scott. ibid.
His factory on the Tyne became Britain’s largest manufacturer of guns and warships. With the profits of war Armstrong built his very own stately home ... In 1887 he became Baron Armstrong. ibid.
Just six hundred men charged into the valley against five thousand Russian soldiers and their artillery. ibid.
The Roll Call: Lady Elizabeth Butler. ibid.
One foreign minister described his government’s policy in the 1870s as ‘Fortify Occupy Grab and Brag’. ibid.
Hard Times: Hubert von Herkomer. ibid.
The Emigrants’ Departure: Paul Falconer Poole. ibid.
The Emigrant Ship: C J Staniland. ibid.
The London Docks may have been the gateway to the wealth of empire but the men who worked here were some of the poorest in Britain ... They were paid little and only by the hour. On average a doctor worked three hours a day. Resentment ran high. But all this was about to change. On August 12th 1889 the London dockers fought back ... Within a week 30,000 men were on strike ... For the strikers the suffering was intense; but not only for the dockers, for their families too ... In London the dock strike took to the streets. Thousand of dockers and their families marched carrying huge banners, their children holding signs saying please feed us. ibid.
On Strike: Hubert von Herkomer. ibid.
By the second half of the nineteenth century the Victorians had built a nation that was the richest and most powerful on Earth. Britain’s painters celebrated Britain’s triumphs. And yet just when the Victorian miracle was at its peak came voices of doubt, of anxiety and even of protest. Jeremy Paxman, The Victorians IV: Dreams & Nightmares
Artists began to talk of waging a war on the machine age. ibid.
John Martin: An extraordinary painter whose mind seethed with troubling visions. ibid.
Henry Alexander Bowler: The Doubt: Can These Dry Bones Live? ibid.
One Victorian led a call to arms against Victorian values: Edward Burne-Jones. ibid.
Richard Dadd was a phenomenally successful fairy painter who was admitted to the Royal Academy at the age of only 20. ibid.
Their pictures of the most dramatic, feverish time in our history were the cinema of our day. ibid.
History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created. William Morris
Frida Kahlo is one of the most famous female painters of the twentieth century. Emeli Sande, Perspectives: Under My Skin, ITV 2014
She made around seventy self-portraits. ibid.
On the walls of the world’s most important museums and galleries – women and models and muses but there is an absence of female artists themselves. Why is that? Do women lack talent? Or does it speak to a more profound truth about the history of women? Amanda Vickery, The Story of Women and Art, BBC 2014
There were successful female artists whose reputations have simply faded into obscurity. ibid.
The first great female artist of the Renaissance – Properzia de Rossi was born in Bologna in 1490. ibid.
Sofonisba Anguissola 1555: A Game of Chess ... Their individual personalities shine out of this painting. ibid.
Lavinia Fontana: Her paintings are so powerful because they provide a precious window upon the lives of daughters, brides, wives and widows. ibid.
Rome: the home of Artemisia Gentileschi, born in 1593 ... She tackled the epic. ibid.
The Dutch liked their pictures on a domestic scale ... viz. Clara Peeters’ Still Life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels ... It’s peace and prosperity in miniature. ibid.
Judith Leyster: Self Portrait 1630 ... Judith Lyester’s work was more than a match for her male contemporary Frans Hals. ibid.
Elizabeth Radcliffe ... Betty was no ordinary servant ... Such sublime arty-craftiness. Amanda Vickery, The Story of Women and Art II, BBC 2014
Royal Academy: thirty-two men, two women ... Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffman. ibid.
The bust was praised but [Anne Seymour] Damer going on to further works was now encroaching on the territory of her male contemporaries. ibid.