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Lot Essay
This attractive picture was the only work that Stanhope showed at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1888, and the last he was ever to contribute to its exhibitions. For a decade the Gallery, launched by Sir Coutts Lindsay in 1877, had been a great cultural and social centre. The summer exhibitions had been eagerly awaited and much discussed events, while during the winter months there had been important shows of old master paintings, as well as retrospectives of Watts, Alma-Tadema and Millais. Lady Lindsay's Sunday afternoon receptions had also been a great success, attracting everyone who was anyone in the haute bohème. But in 1882 she separated from her husband, and withdrew her vital financial support. Sir Coutts was forced to raise revenue by hiring the Gallery out for private functions, and inevitably its elevated tone declined. Burne-Jones and other luminaries watched the developments with dismay, and in 1887, with their active support, the Gallery's two directors, Joseph Comyns Carr and Charles Hallé, resigned to build a gallery of their own. Situated in Regent Street and erected at phenomenal speed in order to open the following summer, the New Gallery sought to recapture the idealism of its predecessor while avoiding its mistakes. The Grosvenor struggled on for another two years, but the competition was too intense and it closed in 1890, a sad end to a gallant and by no means unsuccessful attempt to redefine the art establishment and give to art the absolute value so often denied it in England.
With so many of its key artists gone, the Grosvenor was inevitably a very different place in 1888. 'The altered circumstances of this exhibition are apparent on every wall' wrote F.G. Stephens in his Athenaeum review. 'Pictures are to be found which are not of the kind that the former management sought for, while works such as used to form the leading attractions... have vanished altogether. This implies a total change; and the missing works of art being those that gave the gallery its cachet, and no peculiar features having taken their place, the whole resembles... an ordinary London exhibition'.
The art critic on the Times made the same point. 'Of course, the Grosvenor Gallery is not what it was. Nothing could replace Mr Burne-Jones and Mr Watts... Indeed there is scarcely more than a single picture... that attempts to represent ideal art at all'. The writer also noted ruefully that the place of honour in the main gallery, 'the place which we have been accustomed to associate with King Cophetua, The Garden of Pan [both by Burne-Jones] and Hope [by Watts]', was now occupied by a picture called Smugglers - Cornwall Sixty Years Ago by the popular Scottish artist John Reid. 'Surely nowhere does the whirligig of time bring such curious changes as in the world of art!'
Yet the Grosvenor was not entirely deserted by its old stars. Millais, Poynter, Richmond and Albert Moore all contributed, as did a few of Burne-Jones's followers. Robert Bateman, one of the so-called 'Poetry without Grammar' group who had fallen under his influence in the 1860s, sent two works, and there were isolated examples of Evelyn De Morgan and Charles Fairfax Murray, the latter's Violin Player (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) being the 'single' idealist picture that the Times art critic noted as the exception to the general rule. Stanhope's Pine Woods at Viareggio was yet another of these lorn survivals, and one wonders why he remained. Perhaps out of loyalty to Sir Coutts Lindsay, or perhaps at the persuading of his niece Evelyn De Morgan, although this was to be her last appearance at the Grosvenor too.
As if in response to the dramatically altered circumstances, Stanhope's picture was different from anything he had sent to the Grosvenor before. All his previous exhibits had either been allegorical compositions invented by himself or subjects drawn from the Bible or classical mythology. In contrast, his 1888 contribution was a timeless genre scene in which three young girls are seen collecting timber and pine-cones in the woods at Viareggio, a town on the shore of the Ligurian sea, due west of Lucca. F.G. Stephens for one was puzzled, as he observed in his review:
Mr R.S. Stanhope's Pine Woods at Viareggio we must needs accept under his own conditions as a Mantegnesque, yet perfectly sincere and, at heart, very poetical, if somewhat conventional and hard group of girls in a pine wood, laden with fir cones and branches. The realism of the drawing, modelling, and landscape, thoroughly sound and even beautiful as it is, is out of keeping with the conventions of the painter.
Stephens might have been perplexed, finding the picture 'out of keeping' with his preconceived image of Stanhope, but, as three major examples in the sale show (see also lots 8 and 11), these country genre scenes were an important aspect of the artist's work, albeit one which he seldom chose to exhibit. Their size and degree of finish make it clear that they were not in any way slight, incidental works, knocked off in the intervals of painting more 'serious' subjects. On the contrary, like the allegorical and literary pictures, they have obviously been carefully worked up in the studio from memory, imagination, and possibly preliminary, on-the-spot sketches. No such sketches are known, but then one of the most mysterious things about Stanhope is the complete absence of any preparatory drawings for his paintings. It is possible that, in stark contrast to Burne-Jones, who was obsessive about making such drawings, he painted entirely 'out of his head'. Or perhaps Stanhope's sketchbooks are one of the great revelations still to come.
However he set about them, Stanhope's genre scenes remind us forcibly of how little we know about his life in Italy. They suggest that he travelled reasonably widely. Viareggio and the countryside found in Charcoal Thieves (lot 11) may have been within easy reach of Florence, but Sorrento (lot 8) was many miles to the south. They also indicate that he was a close observer of local habits and customs, something one would not readily assume from his literary subjects. These seem to be essentially cerebral constructs, the product of what Henry James, speaking of Burne-Jones, called 'a complete studio existence, with doors and windows closed, and no search for impressions outside'. It is even possible to wonder, so substantial and considered are these pictures, if in fact they are just simple genre scenes; could they not have some ulterior, symbolic meaning?
Finally, there is the question of whether they are merely a late flowering of the 'extraordinary turn for landscape' that Stanhope had revealed from an early age, or whether they relate to any wider tradition. He must, for instance, have been familiar with the work of the Etruscan School. True, these painters were based in Rome, but their work was widely exhibited in England, at the Dudley Gallery, the Fine Art Society, and the Grosvenor. The Grosvenor consistently supported the school from the moment it opened its doors in 1877, showing the work not only of its leader, Giovanni Costa, but of two other Italian exponents, Cesare Formilli and Gastano Vannicola, and many of its English adherents: Leighton, Richmond, Crane, George Howard, Matthew Ridley and Edith Corbet, Edgar Barclay and others. Also represented in the early 1880s were Telemaco Signorini and Vincenzo Cabianca, two of the well-known group of Tuscan realists known as the Macchiaioli, with whom Costa was closely associated.
At first sight the differences between Stanhope and these artists are more obvious than the similarities. His paintings are large, mannered, studio productions, 'portrait' or 'landscape' in format, and emphasize the figures as much as the landscape backgrounds. The typical Etruscan or Macchiaioli picture is small and naturalistic, if not indeed painted en plein air. Landscapes tend to be of narrow oblong shape, and are first and foremost landscapes, whether or not they contain figures. Stanhope may, indeed, have hated these pictures, and deliberately reacted against their realism. Or perhap there are underlying connections waiting to be explored. Certainly we are not yet in possession of all the data. It would be interesting, for example, to have the 'pure' landscapes painted in Florence and Switzerland (more evidence of travel) that Stanhope exhibited at the New Gallery in 1889-90.
The price paid for Pine Woods at Viareggio in 1925, 40 guineas, is another good example of how cheaply such works could be bought when Victorian art was out of fashion, and what opportunities there were for Mrs Stirling if she watched the salerooms carefully (see also lot 2).
With so many of its key artists gone, the Grosvenor was inevitably a very different place in 1888. 'The altered circumstances of this exhibition are apparent on every wall' wrote F.G. Stephens in his Athenaeum review. 'Pictures are to be found which are not of the kind that the former management sought for, while works such as used to form the leading attractions... have vanished altogether. This implies a total change; and the missing works of art being those that gave the gallery its cachet, and no peculiar features having taken their place, the whole resembles... an ordinary London exhibition'.
The art critic on the Times made the same point. 'Of course, the Grosvenor Gallery is not what it was. Nothing could replace Mr Burne-Jones and Mr Watts... Indeed there is scarcely more than a single picture... that attempts to represent ideal art at all'. The writer also noted ruefully that the place of honour in the main gallery, 'the place which we have been accustomed to associate with King Cophetua, The Garden of Pan [both by Burne-Jones] and Hope [by Watts]', was now occupied by a picture called Smugglers - Cornwall Sixty Years Ago by the popular Scottish artist John Reid. 'Surely nowhere does the whirligig of time bring such curious changes as in the world of art!'
Yet the Grosvenor was not entirely deserted by its old stars. Millais, Poynter, Richmond and Albert Moore all contributed, as did a few of Burne-Jones's followers. Robert Bateman, one of the so-called 'Poetry without Grammar' group who had fallen under his influence in the 1860s, sent two works, and there were isolated examples of Evelyn De Morgan and Charles Fairfax Murray, the latter's Violin Player (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) being the 'single' idealist picture that the Times art critic noted as the exception to the general rule. Stanhope's Pine Woods at Viareggio was yet another of these lorn survivals, and one wonders why he remained. Perhaps out of loyalty to Sir Coutts Lindsay, or perhaps at the persuading of his niece Evelyn De Morgan, although this was to be her last appearance at the Grosvenor too.
As if in response to the dramatically altered circumstances, Stanhope's picture was different from anything he had sent to the Grosvenor before. All his previous exhibits had either been allegorical compositions invented by himself or subjects drawn from the Bible or classical mythology. In contrast, his 1888 contribution was a timeless genre scene in which three young girls are seen collecting timber and pine-cones in the woods at Viareggio, a town on the shore of the Ligurian sea, due west of Lucca. F.G. Stephens for one was puzzled, as he observed in his review:
Mr R.S. Stanhope's Pine Woods at Viareggio we must needs accept under his own conditions as a Mantegnesque, yet perfectly sincere and, at heart, very poetical, if somewhat conventional and hard group of girls in a pine wood, laden with fir cones and branches. The realism of the drawing, modelling, and landscape, thoroughly sound and even beautiful as it is, is out of keeping with the conventions of the painter.
Stephens might have been perplexed, finding the picture 'out of keeping' with his preconceived image of Stanhope, but, as three major examples in the sale show (see also lots 8 and 11), these country genre scenes were an important aspect of the artist's work, albeit one which he seldom chose to exhibit. Their size and degree of finish make it clear that they were not in any way slight, incidental works, knocked off in the intervals of painting more 'serious' subjects. On the contrary, like the allegorical and literary pictures, they have obviously been carefully worked up in the studio from memory, imagination, and possibly preliminary, on-the-spot sketches. No such sketches are known, but then one of the most mysterious things about Stanhope is the complete absence of any preparatory drawings for his paintings. It is possible that, in stark contrast to Burne-Jones, who was obsessive about making such drawings, he painted entirely 'out of his head'. Or perhaps Stanhope's sketchbooks are one of the great revelations still to come.
However he set about them, Stanhope's genre scenes remind us forcibly of how little we know about his life in Italy. They suggest that he travelled reasonably widely. Viareggio and the countryside found in Charcoal Thieves (lot 11) may have been within easy reach of Florence, but Sorrento (lot 8) was many miles to the south. They also indicate that he was a close observer of local habits and customs, something one would not readily assume from his literary subjects. These seem to be essentially cerebral constructs, the product of what Henry James, speaking of Burne-Jones, called 'a complete studio existence, with doors and windows closed, and no search for impressions outside'. It is even possible to wonder, so substantial and considered are these pictures, if in fact they are just simple genre scenes; could they not have some ulterior, symbolic meaning?
Finally, there is the question of whether they are merely a late flowering of the 'extraordinary turn for landscape' that Stanhope had revealed from an early age, or whether they relate to any wider tradition. He must, for instance, have been familiar with the work of the Etruscan School. True, these painters were based in Rome, but their work was widely exhibited in England, at the Dudley Gallery, the Fine Art Society, and the Grosvenor. The Grosvenor consistently supported the school from the moment it opened its doors in 1877, showing the work not only of its leader, Giovanni Costa, but of two other Italian exponents, Cesare Formilli and Gastano Vannicola, and many of its English adherents: Leighton, Richmond, Crane, George Howard, Matthew Ridley and Edith Corbet, Edgar Barclay and others. Also represented in the early 1880s were Telemaco Signorini and Vincenzo Cabianca, two of the well-known group of Tuscan realists known as the Macchiaioli, with whom Costa was closely associated.
At first sight the differences between Stanhope and these artists are more obvious than the similarities. His paintings are large, mannered, studio productions, 'portrait' or 'landscape' in format, and emphasize the figures as much as the landscape backgrounds. The typical Etruscan or Macchiaioli picture is small and naturalistic, if not indeed painted en plein air. Landscapes tend to be of narrow oblong shape, and are first and foremost landscapes, whether or not they contain figures. Stanhope may, indeed, have hated these pictures, and deliberately reacted against their realism. Or perhap there are underlying connections waiting to be explored. Certainly we are not yet in possession of all the data. It would be interesting, for example, to have the 'pure' landscapes painted in Florence and Switzerland (more evidence of travel) that Stanhope exhibited at the New Gallery in 1889-90.
The price paid for Pine Woods at Viareggio in 1925, 40 guineas, is another good example of how cheaply such works could be bought when Victorian art was out of fashion, and what opportunities there were for Mrs Stirling if she watched the salerooms carefully (see also lot 2).