Professional Documents
Culture Documents
C
stephen bann and linda whiteley
with john guy, christopher riopelle
and anne robbins
Cover, pages 8, 16, 24, 34 and 106–7 (details): Paul Delaroche (1797–1856), Lenders to the Exhibition · 160
The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, 1833. Oil on canvas, double-lined, 251 x 302 cm.
The National Gallery, London (NG53). Bibliography · 161
Opposite title page: Jules-Gabriel Levasseur (1823–about 1900), Photographic Credits · 166
aFer Eugène Buttura (1812–1852), Portrait of Paul Delaroche, 1853.
Engraving on paper, 28 x 21.5 cm. Private Collection Appendix and IndeX · 167
The Story of L ady Jane Grey
john guy
^
J
ANE GREY HAS ALWAYS been enveloped in myth. Her date of When Jane was ‘just fourteen’ in May 1551, her own tutor, John
birth is invariably wrongly stated, and allegations that her father Aylmer, praised her in a letter to the leading Swiss reformer Heinrich
verbally and physically abused her as a child have been invented Bullinger.7 Jane was encouraged to write to Bullinger herself: an ex-
over the centuries to turn her into a victim as well as a tragic heroine iled German divine, John of Ulm, visiting Bradgate that spring, was
(fig. 1).¹ She was born at Bradgate in Leicestershire on the edge of the shown a copy of one of these letters.8 Although formal, sententious
Charnwood Forest in the spring of 1537, the eldest surviving child of and awkward, her letters to Bullinger are in faultless Latin. ‘In writing
Frances Brandon, Henry VIII’s niece, and her husband Henry Grey, to you in this manner’, she explains, ‘I have exhibited more boldness
Marquis of Dorset (later Duke of Suffolk).² Her father, unusually than prudence: but so great has been your kindness towards me, in
well educated for a nobleman, was a bibliophile. Both Jane’s parents condescending to write to me, a stranger, and in supplying the nec-
sympathised with the humanist and evangelical reformers, and she re- essary instruction for the adornment of my understanding and the
ceived a superb education based on the model that Sir Thomas More improvement of my mind, that I should justly appear chargeable with
had devised for his eldest daughter, Margaret. neglect and forgetfulness of duty, were I not to show myself mindful
As a great-granddaughter of Henry VII, the founder of the Tudor of you and of your deservings in every possible way.’9 She began to
dynasty, and a second cousin to Edward VI and his half-sisters Mary study Hebrew as well as Greek, so that she could read the Old and
and Elizabeth, Jane was close to the court and its politics (see Jane’s New Testaments in the original, and a year or so later, Mildred Cooke,
claim to the throne on p. 10). By the terms of Henry VIII’s will, should a kinswoman and another brilliant intellectual, the wife of Sir William
his own children die without heirs, she was next in line of royal suc- Cecil, Elizabeth I’s future chief minister, sent her the Greek homilies
cession aFer any son that her parents might have.³ And by the age of of Saint Basil.¹0
11 she had caught the eye of Thomas, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, one As Jane matured, she became increasingly confident and asser-
of King Edward’s uncles, who had married Henry VIII’s sixth queen, tive, determined to cultivate her status as an evangelical Protestant
Katherine Parr, shortly aFer Henry’s death. Seymour had a scheme figurehead and not averse to one-upmanship. Although she had loved
to marry Jane to Edward, and he bargained with the Greys for her fine clothes and braided hair as a child, when urged by her father and
wardship.4 Jane was briefly installed at Seymour Place in London, but tutor to imitate her cousin Elizabeth in dressing plainly, she quickly
a serious scandal involving Seymour’s ambitions and his relationship got the message, and when sent a costly dress of ‘tinsel, cloth of gold,
with the young Elizabeth, on whom he also had designs, led to his fall and velvet, laid on with parchment lace of gold’ as a New Year’s giF
and execution on a charge of treason, and Jane returned to Bradgate by Mary, a staunch Catholic, she asked curtly: ‘ “What shall I do with
to resume her studies. it?” “Marry,” said a gentlewoman, “Wear it.” “Nay,” quoth she, “that
In the summer of 1550, Roger Ascham, the most famous Tudor were a shame to follow my Lady Mary against God’s word, and leave
educationalist, visited Bradgate, where he found Jane reading Plato’s my Lady Elizabeth, which followeth God’s word.” ’¹¹
Phaedo in Greek ‘and that with as much delight as some gentlemen Religion lay at the heart of the political crisis in Edward VI’s reign.
would read a merry tale in Boccaccio’. When he asked why she was not In the spring of 1553, when Jane was 16, the young king fell mortally ill
out hunting with her family in the park, she smiled and said smugly: and planned to exclude his sisters from the succession. He believed that
‘All their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure that I find neither could be trusted not to reverse or modify his new Protestant
in Plato.’5 AFerwards, Ascham discreetly hinted that Jane was a better settlement. He was convinced that both were legally barred from
scholar than her cousin Elizabeth, whose tutor he briefly was.6 inheriting the crown, for both had been declared illegitimate by his
I
N THE SPRING OF 1973, a young curator at the Tate Gallery was Tate on an emergency footing. Nine ground-floor galleries were tem-
at work on his first book, a monograph on the English Romantic porarily abandoned. Loan exhibitions were cancelled. Conservation
painter John Martin. Christopher Johnstone, who would go on to work immediately began on endangered pieces, not least 14 paint-
direct the Auckland City Art Gallery in New Zealand, wanted to learn ings by Turner and thousands of works on paper.³ In the commotion,
more about Martin’s first major commission, The Destruction of Pompeii Delaroche’s canvas was not judged a priority. Listing it along with
and Herculaneum. A monumental painting of 1822, it had entered the the Martin among the 18 spoiled paintings, the authors of the 1930
Tate in 1918, but according to reports had been lost there, along with report added that in any event ‘few of these … would be regarded as
several other works, when the Thames flooded the Gallery basement of primary importance from an artistic point of view’.4 Lady Jane Grey
in the early hours of Saturday 7 January 1928. A report of 1930 stated was rolled up, put away and, having been dismissed as aesthetically
that 18 oil paintings had been ‘completely spoiled’ in the flood, among negligible, forgotten. In 1959 it was definitively listed as ‘destroyed’.5
them the Martin.¹ Decades later rumours circulated to the contrary. Strange fate for an artist whose reputation had once ranked with
‘Someone had told me,’ Johnstone recalled, ‘that some of the paint- those of his acclaimed contemporaries Delacroix and Ingres! By com-
ings listed as lost or damaged beyond repair were not.’² mon consent, Lady Jane Grey was among Delaroche’s masterpieces.
Acting on a hunch, Johnstone persuaded Tate conservators to It had figured in one of the most significant collections of contem-
double-check rolled canvases which had long been stored under large porary art of the day, that of the richissime Russian Count Anatole
tables in the conservation studios. ‘There were quite a few rolled works Demidoff, later Prince of San Donato. Prints aFer it were dissemi-
there. No one had looked at them for a very long time. … No one had nated worldwide (cat. 78). Indeed, it had been an artistic cause célèbre
the faintest idea what was there – there were no labels attached.’ of France’s July Monarchy, famous from the moment it first went on
Knowing the dimensions of the Martin, they looked for a large roll. display at the Paris Salon of 1834. Every day throughout the run of
Johnstone recalls the excitement as unfurling began, for it was then the exhibition, admiring crowds gathered in front of it. They found
that they discovered the Martin largely intact, if battered. And there themselves inexorably drawn to the poignant image of the 17-year-old,
was an unexpected bonus. Bound up with it in the same roll was an- blindfolded queen as she groped her way pitiably to the execution
other monumental canvas that had been listed as lost in the flood, block. They were pulled in too by the intense realism of the scene,
Paul Delaroche’s Execution of Lady Jane Grey (cat. 53). ‘My memory painted as if happening in our own space, and by the extrême perfec-
was that the Martin had a corner chopped out,’ he recalled, ‘but the tion of its details, as one critic had it, including the rustling silk of the
Delaroche was pristine.’ A photograph of the latter taken soon aFer girl’s dress and the strands of hay into which her severed head would
the rediscovery confirms that the canvas was, by and large, in sound soon fall. Lady Jane Grey secured the reputation Delaroche had be-
condition (fig. 4). gun to build in the 1820s for his depictions of scenes from English
Lady Jane Grey had been bequeathed to the National Gallery history. With it he again demonstrated his uncanny ability, as the
by Lord Cheylesmore and accepted by the Board of Trustees on critic Tardieu characterised it, to find ‘subjects that attack the nerv-
16 December 1902. Two days later, on 18 December, it was transferred ous system of the public’.6 History seemed very real here, and utterly
to the Tate Gallery, then known as the National Gallery Millbank, present. As another critic noted of the Lady Jane Grey phenomenon,
where paintings of the Modern Foreign Schools were displayed. Its Delaroche’s ‘name is repeated in every salon, in every shop, with the
subsequent exhibition history is complicated; by 1928, however, it was praises which accompanied that of M. Gérard fiFeen years ago, that
no longer on view but relegated to the basement. The flood put the of David thirty years ago’.7
I
N 1823, SIR WALTER SCOTT published his first novel on a French Blaz’d battlement, and pinnet high,
theme, a chronicle of the life and times of a real historical figure, Blaz’d every rose-carved buttress fair
Louis XI of France, seen through the eyes of an imaginary one: So still they blaze, when fate is nigh,
Quentin Durward, a Scottish archer. In contrast to his usual rapid The lowly line of high St Clair.4
pace of composition, Quentin Durward necessitated many hours of
research, much of it in the Advocates Library in Edinburgh.¹ One of Antiquarianism, the collection and study of historical remains, had
the initial sources of Scott’s inspiration for the book, however, sprang been satirised since the seventeenth century as the pursuit of antique
from the visit of his friend, James Skene (a fellow advocate and trivia by unworldly scholars. In early nineteenth-century France, how-
amateur painter), newly back from a tour in France, with travel ac- ever, it took a particularly popular and emotive form, in reaction to
counts, sketches and a collection of manuscripts, a resource to delight the destruction of antiquities during the Revolution. The Musée des
a novelist-antiquarian, eager to take a subject at some distance from monuments français, set up by Alexandre Lenoir in an abandoned
his customary interests. Skene’s architectural sketches must have been monastery in Paris as a refuge for fragments of monuments and other
of special interest in this context, since the ancient castle of Plessis-les- works of art salvaged from destruction, became a place where what
Tours, west of Tours, was to play a central role in the narrative. While was lost could be reconstructed through the evocative power of relics.5
in Aix-en-Provence, where for some time he had a house, Skene had Lenoir transformed the collection, set up originally as a simple reposi-
come to know the Marquis de Forbin, the descendant of an ancient tory, into a fashionable museum which was open to the public from
Provençal family. The Marquis gave him a vivid account of the revo- 1795. It was divided into a series of rooms, each evoking a particular
lutionary years, and of the resulting devastation of his own chateau, period of the French past. A number of artists, including Fleury
La Barben (fig. 9), an account which Walter Scott was to adapt, in Richard, Charles-Marie Bouton and Henriette Lorimier (cats. 1, 6),
his introduction to Quentin Durward, as a fictional visit to a nobleman responded to the ‘inspiration of the past’ embodied in the museum,
in whose ‘curious Gothic library’, he pored over ancient chronicles not only by incorporating the ‘real’ appearance of ancient artefacts
which, he claimed, formed the basis for the novel.² While living in Aix, into their work, but at times evoking by scenes from history which
where he had a number of friends, Skene may have come across a copy otherwise might have been leF to the imagination of the visitor. When
of one of the earliest volumes of the Voyages pittoresques et romantiques Bouton painted the Fourteenth-Century Room in the museum, he con-
en l’ancienne France, a picturesque tour by Charles Nodier and Isidore verted it, as it were, into a theatrical set, for the staging of the madness
Taylor, published from 1820, in which the link between medieval archi- of Charles VI. This kind of evocation was to have a number of parallels
tecture and the history of ‘l’ancienne France’ was reinforced on almost with the pages of the Voyages pittoresques, to which Bouton himself (as
every page (cat. 7). In Charles Nodier’s words: ‘As for ourselves, the well as a number of theatrical scene-painters) contributed.
last travellers among the ruins of old France, shortly to disappear, The response of historians and artists to Lenoir’s museum was ech-
we choose to depict only those ruins whose secrets and whose history oed throughout France wherever there were ruins of ancient buildings
would otherwise be lost forever…’³ Scott was already keenly aware of destroyed by the Revolution. François-Marius Granet, one of the pio-
the power of buildings to evoke poetic and historic associations, and neers of ‘historic genre’, was first moved to paint a picture of this type
thus to stimulate literary creation; in The Lay of the Last Minstrel, pub- by the sight of a moonlit Paris cloister which had been laid to waste
lished in 1805, the destiny of the St Clair family is embedded within the during the Revolution,6 while the haunting atmosphere of his Choir of
stones of Rosslyn Chapel (cat. 3): the Capuchin Church (cat. 2), his most famous work, was inspired by the
O
N 30 MARCH 1844, the first performance of Alexandre Soumet’s the painter Ernest Hébert, reinforced this claim in a letter which pin-
play Jane Grey took place at the Odéon Theatre in Paris. AFer pointed the achievement: ‘you are the man who succeeded in moving
the execution scene, according to the stage directions: ‘There people through the profound observation of concentrated drama, and
appears in the distance the picture by M. Paul Delaroche’. This was through veiled terror (the gesture of Jane Gray [sic], the dog of the
not the very painting that the admiring Parisian public had seen a Princes in the Tower). The [Assassination of ] the Duc de Guise is a
decade before at the 1834 Salon. That had passed into the collection masterpiece and perhaps even the masterpiece of present times.’²
of the wealthy Russian Count Anatole Demidoff, and would not be Yet we get no further by endorsing contemporary judgements that
visible until the retrospective following the artist’s death in 1856. But credit the success of Delaroche’s paintings to their kinship with spec-
Soumet assumed that theatregoers would recall seeing the original tacle. What must be explained is the variety of different levels through
picture in 1834, or at least be familiar with one of the engraved repro- which this new direction may be understood, and especially its inte-
ductions that appeared in illustrated magazines. Here is an episode gral connection with Delaroche’s representation of victimhood. The
where Delaroche’s kinship with theatre is evident, and it leads to the theme of the victim, or martyr, runs throughout his entire career, and
following question. How may we understand the close link between is central to this exhibition. It is definitively expressed in his rendering
The Execution of Lady Jane Grey and the practices of dramatic represen- of Lady Jane Grey. The previously unpublished material relating to
tation current in Paris over the period? I shall attempt to answer this Delaroche’s personal life in the period when he was painting this work
question on two levels, first by underlining the relevance to his work of suggests a new dimension to his involvement in theatre. It does not
the concept of ‘spectacle’, and secondly by focusing on his relationship in itself explain the dramatic effect of the work. But it shows that the
with one particular actress, Mademoiselle Anaïs, which helps us to emotional appeal of the historical victim was intensified, in this case,
understand the special appeal of his Lady Jane Grey. by Delaroche’s passion for a luminary of the stage.
In this debate about painting and theatre, it is not just a question Before turning to biography, however, it is necessary to give
of the painter copying dramatic effects. Even where Delaroche ap- an account of Delaroche’s position as a rising young artist in post-
pears close to theatrical spectacle, the objective is to reinvigorate the Napoleonic France, which will demonstrate the differing facets of
art of picture-making. When the noted critic and novelist Stendhal his engagement with ‘spectacle’. The novelist Balzac, whose Comédie
appraised Delaroche’s Death of Elizabeth at the 1827/8 Salon, he made humaine is a barometer of the national scene, visualises two students
the distinction clear by condemning the tendency of French painters living penuriously in a garret in the Latin Quarter in the early 1830s,
to ‘répétition’; by this he explicitly meant copying the manner of the and taking stock of the turbulent history of their times: ‘We looked on
classical actor François-Joseph Talma, which had ‘ruined the pictures all these things as a spectacle, and we complained about them without
of the old adherents of David’. With reference to this aping of the ourselves taking sides.’³ In the mid-1820s Balzac inhabited the same
conventional gestures of the stage, Stendhal claimed: ‘The Death of building in the present rue Visconti as Delaroche and his friend from
Queen Elizabeth, by M. Delaroche, is free from this unfortunate fault. Baron Gros’ studio, Eugène Lami. The situation of these rising young
Thus the spectator believes himself to be taking part in this terrifying artists would not have been very different from the fictional case im-
spectacle.’¹ For Stendhal, Delaroche’s achievement was precisely to agined by Balzac. Born in 1797 to the family of a cultivated but hardly
have broken with the clichés of Neoclassicism, and to have inaugu- wealthy picture dealer, Delaroche had just reached adulthood when
rated a new, intense form of audience participation, giving the illusion Waterloo sealed Napoleon’s defeat, and the exiled Bourbons returned
of being a witness to the event portrayed. In 1850, Delaroche’s pupil, to rule France through an untried system of constitutional monarchy
46 | PAINTING HISTORY
CHARLES-MARIE BOUTON Bouton, a pupil of David, first exhibited Milan, keeps curious onlookers at a distance.
(1781–1853) at the Salon in 1810 with a view of a This is anachronistic only if we do not
subterranean chapel at St Denis, a picture interpret the scene as theatre: Charles VI
[6] The Fourteenth-Century Room
now untraced, but no doubt inspired was to appear and reappear as a subject,
in the Musée des Monuments Français, by the destruction of the early years of not only in historical accounts (notably in
1817 the Revolution, when numerous tombs Prosper de Barante’s Histoire des ducs de
Oil on canvas, 114 x 146 cm were removed from that great church. In Bourgogne) but, in a period drawn to themes
Musée de Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse (982.156) 1812, in a logical progression, he sent in a of madness, in the theatre and in opera too.
Provenance: Acquired from Galerie Didier Aaron Philosopher meditating beside the Tombs in Bouton himself shortly aFerwards entered
& Cie, Paris, 1982. the Thirteenth-Century Room at the Musée des into partnership with Louis-Jacques-
Petits-Augustins (this was Lenoir’s Musée des Mandé Daguerre, at this time still a theatre
monuments français). He continued to take designer, to set up the Diorama, thus taking
the museum as subject, and to emphasise to its logical conclusion the power of light
the force of its ‘period’ evocations, sending and architecture to reconstitute the past as
in 1814 a View of the Fifteenth-Century Room, dramatic experience. LW
and finally, in 1817, a year aFer the closure
of the museum (and perhaps, as Marie-
Claude Chaudonneret has suggested, as a
final tribute to it 1), the Fourteenth-Century
Room. This is probably the second of two
versions of this final view; the first (Musée
Carnavalet, Paris) differs in representing
only a single visitor taking notes.
The tombs of Charles V and Jeanne de
Bourbon are visible to the right, placed on
a base made up of wood panelling from the
Sainte Chapelle; to the leF, in a series of
arches from Saint Denis, Lenoir had placed,
upright, a set of formerly recumbent figures
from tombs taken from Saint Denis and
various Paris convents. In such a setting it
is tempting to recall, with Marie-Claude
Chaudonneret, the words of the historian
Jules Michelet, remembering his childhood
visits to the museum: ‘What was I looking
for? I hardly know – the life of the time,
no doubt, and the spirit of the ages. I was
not altogether certain that they were not
alive, all those marble sleepers.’ For Bouton,
the ‘life of the time’ here takes form as the
unhappy king Charles VI, subject to fits
of madness, who broods at the tomb of his
father, while his sister-in-law, Valentine de 1. Chaudonneret 1983, p. 413.
56 | PAINTING HISTORY
PAUL DELAROCHE (1797–1856) determined to give some authenticity to the Here the drawings derived from Delaroche’s
chamber in the Tower of London where the study of Henri III et sa cour, which focus
[14] The Princes in the Tower
two sons of Edward IV were imprisoned. He attention on the open window to the leF, are
(Les Enfants d’Édouard), 1830 consulted visual documents from the period, a better guide to the dynamic interpretation
Oil on canvas, 181 x 215 cm such as the Annunciation by Rogier van der of pictorial space that was revealed in The
Musée du Louvre, Paris (Inv.3834) Weyden in the Louvre, from which he bor- Princes in the Tower (see cat. 50).
Provenance: acquired by the French state from the rowed the detail of the hanging medallion Delaroche chose the models for the
Salon of 1831 for 6,000 francs and exhibited at the on the back wall.4 In 1828, he plotted his two princes from among his friends and
Musée du Luxembourg; transferred to the Louvre
composition with the aid of small plaster acquaintances. Reliable later testimony
in 1874.
figures of the two princes, which remained indicates that the younger prince was mod-
in the possession of his family 30 years later.5 elled by the young sister of the artist Félicie
In the catalogue of Delaroche’s work Throughout these preparations, however, he de Fauveau, while the brooding Edward V
published aFer his death it was noted: ‘In was committed to a composition ‘en hauteur’ was Henri Delaborde, future biographer
general […] Paul Delaroche began his – that is to say, taller than it was broad – as of Ingres and secretary of the Académie
pictures in proportions or in forms that were in Northcote. At what must have been a late des Beaux-Arts, who was then beginning a
different from their definitive forms and stage in the creation of the work, he decided period as Delaroche’s pupil and studio assis-
proportions.’¹ This observation, made with to make a radical change in its proportions, tant.9 Among those who praised the painting
regard to his Death of Elizabeth, applies in and ‘had about 65 centimetres of canvas on its appearance at the 1831 Salon was
particular to the studies leading up to The sewn on at each side’.6 Delaroche’s former master, the Baron Gros,
Princes in the Tower, and the two versions The additional flanking pieces, which re- who reportedly exclaimed: ‘What expression
of the picture that were painted. Delaroche main visible today, enabled him to transform in these two children! What wit! What intel-
was certainly familiar with the scene from the composition. The leF-hand strip enabled ligence in the little dog who looks and listens
Shakespeare’s Richard III that had been him to introduce the dramatic detail of the so well!’¹0 SB
strikingly portrayed by Sir Joshua Reynolds’ barred door, with candle-light penetrating
pupil, James Northcote, in 1790, and was through a crack, and the small dog who de-
reproduced in Francis Legat’s engraving for tects the approach of the assassins. There is,
the Shakespeare Gallery. The recent revela- however, a dearth of preliminary studies that
tion of his visit to England in 1822 makes might trace this change of plan. Two draw-
it possible that he saw the original work, ings in the Fogg Art Museum that have now
and may have met its author, who specially rightly been attributed to Delaroche do not
prized this evocation of ‘the murder of two help. As Louis-Antoine Prat has argued, they
innocent children’.² On his subsequent visit appear to relate more closely to the second
of 1827, one of Delaroche’s priorities was to version of The Princes in the Tower, painted 1. Delaborde and Goddé 1858, opp. plate 6.
discover the historical context of this episode for the English collector John Naylor in 2. Bann 2006, pp. 362–4.
from English history. As was later explained 1852.7 Yet Delaroche was clearly contem- 3. Quoted in Bann 1997, p. 94.
in the Illustrated London News: ‘The costume plating a version akin to Naylor’s work as 4. His intermediary drawing is reproduced in Bann
of the Princes, the bedstead, and its draper- early as 1831, when he produced the unique 1997, p. 101.
5. Delaborde and Goddé 1858, opp. plate 14.
ies, were carved and made in England, from lithograph of the two princes on their knees
6. Delaborde and Goddé 1858.
the best authorities, under the supervision of beside the bed.8 The Fogg drawings confirm
7. Prat 1997, p. 70. See Bann 2005, p. 30 for Naylor’s
Delaroche who came expressly to London to that possible variants were occurring to commission.
visit the scene of his picture.’³ Delaroche at an early stage. But they do not 8. Reproduced in Bann 1997, p. 95.
In contrast to Northcote, who con- indicate the transformation of the work by 9. See Benoist 1994, p. 143, and Larroumet 1904, p. 125.
veyed little of the context, Delaroche was the addition of the little dog and the door. 10. Quoted in Bann 1997, p. 100.
64 | PAINTING HISTORY
FRANCIS LEGAT (1761–1809), John Boydell opened his Shakespeare together with other contemporary works
AFTER JAMES NORTHCOTE Gallery in Pall Mall in 1786, having com- from his own collection, but the engrav-
(1746–1831) missioned from Thomas Banks a sculptural ings themselves were at the heart of it. The
group representing Shakespeare between the engravers, indeed, were oFen paid more
[15] Shakespeare Gallery:
Dramatic Muse and the Genius of Painting than the painters, who included Sir Joshua
King Richard III, Act IV, Scene III: – exactly representing his own ambition for Reynolds, Benjamin West and James Barry,
The Murder of the Princes, 1790 the Gallery. He was able to meet the great as well as a number of artists better known
Etching and engraving on paper, 56.5 x 41 cm expense of his scheme from the proceeds as illustrators. The whole enterprise invited
The British Museum, London (Dd.6.26*) of some thirty years of commercial success, both keen interest and criticism; Charles
during which he had also succeeded in Lamb famously complained: ‘What injury
WILLIAM SKELTON (1763–1848), establishing a British school of engravers did not Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery
AFTER JAMES NORTHCOTE to rival the perfection of the French. It was do me with Shakespeare. To have Opie’s
(1746–1831) a success based largely on commissioning Shakespeare, Northcote’s Shakespeare,
[16] Shakespeare Gallery: and selling reproductive prints; the most light-headed Fuseli’s Shakespeare, wooden-
famously successful was William Woollett’s headed West’s Shakespeare, deaf-headed
King Richard the Third, Act IV, engraving aFer Benjamin West’s Death Reynolds’s Shakespeare, instead of my and
Scene III: The Burial of the Princes, of Wolfe, published in 1776. Not only did everybody’s Shakespeare’ – perhaps not
1795 Boydell receive £15,000 for it, over 15 years, unlike the response to the film of a favourite
but he also established, with this celebrated book. However, it was not criticism of this
Etching and engraving on paper, 56.5 x 41.4 cm
The British Museum, London (Ee.2.151) print, a precedent for the representation kind, but the war with France which led to
in the grand manner of a recent historical the ultimate failure of the gallery, ending in
ISAAC TAYLOR (1730–1807), event.¹ Boydell’s near-bankruptcy in 1804.
AFTER THOMAS STOTHARD Preliminary discussions for the The last quarter of the eighteenth cen-
(1755–1834) Shakespeare Gallery began at a dinner party tury saw the rise of a marked enthusiasm for
in Hampstead, at the home of his nephew, Shakespeare, stemming in part from the act-
[17] Shakespeare Gallery:
Josiah Boydell, who was later to become a ing of Mrs Siddons and David Garrick, and
Henry VIII, Act I, Scene IV: Henry business partner. At home in Cheapside, stimulated by Garrick’s Shakespeare Jubilee
VIII leading Anne Boleyn to the Dance, among Boydell’s own pictures, hung James at Stratford in 1769. Various illustrated edi-
1798 Northcote’s The Murder of the Princes in the tions appeared, as well as books of plates.
Tower, from Richard III. Northcote later Boydell’s, however, was on a different scale,
Etching and engraving on paper, 50.4 x 63.5 cm
The British Museum, London (Dd.6.27) claimed this as the origin of the scheme, as he describes it in his Preface: it was for art-
though other artists, including Romney and ists ‘to carry into execution an undertaking,
THOMAS RYDER (1746–1810), Fuseli, also claimed to have thought of the where the national honour, the advancement
AFTER THOMAS STOTHARD idea (Fuseli while lying on his back looking of the Arts, and their own advantage, are
(1755–1834) at the Sistine Chapel ceiling). equally concerned’. 15 16
The essence of the scheme was the Though some of the artists involved
[18] Shakespeare Gallery:
publication of a series of large plates illus- occasionally used actors to model the prin-
Othello, Act II, Scene I: The Meeting of trating the plays of Shakespeare, and a cipal parts, the compositions themselves
Othello and Desdemona, 1799 smaller series planned to accompany an were not based on theatrical performance;
Stipple engraving on paper, 49.8 x 63 cm edition of the plays; some two hundred many, indeed, are set in landscapes of a kind
The British Museum, London (1977.U.739) prints in all. Boydell commissioned the almost impossible to present in a theatre.
paintings from which these were made; Not surprisingly, perhaps, for a scheme
they hung in the Shakespeare Gallery, aiming at ‘the advancement of the Arts’, and
66 | PAINTING HISTORY
PAUL DELAROCHE (1797–1856) Yet the fact that the work was com- reproduction found an honoured place in the
missioned by the state before the July nascent collection of the city of Hamburg.
[23] Cromwell and Charles I
Revolution indicates that Delaroche could Cromwell was also recreated as an authorised
(Cromwell découvrant le cercueil de not have anticipated this fortuitous timing. full-scale replica by Delaroche’s favoured ex-
Charles Ier), 1831 It was later claimed that the decision to pupil Charles Jalabert, which was exhibited
Oil on canvas, 230 x 300 cm send the painting to Nîmes could be traced at the Royal Academy in London in 1850.
Fonds national d’art contemporain (Cnap), Ministère to the Duchesse de Berry, mother of the Towards the end of his life, Delaroche
de la culture et de la communication, Paris, Fnac PFH Bourbon heir to the throne, who had earlier looked back on the work as a touchstone of
– 2803. On long-term loan to the Musée des Beaux- acquired his Saint Vincent de Paul (cat. 10).² the new approach that he had brought to
Arts, Nîmes.
But by 1831 the Duchesse de Berry was in the rendering of historical subjects. ‘At the
Provenance: 1830, state commission (5,000 francs), exile, and it is more likely that the destina- time of my Cromwell,’ he claimed, ‘people
allocated to the Nîmes museum in 1834.
tion of the work was secured by Guizot, who reproached me for making it too true, and
held high office in the new government of now this figure has become the type for
Delaroche’s Cromwell and Charles I arrived Louis-Philippe.³ Guizot was born in Nîmes, anyone wishing to represent him, either in
late at the 1831 Salon, where his Princes in and would have been mindful of the extreme the theatre, or in sculpture, even in England,
the Tower was already on exhibition. As suffering of the city during the Revolution. where they are proud of this big hypocrite.’5
the critic Horace de Viel-Castel observed, Once it was hung in the city museum (then By this time, the painterly qualities of
the work ‘took the attention of the public lodged in the Roman temple known as Cromwell were also appreciated. Charles
straight away, [and they] were silent for the Maison Carrée), the citizens of Nîmes Blanc wrote that ‘to find a costume drawn
hours on end, astonished by the deep and became deeply attached to the work. They with more facility, better modelled in its
melancholy ideas that this painting awak- refused to permit it to make the journey to surfaces, better detailed in its folds, in fact
ened in them’.¹ The scene showed Oliver Paris for the Delaroche retrospective in 1857. rendered with a brush that is freer, more
Cromwell viewing the body of Charles I, If Cromwell held a special message for flexible and at the same time firmer, one
King of England, aFer his execution by the French and for the Nîmois in particular, must go back as far as Van Dyck’.6 SB
order of the Parliament on 30 January 1649. it was also the painting that established
But it struck home in France as providing Delaroche’s reputation in Europe as a
a directly contemporary lesson. French whole. The German poet Heinrich Heine
writers like Châteaubriand and the historian wrote a lengthy criticism in which he hailed
François Guizot accustomed the French the artist as the ‘choir-leader’ of the new
public to thinking of the English Civil War French school of historical painting, and
as a forerunner of their own Revolution. memorably characterised the depiction
Here was a powerful visual symbol that of Cromwell: ‘There he stands, a form as
exposed the historical predicament in which firm as earth, “brutal as fact”, powerful
the French nation was still involved, less without pathos, naturally supernatural,
than a year aFer the July Revolution of 1830 marvellously commonplace, outlawed and
had forced the exile of the elder branch yet famous, beholding his work almost like
of the Bourbon dynasty. As Viel-Castel a woodman who has just felled an oak.’4 1. Viel-Castel 1831, p. 269.
exclaimed: ‘It is at a period like our own, in Delaroche responded to this general acclaim 2. Gillet 1934, p. 257.
a century when the destinies of kings have by arranging for the young printmaker Louis 3. Guizot owned a drawing for Cromwell, with a
personal dedication by Delaroche, which is now in the
been found to weigh little in the scales of the Henriquel-Dupont to engrave an aquatint, Musée Tavet-Delacour, Pontoise.
great interests of the people that the picture which was shown at the 1833 Salon. Even 4. Heine (no date), p. 81.
of Cromwell arrives, and strikes us with all the reduced version of the work which 5. Quoted in Bann 1997, pp. 106–7.
its high morality.’ Delaroche painted as an aid to Henriquel’s 6. Quoted in Nantes and Montpellier 1999, p. 289.
74 | PAINTING HISTORY
PAUL DELAROCHE (1797–1856) Clouet’s full-length portrait of the French omitting the dagger that he half-draws
king Charles IX (Musée du Louvre, Paris) impulsively in Act I, Scene 9 (see cat. 33).
[29] Study after François Clouet
could have been made in the process of A version of the striking plumed hat, which
(about 1516–1572), Portrait of collecting details of period dress for the does not feature in Alexandre Lacauchie’s
Charles IX, 1830s first production of Meyerbeer’s opera later costume prints of the Duke of York
Graphite on paper, 11 x 8.5 cm Les Huguenots in 1836. Charles IX was the (cats. 33, 34), does, in fact, make its appear-
Private collection monarch in whose reign the slaughter of ance in Maleuvre’s contemporary print of
Provenance: formerly Delaroche-Vernet Collection. the Huguenots known as the Massacre of the costume for Martinet’s Galerie théâtrale.
Saint Bartholomew’s Day took place in 1572. Though debatable as an authentic period
[30] Boy in Costume relating to Delaroche’s interest in being associated with feature, this can be related to the fashion
Younger Prince in the play Les Enfants this opera is easy to understand, given his for plumed hats that developed aFer their
d’Edouard, about 1832 view that post-revolutionary France was still spectacular display on the heralds assisting
suffering from the long-term effects of that at the Coronation of Charles X in 1827.³
Graphite with body colour on paper, 28.6 x 23 cm
Collections de la Comédie-Française, Paris (MC.
divisive outbreak of religious intolerance. This drawing is clearly not a conventional
ENF.1833 [H1 Bis]) But once again there appears to be no con- costume design, but a posed portrait in
Provenance: design for a Comédie-Française vincing visual evidence of his involvement. costume, possibly involving the young
production This is partly a consequence of the types Delaborde, who had already modelled the
of visual documentation that have survived. elder prince for Delaroche’s painting. The
Theatre costumes were put on record aFer quality and style of the drawing suggest
Of Delaroche’s interest in the theatre, espe- the event in print collections such as the that it was sketched by Delaroche himself.
cially in the period from 1829 onwards, there Galerie dramatique of Martinet (cat. 55). In Presumably it was passed on to the theatre
can be no doubt. It is oFen asserted that he the case of the Comédie-Française, there for reference in the devising of Anaïs’s first
designed costumes for the theatre and the are also surviving sets of the actual designs costume. SB
opera during this period. But Alexandre used for the production of costumes. Indeed
Dumas fails to confirm the tradition that Delavigne’s Les Enfants d’Edouard is one of
Delaroche was involved in the costumes the first plays for which such an extensive
for Dumas’s play Henri III et sa cour (1829), visual record – accompanied by a contem-
although there is clear evidence that he drew porary inventory of the costumes – remains
upon the last act for his own compositional extant. But the set of costume studies in
studies (cat. 50). Dumas does, however, question is not from Delaroche’s own hand.
assert that Delaroche was the designer for By this time, he was delegating duties to
Casimir Delavigne’s Marino Faliero later in pupils. Gustave Larroumet explicitly states:
the same year, and pokes fun at the rumour ‘In Delaroche’s studio, the pupil most fond
that he tried to ‘get the movement of the of the theatre and the most knowledgeable 29
wind’ into his costumes.¹ Though there is about history [was] Henri Delaborde. It
every possibility that Delaroche did col- [was] he who, under the master’s direction,
laborate with his friend Delavigne, the prints designed the costumes for [Delavigne’s]
1. Dumas 1966, pp. 107–8.
depicting the costumes do not disclose Louis XI and the Enfants d’Edouard.’² 2. Larroumet 1904, p. 126.
whether he realised this ambition! In this context, Olivia Voisin’s discovery 3. See the reference to the fashion in Hugo 2009,
Delaroche did undoubtedly make auto- of a drawing in the dossier of Les Enfants vol. 2, p. 89. Such plumed hats can be seen in Lami’s
graph sketches aFer historic portraits, d’Édouard is significant. It relates broadly lithographs of several of the participants in the
Duchesse de Berry’s Ball (1829). A portrait of an
and these might have served for costume to the costume that Richard, Duke of York unnamed woman, signed and dated by Delaroche in
designs. His rapid study aFer François wears in the early acts of the play, not 1829, features another fine example.
30
82 | PAINTING HISTORY
RICHARD PARKES BONINGTON There is a lithograph with a similar
(1802–1828) composition in Bonington’s album Cahier de
six sujets, published in 1826. Like the composi-
[39] Amy Robsart and the Earl of
tion of Quentin Durward, therefore, this work
Leicester, about 1827 has some affinities with the picturesque
Oil on canvas, 35 x 27 cm imagery circulating within print albums in
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (WA 1933.3) the 1820s; Nodier’s publication, the Voyages
Provenance: Alexander Hamilton Douglas, 10th pittoresques (see cats. 7–9) was a magisterial
Duke of Hamilton, and by descent to the Beckford version of such an enterprise. The costumes
collection; sold Christie’s, London, 6 November 1919,
here look French rather than English;
lot 109 (as The Declaration); bought by Colnaghi; sold
Christie’s, London, 31 July 1925, lot 31; bought by Bonington, like Delaroche (cat. 4), made
Gooden & Fox (for Mrs W.F.R. Weldon); presented by sketches aFer Clouet’s Henri II, and his
Mrs W.F.R. Weldon in 1933. Charles IX, both in the Louvre,¹ and appar-
ently made use of Charles IX for the figure of
The picture received its present title only in Leicester. In 1827 Delacroix began to design
1937, but may represent, as then suggested, the costumes for Victor Hugo’s Amy Robsart
the scene from Sir Walter Scott’s novel (it opened in 1828, but ran for only one night).
Kenilworth in which Amy Robsart urges her The present painting is not dated, but since
husband Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, to Bonington and Delacroix were close friends,
end the secrecy surrounding their marriage, and as it is probable that it dates from the
a secrecy which he, as a favourite of Queen same period, we may suppose that they
Elizabeth, wishes to maintain. The scene discussed together the scenes of the play. As
may relate to a moment at the beginning of Patrick Noon has observed, Bonington has
Chapter 7 describing the arrival of Leicester drawn on several antiquarian sources for
on one of his occasional visits to Amy details of costume, in addition to his studies
Robsart at Cumnor: aFer Clouet, showing the same concern for
Meanwhile the Earl, for he was of no inferior authentic period costume which character-
rank, returned his lady’s caresses with the most ised theatrical productions in the late 1820s²
affectionate ardour but affected to resist when and, indeed, the preparation of costumes
she strove to take his cloak from him. for the Quadrille de Marie Stuart (cat. 38).
“Nay”, she said “but I will unmantle you. I As Henri Duponchel commented, the most
must see if you have kept your word to me, and historically accurate of all the costumes at 1. Illustrated in Nottingham 2002, p. 69, no. 111.
come as the great Earl men call thee, and not as the Duchesse de Berry’s ball was that worn by Both are reduced versions, painted in the studio of
François Clouet. The original life-size portrait of
heretofore like a private cavalier.” the Duc de Richelieu; describing the sumptu-
Henry II is in the Palazzo Pitti, in Florence, and that
Scott lays particular emphasis, in the ous details, he wrote ‘comme on en peut voir of Charles IX in Vienna.
course of the novel, on the richness of Amy’s dans le portrait de Charles IX par Clouet’.³ 2. Mr Michael Venator has brought two related im-
dress and the dazzling brilliance of her Though Bonington’s picture recalls certain ages to my attention: a lithograph by Fontenay from
this period, showing an actor in a costume which ex-
apartments at Cumnor; the kind of bril- features of ‘Troubadour’ painting, and shows actly recalls the Clouet portrait, as sketched by both
liance Bonington took particular delight in a concern for the details of period costume, Delaroche and Bonington,and a figure in a water-
evoking in paint, as he does here. For Amy it also derives much from the artists he and colour by Delacroix in the Louvre (RF 10639), which
closely resembles the others, and may represent a
Robsart, however, it served only to heighten Delacroix both admired – Rubens, Titian and character from Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, for which
the irony of her permanent isolation from Watteau – and from what Delacroix called Delaroche may have designed costumes.
the court. ‘the aFernoon light of Veronese’. LW 3. Duponchel 1829, pp. 249–50.
92 | PAINTING HISTORY
PAUL DELAROCHE (1797–1856) Marie-Antoinette 40 years earlier, the story description of the scene taken from the
of Lady Jane Grey’s fate carried real histori- Martyrologe des Protestans, dated 1588.
[53] The Execution of
cal significance. A preparatory drawing for The story of Lady Jane Grey had been
Lady Jane Grey, 1833 the painting (cat. 66) includes a vignette recounted in historical literature, with ac-
Oil on canvas, double-lined, 251 x 302 cm for a different, subsequently abandoned counts of her life in all histories of England.
The National Gallery, London (NG1909) composition clearly annotated ‘La Dauphine In France, Madame de Staël had turned the
Signed and dated lower right: Paul DelaRoche / 1833. et L[ouis] 17 au temple’. The juxtaposition Nine Days’ Queen’s life into drama with her
Frame inscription: L’EXECVTION DE / LADY JANE
of the two scenes on the same sheet supports eponymous play,³ and N.H. Nicholas’s Literary
GREY / EN LA TOVR DE / LONDRES L’AN 1554’
Provenance: 1833, bought by Count Anatole
the parallel between the fate of Lady Jane Remains of Lady Jane Grey had just been trans-
Demidoff (1812/13–1870) for FF 8,000; 4 March 1870, Grey and that of the French royal family lated into French.⁴ Delaroche’s factual sourc-
sold at Demidoff sale to John Heugh; 24 April 1874, condemned to the guillotine. An oFen-drawn es for the painting may have been influenced
Christie’s, bought by Agnew’s; 11 July 1874, bought
by A.G. Kurz; Kurz sale, 9–11 May 1891, Christie’s,
analogy between the French and English by such literary reminiscences, but historical
bought Agnew’s; sold to the 1st Lord Cheylesmore, 7 revolutions had revived an interest in lesser- accuracy was his main goal. He could have
May 1892, No. 78; bequeathed to the National Gallery, known English historical figures. The bur- opted for a romanticised version of Lady Jane
16 December 1902, by the 2nd Lord Cheylesmore;
transferred to the Tate Gallery (then National
geoning Anglomania of the time resulted in Grey’s last moments as the foundation for
Gallery, Millbank), 18 December 1902; 1928, damaged an appetite for paintings of ill-fated English his painting, but instead, for the sake of ac-
in the Thames flood; 1958, declared a total loss¹; 1973, royalty. Louis XVII of France and Edward V curacy, favoured a sixteenth-century account
rediscovered at Tate and transferred to the National
Gallery, London.
of England were innocent child victims who of the execution, then believed as historically
died because of political circumstances; so reliable, however dry and obscure.⁵
was Lady Jane Grey. Delaroche’s historical reconstitutions
This huge but finely wrought painting is one As Stephen Bann suggests (cat. 66), had to be plausible, and the making of his
of the best examples of the historical dramas Delaroche may not have initially planned paintings was preceded by extensive research.
that made Delaroche more popular in his to represent Lady Jane Grey, but probably Endowed with a curious mind and an aware-
lifetime than his contemporaries Ingres or toyed with the idea of depicting another ness of visual culture, he had amassed a
Delacroix. The Execution of Lady Jane Grey doomed English royal. Jane Grey was hardly lot of material which he was able to form
shows the young great-granddaughter of a newcomer to the Salon; there were at least and synthesise. The study of Lady Jane Grey
Henry VII, who, following the death of four occurrences of the subject in the two reveals that Delaroche’s visual repertoire
Edward VI in 1553, reigned for nine days decades preceding Delaroche’s showing for the painting was varied; a compromise
as queen. Deposed by the supporters of in 1834.² Yet her story, arguably still little- between various English sources, Troubadour
the Catholic Queen Mary, she was tried known in France, was only familiar to the formulae (see p. 26), and motifs from both
for treason and beheaded at Tower Hill on cognoscenti, and the subject may not have religious art and Davidian painting. These
12 February 1554. been popular with the public. To allow view- were acquired through visiting galleries and
Delaroche shows the instant when the ers a full grasp of the painting, Delaroche exhibitions or siFing through publications or
victim, blindfolded and stripped to her ensured the facts were set out in the Salon print portfolios. Delaroche came to London
petticoat, is guided to the block by Sir John livret with a few lines of explanation: ‘Jane in 1827 ‘expressly to visit the scene of his
Brydges, Lieutenant of the Tower. Overcome Grey, whom Edward VI had, through his picture’⁶ of the young princes, and researched
with emotion, two of her ladies-in-waiting will, appointed heir to the English throne, details of the Tower which could have been
lean against a pillar to the leF. The execu- was, aFer a nine-days long reign, impris- used for cat. 53.⁷ He probably would have
tioner stands aside with rope and dagger, oned by order of her cousin Mary, who, six encountered Charles Robert Leslie’s Lady
resting on the handle of his axe; at the back, months later, had her beheaded. Jane Grey Jane Grey prevailed on to Accept the Crown, then
the tips of guards’ halberds can just be seen was executed deep in the Tower of London, on display;⁸ the young queen’s dazzling white
beyond the black scaffold. aged seventeen, on 12 February 1554.’ This dress and delicate hand gesture may have
With its echoes of the death of Queen background information precedes a vivid stayed in his memory.