Victoria's Jewels

A glimpse at England in the 19th Century

British paintings from the Victorian era are mostly located in Great Britain, unlike continental art collections, which have been ravaged by social upheavals and two world wars. British artworks have the good fortune of residing in a stable country that last saw a successful foreign invasion in 1066 A.D.

That means few works have been lost or dispersed, but it also means that the general public is unfamiliar with England's 19th-century treasures. By contrast, Victorian novels are extremely well-known in this country: you can't walk through a video store these days without bumping into a Jane Austen movie. Dickens, Thackeray and Trollope still have avid readers a century and a half after their heyday.

The long reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) continues to fascinate people as a study in paradoxes. Religious toleration was finally extended to Roman Catholics, but anti-Catholic bigotry enjoyed a heady resurgence. Religion and the supernatural were pursued intensely, but so was wealth. Victorians insisted on traditional morality, but delighted in scientific innovations. They ran a vast foreign empire, yet mass democracy (at least for Englishmen) was on the ascent.

Given the vibrancy of the period, it is no wonder that the artists found much to inspire them. "The Victorians," an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington through May 4, introduces Americans to an overlooked genre.

Joseph Mallord William Turner's later works arrived too early, and their inclusion in this exhibit would have shocked many 19th-century critics. Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Night (1835) is painted in an impressionistic style three decades before Impressionism. Although he was not as concerned with the portrayal of light as the Impressionists, he did emphasize texture and hue over other considerations, a cause for grumbling amongst his fellows.

His dim view of humanity came through vividly in his Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying (1840). Turner based his famous painting on a notorious incident of a slave ship captain ordering the crew to throw his human cargo overboard because of an approaching storm. Swathes of color, rather than definite form, take the foreground. The only defined shapes are the spindly boat in the background and the limbs of the slaves protruding obscenely from the sea.

In contrast to Turner's rather grim visions, James Tissot stands as a spirited counterpoint. Three of his works are on display, foremost among them London Visitors (1874).

"Gray" is synonymous with drabness, but Tissot's grays are opulent, competing with the white and reddish tones in the rest of the composition. His other works are bemused and relaxed, unlike the intense themes of some of the other paintings.

Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl will be familiar to many, though it is difficult to imagine why it would cause such a stir when it was completed in 1862. (You've heard of "Whistler's Mother"? This is Whistler's mistress.)

Like most 19th-century American painters, James McNeill Whistler came to England to study, and he remained there during most of his career.

Whistler enjoyed baiting the art establishment with his daring compositions and technique. When his works were rejected, as they often were, he would join the fray with printed rebuttals. On the principle that even bad publicity is good publicity, he thought that this tactic would increase his stature, and he was correct.

Many attacked The White Girl's unaffected posture as brazen, accentuated by her standing on an animal-skin rug. They were also not amused that he would include his mistress in a major work displayed for the public (a fact discreetly ignored by the exhibition catalogue.) Other famous Whistler paintings, including the Portrait of Thomas Carlyle, are also on display.

Though other worthies are exhibited, John Everett Millais dominates "The Victorians." His striking colors and lavish details invite the eye, and his keen sense of humanity completes the effect. Millais was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a movement dedicated to the proposition that art should be concerned not with beauty, but with observation of things as they appear. His fellow Pre-Raphaelites William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti are also prominently featured.

However one might rail against the rejection of beauty as an ideal, that notion had not disfigured the art world to the extent that it has today. In its youth, it showed some promise. Isabella (1869), based on Keats' poem of the same name, must be seen in person to fully appreciate the delicate shades of humor and feeling conveyed by Millais. Painted when he was 19, the technical aspects alone are impressive. But the characters — the manservant with the long face, or the brother seemingly absorbed in the contemplation of his wine — are tremendously engaging.

Viewers will also find other famous Millais works like Ophelia (1852), depicted after her suicide. A Huguenot on Saint Bartholomew's Day, Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge (1852) may have been intended to play to anti-Catholic sentiments. The scene recounts the 1572 massacre of the French Huguenots, hardly the Church's finest hour, but never forgotten by the Protestant population of England.

Vale of Rest, painted six years later, might appear to be more of the same, but maybe not. Millais' wife recalled that she and her husband fell in love with the aesthetics of Catholicism when they saw an abandoned monastery in Scotland, and he planned to include these ideas in a future painting. So perhaps Millais was not anti-Catholic. Or else he didn't care one way or the other.

Other offerings are commentaries on social conditions. The Death of Chatterton (1856), by Henry Wallis, glorifies Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), an unsuccessful writer who tried to pass off his poems as the work of a 15th-century monk. He committed suicide at age 17 by drinking arsenic, and was mentioned by Coleridge, Wordsworth and Browning in their poems. The Pre-Raphaelites also adored him as a "misunderstood and mistreated artist," a victim of a cruel society. Actually, Chatterton's contemporaries quite correctly understood him to be a liar and forger. They simply were not willing to ignore those traits.

Two other paintings are stark reminders of man's capacity for foolishness and hubris. Balaclava, by Elizabeth Thompson (a.k.a. Lady Butler), was painted in 1876 as a reminder of a famous battle in the Crimean War, 22 years prior.

The incompetent commanders ordered a cavalry brigade to charge entrenched Russian guns, which succeeded despite the needless loss of 200 men. If this sounds vaguely familiar, the incident is also recorded in Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade." Like the famous poem, the painting captures the squalor of war without diminishing the courage of the soldiers. One cavalryman approaches on foot, his sword drawn, apparently stunned by the noise and blood, while buzzards circle overhead.

Another cheerless look at human endeavor is found in Man Proposes, God Disposes (1864), by Edwin Landseer. An 1845 expedition to find a northern route from the Atlantic to the Pacific ended up in disaster, with 138 men shipwrecked in an Arctic wasteland. Their remains were found years later, eaten by polar bears. With brutal accuracy, Landseer shows unforgiving nature exulting over the feeble efforts of man.

Victorian society, once dismissed as a cauldron of repression and patriarchy, is getting a cautious second look from many people. Far from being frivolous or unimaginative, the Victorians rebuilt a decadent society with work and creativity, while maintained enough humility for self-criticism. Visitors to the National Gallery will doubtless walk away with a new appreciation for the maligned era.

— Eric M. Johnson

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