Author Archives: jackie

BSECS Conference 6-8 January 2016, St Hugh’s College, Oxford

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14.00-15.30 Panel 12 – The Visual and Material Culture of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. Chair: Dr Viccy Coltman

This panel focuses on the visual and material culture, both Hanoverian and Jacobite, which was created before, during and after the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. It aims to deal with broad issues, such as identity and nationhood, while offering close readings of a variety of objects: from portraiture and graphic satire, to medals, dice and pipe stoppers. The papers will build on the wealth of recent historical and literary scholarship (particularly in the field of Jacobite Material Culture) by showcasing new research and approaches from an Art Historical perspective.

Paper: Jacqueline Riding ‘The True Contrast: the changing image of Charles Edward Stuart, 1745-1746’

From the time of his birth in 1720, the pictorial representation of Charles Edward Stuart, Jacobite Prince of Wales and heir apparent, was very carefully managed. Until his attempt to seize the throne of Great Britain in 1745-6, he was invariably depicted, in oil and engraving, using the standard pictorial models of European monarchy: never, that is, in tartan. During the ’45, when, for the first time, he was in complete control of his own image, the prince carefully alternated his appearance, from that of a tartan-clad Highland Chief, to a fashionably dressed European or, more specifically, British prince, thus treading a symbolic line between the expectations of his predominantly Highland army, and the need to appeal to the majority of his British ‘subjects’, many of whom (Lowlanders and English alike) considered the Highlander (as represented through tartan plaid) a barbaric anachronism. In this sense, the rediscovered portrait by Allan Ramsay, which was commissioned by the prince in the October of 1745 while Charles held court at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, and painted just prior to his advance into England, can be seen as both a statement of Charles’ self-image, while symbolising his broader dynastic ambitions. Crucially this image was swiftly engraved and then circulated.

The prince’s enemies, meanwhile, generated images of him that aimed to undermine the legitimacy of his claims and win over popular opinion, by exaggerating his otherness: stressing, on the one hand, his birth and upbringing in Rome as a Roman Catholic and, on the other, his widely-reported wearing of Highland garb, most famously the ‘wanted poster’ accompanying the £30,000 bounty issued by the British government. The engraving ‘Scotch Female Gallantry’ (above), depicting Charles surrounded by ecstatic women at an evening entertainment, even attempts to equate the prince with another unmanly Italian import (as the anti-Jacobite propagandists would argue), the Castrato.

This paper will begin by presenting close readings of these three key images, all produced during the early stages of the ’45. It will consider how, as a group, they reflect a very particular moment during the campaign, when the outcome of the rebellion was very far from certain. Finally, it will look at how these ‘prototypes’, the British Hero, the Highland Laddie and the Effeminate Italian, informed representations of Charles in the aftermath of Culloden, including the pro-Cumberland print, ‘The True Contrast’.

Wolverhampton Art Gallery Talk 2 Oct 2015 2-3pm: The Family of Sir Eldred Lancelot Lee

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In 1736 Joseph Highmore completed the group portrait, The Family of Sir Eldred Lancelot Lee within which all eleven of the main figures are painted near life size. It is without doubt his most ambitious portrait.

Sir Eldred (b.1650) may have instigated the creation of the portrait for display at his Shropshire seat, Coton Hall near Alveley. Both he and his brother Thomas were benchers of Lincoln’s Inn, London (their father had also been a barrister there) providing a connection with the artist’s early law career (Highmore had served a clerkship with a London attorney) and proximity to his studio in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Yet, as The Lee Family was completed two years after Sir Eldred’s death in 1734, the portrait’s final appearance would have been agreed with Lee’s widow: in fact it is more likely that Isabella (1690-1767) herself was the original patron of the painting. This fact alone transforms the potential purpose of the portrait and its symbolism.

This talk will present new research that uncovers the complex meaning of this extraordinary portrait.

March 2015 ‘Celebrating Britain: Canaletto Hogarth and Patriotism’ available now

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This lovely, fully colour illustrated publication includes essays by Steven Parissien, Pat Hardy, Oliver Cox and me:

From Bosworth Field to Finchley Common: Britain, Hogarth and the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion.

On a summer’s day in 1745, William Hogarth stands in the painting room of his house in Leicester Square. Before him is a large, half-finished canvas of a military encampment the night before a great battle. In the top left corner, the first light of dawn rises above the assembled tents and glances off the gathering storm clouds. Beneath this, foot soldiers warm themselves by a small fire. Dominating the entire foreground is a solitary figure who has been roused suddenly from a terrible dream. Suspended between one action and the next, his tense body turns outward, right hand raised with fingers splayed, his wide eyes betraying confusion and fear. His left hand grasps the hilt of the sword lying at his side: a gesture that draws the eye towards the object located just above this hand. The object concerned, the contested crown of England, lies at the heart of this drama. The figure is King Richard III of the Royal House of York, the rightful king or usurper, as your loyalties dictate. In a few hours from now he must face his cousin, Henry Tudor of the Royal House of Lancaster–in turn the rightful king or pretender–on Bosworth Field. The subject is civil war, dynastic loyalty, legitimacy and usurpation: the nation is once more divided and the future of a Kingdom hangs in the balance.

Hogarth’s painting is in fact a portrait of his friend David Garrick in the eponymous Shakespearean role that four years earlier had made him the darling of the London stage. But as fate would have it, while Hogarth gently applied paint to canvas and life went on about him in the streets of London, a mere six hundred miles north another would-be king, Charles Edward Stuart, had already landed with a small cohort of supporters on the Outer Hebridean Island of Eriskay. This was the modest and uncertain beginnings of what was to become the ’45 Jacobite Rebellion: the most recent attempt to remove the House of Hanover and restore the House of Stuart and arguably the single most important domestic challenge that either George I or II ever faced.

‘Mr. Turner – an exhibition’ opens at Petworth House 10 January 2015

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Here are some details about an exhibition I have co-curated with Andrew Loukes, Curator of Exhibitions Petworth House:

“This January, a major art exhibition featuring over 30 pieces on loan from major collections, is set to open at Petworth House, West Sussex.

The show, Mr. Turner – an exhibition, has been inspired by Mike Leigh’s award-winning film, Mr. Turner, filmed in part at Petworth House and Park.

The film portrays the last quarter century of the great British painter, J.M.W. Turner, who spent a considerable amount of time in residence at Petworth, in the company of his close friend and patron, the 3rd Earl of Egremont.

Highlights of the exhibition include rarely seen portraits of the artist, iconic Turner oil paintings such as The New Moon (Tate) and Calais Sands (Bury Art Museum), and outstanding examples of his watercolours of the British and European landscape.

Unique and original ephemera will also be on display, including Turner’s personal fishing rod, jewellery, books, notes and painting materials.

The show, running from 10 January to 11 March 2015, explores major themes of the film, including travel, patronage, science, colour and the Royal Academy.

Visitors will have the opportunity to to view 20 extraordinary Turner paintings in their natural location inside the mansion house, in addition to a visit to the Old Library (not normally open to the public) used as a studio by Turner and other artist-guests in the early 19th century.

There will also be a selection of props and costumes on display from the film.”

My Guardian article on researching ‘Mr. Turner’

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Here’s my article for The Guardian, Friday 31 October 2014:

“On a sunny afternoon in December two years ago, the cast and crew of the film Mr Turner – then only known as Untitled 13 – gathered in central London for a read through. Only there was no read through, because there was no script.

Mike Leigh’s film-making process is intensive and collaborative, with character, action and dialogue gradually emerging from months of research, discussion and improvisation – and he told us that this method is broadly the same whatever the subject. It was a process that would develop over six months of rehearsals, and a four-month shoot.

At the initial stage there was a lot of reading (the books on JMW Turner alone can be measured by the yard), and site visits and dossiers to be created – of Turner’s family, partners, fellow artists, friends, patrons, associates – out of which the time span of the film is settled, themes and events are defined, characters are selected and actors cast. We managed to get agreement from a large number of museums and galleries to use their images and selected hundreds of works that could be included in the set-piece reconstructions, such as Turner’s Queen Anne Street gallery and the magnificent 1832 Royal Academy summer exhibition. The next research stage was a sort of actors’ art/history boot camp, which happened alongside the actors’ sessions with Mike, because everything and anything that was read or experienced might find its way into the character, the scene and the dialogue.

This meant a lot of work for each actor, particularly Timothy Spall, playing Turner. For a character such as Turner, one challenge is knowing when to stop. With others, such as his close companion Sophia Booth (played by Marion Bailey) and his housekeeper Hannah Danby (Dorothy Atkinson), surprisingly little had been written about them, considering the gamut of Turner biographies.

But to give an indication of the overall scale and scope of the research covered: in early December 2012 there were 40 actors, which gradually expanded to 76 as the rehearsal period went on, until the characters included a monarch, a barber, an earl, an art critic, a sherry merchant, an evangelical Anglican, a doctor, a slave ship carpenter, a photographer, an army officer, an architect, two prostitutes and 15 artists (including the great man himself).

The research took us from Kensington Palace to Berry Bros & Rudd fine wine merchants, from the Royal Hospital Museum in Chelsea to the Royal London Hospital at Whitechapel, and from Sir John Soane’s Museum to Margate and Twickenham (Turner’s House). Paul Jesson (playing William Turner senior) had lessons in traditional wet shaving, while Leo Bill (as the photographer John JE Mayall) had sessions on daguerreotype photography with expert David Burder.

I spent months in the British Library and the London Library – the latter packed full of wonderful material such as an 1813 housekeeping manual that provided a useful contemporary recipe for a pig’s head stuffing, using brains and bread crumbs, and early travel guides to Kent.

There were sessions for the “artists” in the library and archive of the Royal Academy, hands-on pigment and oil-paint classes at Winsor & Newton fine art materials and back at U13 central, group discussions on art theory, history and practice. At the Royal Museums and Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich, the same group covered everything from Lord Nelson, Trafalgar and the Temeraire to decorative history painting and European marine art – the latter courtesy of my sister, Christine Riding, who happened to be curating the major exhibition, Turner and the Sea, which Leigh opened in November 2013.

From early on, some form of reconstruction of Turner’s most famous painting, The Fighting Temeraire, was discussed. Clearly computer-generated imagery would be required, but the reality was very different to Turner’s vision. It is known that the Royal Navy had stripped the ship of anything useful, including her masts, and that she was taken up the Thames to Rotherhithe by two tugs and that her last journey to the breaker’s wharf began on the morning of 5 September 1838 to take advantage of the spring tides. No masts, no ethereal glow, no lone jaunty tug, no elegiac sunset.

But then Turner’s painting is essentially a construct of his own imagination using the bare facts of the event as a starting point. That the scene in the film shows a masted war ship and a sunset, with Turner and his companions Clarkson Stanfield (Mark Stanley) and David Roberts (Jamie Thomas King) taking a boat down the Thames to see her, is following Turner’s lead – an imagined scene full of poignant historical resonances, and a little knowing humour, based on the event and in this case the painting it stimulated. I believe the result is spectacular.

A highlight of one rehearsal involved seven actors, including Spall and Josh McGuire (Turner’s champion John Ruskin), which began with a discussion on gooseberries and then segued into the relative merits of Claude Lorrain (then, as now, a revered French 17th-century painter) and Turner’s own representations of the sea.

In the film, you are watching months, years actually, of preparation and graft, gradually evolved from improvisations, then honed into an elegant, funny and revealing five-minute scene. Ultimately, my role was to provide information, to advise, to avoid any howlers and then to stand back. For, as Mike says, this is a movie, not a documentary.”