The reviews given here from the Art Journal in June 1864 were part of a retrospective on Eyre Crowe ('British Artists: their Style and Character - No. LXXIII - Eyre Crowe'), written when Crowe was coming into prominence as part of a group of young artists, and it is notable that they are of a rather more laudatory character than those which were published at the time.
The quotations at the head of each section are taken from Graves' list of Royal Academy exhibitors, and represent the inspiration for the painting, as submitted to the Academy's catalogue by Eyre Crowe.
Title: Dean Swift at St. James's Coffee House, 1710 (1860)
Medium: oil
Size: 29 x 24½ inches (76.3 x 62.3 cm)
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1860
'I got M D's fourth letter today, at the coffee house, etc.'
Athenaeum, 19 May 1860:
Mr. Eyre Crowe, jun. sends a picture which, while it shows him to have made an advance in the mere qualities of execution, marks no other gain. His Dean Swift ... wants concentrativeness of purpose to be expressed in the faces. Swift sits in one of the boxes at the coffee-house, reading 'poor Stella's' letter. He has his head on one side in a characteristic manner, but he does not look at the letter with any earnestness; his eyes are too speculative by a great deal. Mr. Crowe disdains to make the principal figure of his picture to represent the most important individual of his subject, for the former position is taken by a dandy in a splendid sky-blue dress, who occupies the centre of the canvas, in the apparently simple action of receiving a three-cornered and rose-tinted note from the waitress. A card-party is seated at a table in the background. The whole of the picture wants life and unison of action - 'consent' as it is technically called. More solidity and sweetness of colour, as well as more diversity of the last quality, would do the artist greater justice than he seems inclined to do himself in seeking after these qualities.
Art Journal, June 1864:
The witty divine occupies a box while a dandy occupies the attentions of a pretty waitress... This was the best picture of its class the artist had hitherto exhibited; it evidenced originality and thought, with very considerable elaborateness in the manipulation.
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This painting was auctioned at Sotheby’s on 29 March 1995, with an estimated price of £2000-£3000, although it only fetched £1,500. It was auctioned again at Christie's in South Kensington, London, on 24 May 2006, fetching £3,000. By January 2007 it was for sale at Martin Macleish Ltd (Martin Macleish Fine Paintings), 13 Dover Street, Mayfair, London W1S 4LN.
Title: Sir Richard Steele Writing to his Wife (1860)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1860
Engraving by J. Cooper, published in the Art Journal, June 1864
This painting was exhibited at the Winter Exhibition at the Society of British Artists' Suffolk Street Gallery in Pall Mall, and bought by a collector, Mr Plint of Leeds. It was later owned by Mr James Leathart of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a celebrated collector of contemporary art, to whom Crowe had been introduced by William Bell Scott in June 1862. Mr Leathart's widow was forced to sell the collection after his death in 1895, and the picture was purchased by Mr Ralph Atkinson.
Title: A Dead Stork on the Bank of a Stream (1860)
Medium: chalk
Current owner: Victoria and Albert Museum, London (FA 635)
Title: A Barber's Shop at Richmond, Virginia (1861); and Slaves Waiting for Sale: Richmond, Virginia (1861)
See page relating to Slavery paintings.
Title: Mrs Milliken Leaning on her Harp (1862)
An illustration from W.M. Thackeray's Lovel the Widower, painted by Crowe as a housewarming present for Thackeray, according to Thackeray's Haunts and Homes, p. 72.
Title: Henry and Lucy Jervis-White-Jervis (1862)
According to his diary, Crowe painted a portrait of his friends the Jervises in January 1862.
Title: De Foe in the Pillory (1862)
Medium: oil
Size: 13 x 16¼ inches
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1862; Manchester Jubilee Exhibition, 1887; Guildhall Art Gallery, 1900
Current owner: Salford Museum and Art Gallery
'July 31, 1703, Daniel Foe, alias De Foe, this day stood in the pillory at Temple Bar in pursuance of his sentence, given against him at the last sessions at the Old Bailey for writing and publishing a seditious libel, entitled The Shortest way with the Dissenters. During his exhibition he was protected by the same friends from the missiles of his enemies: and the mob, instead of pelting him, resorted to the unmannerly act of drinking his health, etc.'
Engraving by J.C. Armytage, published in the Art Journal, New Series 7 (1868), p. 27
Athenaeum, 17 May 1862:
One of the best figure pictures in the gallery is Mr. Eyre Crowe's De Foe in the Pillory (457) ... A picture full of character, awkward in drawing of parts, yet generally excellent.
The Times, 26 May 1862:
'De Foe in the Pillory' (457) is another biographical picture added to the gallery of such pictures which Mr. E. Crowe has painted. It is his best picture for management of the many figures, and for colour and manipulation, if not for expression ... Mr. Crowe has shown in this picture unexpected power in the management of a crowded composition, though we might which for a little more animation in the faces and action. His colour is simple and agreeable.
Illustrated London News, 31 May 1862:
Mr. Crowe has made a great advance in his 'De Foe in the Pillory' (457). The colouring of this picture is agreeable and almost entirely free from the black and threaded appearance of former works.
Art Journal, 1862, p. 131:
The success of any pictorial narrative depends upon the truth, point, and persistency with which the theme is dwelt upon. This success, in a great degree, characterises the work; there are no mere expletive figures in the composition: each person is interested either sympathetically on the side of Defoe or on that of the authorities, which are principally military, acting in restraining the crowd in the good offices they proffer to the condemned. The painting and drawing are unexceptionable; the former is creditably earnest, without any affectation of eccentric manner.
Art Journal, June 1864:
[The painting was hung 'on the line' in the Royal Academy exhibition], a tolerably sure proof of the opinion formed of it by the hangers, and undoubtedly it deserved the honour awarded. The story is told with great point and truth; the characters are living, and have a purpose in the event that causes the assembling, and the manipulation is throughout most careful, solid, and artistically honest.
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One of Crowe's most popular paintings, De Foe in the Pillory won the medal for Historical Painting from the Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in 1863. It had been sold to the art dealer William Agnew for the large sum of £400 on 2 May 1862, just after the opening of the Royal Academy Exhibition, and was sold on again at Christie's in 1865 to Julius Sichel. James L Newell was the painting's owner in 1887 and 1900. In May 1907, the painting was donated to the Salford Museum and Art Gallery by the Mayor of Salford, Alderman Isadore Frankenburg, J.P., in memory of his son Ralph, who had been killed in the wreck of the SS Berlin at the Hook of Holland in February of the same year. The painting is still owned by the Gallery and is hung on the wall of their Victorian room.
A painting with the same title and dimensions (Defoe in the Pillory, 1862, oil on wood, 12.5 x 16 inches (31.8 x 40.6 cm) - possibly a duplicate) was the gift of Henry C. Hutchins and is part of the collection of the Yale University Library, Connecticut, U.S.A. Reference: "A checklist of American paintings at Yale University," New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1982, no. 363.
Title: Marriage at Cana (1862)
Mentioned in Crowe's diary for December 1862.
Cartoons for mosaics for the International Exhibition (1862)
Mentioned in Crowe's diary. Inspired by the Great Exhibition of 1851, and comprising artworks, historical and modern objects from around the world, the 1862 Exhibition was held over the road from the South Kensington Museum and opened to the public on 1 May. It is not known whether Crowe's designs were accepted or ever made into mosaics.
Title: Brick Court, Middle Temple, April 1774 / Goldsmith's Mourners (1862)
Medium: oil on panel
Size: 27½ inches x 36 inches
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1863
'On the morning of Monday, 4th of April, 1774, Oliver Goldsmith died ... Brick Court is said to have been filled with mourners the reverse of domestic; women without a home, without domesticity of any kind, with no friend but him they had come to weep for; outcasts of that great, solitary wicked city to whom he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable. And he had domestic mourners too. His coffin was reopened at the request of Miss Horneck and her sister that a lock might be cut from his hair, etc.'
Engraving published on the front page of the Illustrated London News, 18 July 1863
The Times, 2 May 1863:
In passing a look should be taken, till the longer examination they deserve can be given, at Mr. Whistler's remarkable river-side subject ... [and] at Mr. E. Crowe's 'Brick Court' (797). [no further space was in fact given to reviewing this painting]
Athenaeum, 9 May 1863:
Mr. Crowe has taught us to look every year for something from him illustrating Johnson and his friends. Last year's 'De Foe in the Pillory' (an excellent picture) was, therefore, rather a disappointment. The artist has found a subject in Goldsmith, Brick Court, Middle Temple, 1774 (359), a work which shows great improvement upon its predecessors in painting and in drawing.
Illustrated London News, 16 May 1863:
Mr. E. Crowe contributes an interesting picture, though a less elaborate effort than his 'De Foe in the Pillory' which we engraved last year. The subject is 'Brick Court' (797), outside the door of Goldsmith's residence on the morning of his death, where the beggars and vagrants, deserving or otherwise, from whom the kind doctor never withheld his charity, have collected.
Art Journal, 1863, p. 111:
Mr. Crowe, who last year was favourably known by his picture of 'De Foe in the Pillory', has illustrated this season, in 'Brick Court, Middle Temple, April 1774' (359), an interesting page in the literature of our country ... Mr. Crowe, by thus allying himself with subjects akin to our literature and history, is fortunate to extend his sphere beyond the narrower sympathies and limits of many among our artists, who must rest content to paint the gossip of a cottage-door, or to immortalise the incidents and accessories of a back kitchen.
Art Journal, June 1864:
... a most attractive work, both in subject and on account of the truly excellent manner in which it is treated.
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Work on Brick Court began in August 1862, according to Eyre Crowe's diary. It is signed and dated 'E CROWE/1862', and has a label on the reverse (probably from its exhibition at the Royal Academy), inscribed 'Eyre CROWE' 33/Langham Street/"Goldsmith's Mourners"/Brick Court April 4th 1774'.
The painting was hung 'on the line' in the prestigious Middle Room of the Royal Academy exhibition, but despite the praise it received, it was not sold, remaining in Eyre Crowe's possession until it was auctioned after his death, raising £47 5s 0d.
The painting was sold by Bonham's of London in their '19th century paintings' sale on 22 April 2009. The hammer price was £6,500 (£7,800 including buyer's premium and sales tax).
Title: Christopher Wren/ William Hogarth (1863)
Medium: oil
Current owner: Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Crowe was one of the artists asked to contribute designs for mosaics to decorate the new South Kensington Museum. He produced cartoons in oil, which now hang in the Lecture Theatre of the V&A. The mosaics, which were put together by students of the National Art Training Schools, originally decorated the niches in the South Court of the Museum. The Christopher Wren mosaic has been moved to another point in the Museum, opposite Gallery 126, while the William Hogarth mosaic is now in storage.
Title: Amy Crowe (1863)
Medium: oil
Crowe worked on this painting of his sister in July 1862, and January 1863. Amy married Edward Thackeray in December 1862 and the couple went to India soon afterwards. She died in 1865, and in 1869 Crowe gave a sketch of Amy - perhaps a version of this painting - to Edward.
Copyright (c) 2005 Kathryn J. Summerwill. All rights reserved.