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: Sanctuary (1877)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1877
Illustrated London News, 5 May 1877:
Mr. Eyre Crowe (in the 'Sanctuary') [has made] an amazing pas en avant in artistic excellence.
The Times, 5 May 1877 [the very first painting noted by the critic]:
In Room 1, Mr. Eyre Crowe's 'Sanctuary' shows us a fair-haired woman in red, clasping in terror the sanctuary stool of a church, while behind the rails which shut off the sanctuary gesticulates a crowd of baffled pursuers. The defect of the picture pictorially is the wide empty space between the woman and her pursuers. A more serious defect is the difficulty the spectator feels of conjecturing the offence of one so young and seemingly so innocent. The painter may have meant to set us this as a problem. But it is a bold thing to do, for the chances are ten to one that the impatience of such puzzles is stronger than their interest.
Athenaeum, 5 May 1877:
Mr. Eyre Crowe gives us a large picture, with a very dramatic subject, styled Sanctuary (9), a wife taking refuge in a church - the scene is well known at Rouen - while pursued by her brutal husband; shhe has attained the fridstool of stone within the sacred enclosure; crowds of curious gazers peer over the rails, while stout men expel the man from the church.
Athenaeum, 12 May 1877:
A poor woman in a bright red dress, the hem of which is marked with dust, indicating a rapid flight, although, by the way, her shoes are clean and bright, has cast herself, panting and exhausted, on the stone seat near the altar ... Her wild flaxen hair streams behind her shoulder; her person is ample and exuberant. Mr. Crowe, when he designed the figure with so much energy and imparted so much passion to her action of turning to the shrine, did not commit the common mistake of making her beautiful. No doubt, having a sterner moral to enforce than meets the eye, he refused to lend meretricious charms to the wretched woman whose husband has pursued her to the very altar, and is seen struggling against six stout arms, which combine to expel him from the church. Beyond the rail of the sanctuary, the verger, sceptre in hand, has brought the black robe, which is marked with a yellow cross and trimmed with red, a sanctuary garment; he holds the dress towards the fugitive, whom an old man, holding a hairy cap, indicates with his forefinger. Other persons, including a big-eyed boy and women, stare over the rail. The tall shafts at the crossing rise out of sight to the roof, gleams of many-coloured light strike the pillars and the walls. The aërial effect of the place is given with great care and success. Some of the expressions are first-rate, and they are varied with skill. The general aspect of the picture is bare, dry, not to say cold - at least the first impression affects us thus. It improves mightily with acquaintance.
Illustrated London News, 26 May 1877:
... Hypercriticsm has accused Mr. Eyre Crowe of having left an immense space of his foreground utterly bare and devoid of anything more interesting than a stone pavement; but it may be pleaded in reply that from the angular nature of the composition ... it was virtually impossible to crowd the foreground with objects without disturbing and confusing the angular lines of the perspective. The contrast, moreover, between the tumultuous mob at the barrier and the calm solitude of the haven in which the hunted woman has taken refuge is, in the highest degree, artistically impressive; and finally, no technical solecism is committed by leaving so large a space untenanted, seeing that the painter has been so careful, by the introduction of the altar in the right and of the brass candelabrum basket and drapery in the left hand corner of his foreground, not to allow the spectator's eye to wander out of the picture.
Art Journal, June 1877:
The picture of the young girl claiming 'Sanctuary' (9), by EYRE CROWE, and clinging wildly to the pillar in the church on which stands the sacred figure of the Virgin, is conceived in the true dramatic spirit.
Title: Silkworms (1877)
Medium: oil
Size: 40 x 25 cm
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1877
Current owner: Christ's Hospital School, Horsham, Surrey
Athenaeum, 19 May 1877:
It exhibits, with rare solidity, delicacy and precision - some hardness and coldness to boot - a group of Blue-coat boys gathered about their silk-bearing treasures, and on a bench; a frame on which bright gold-coloured silk has been wound is on the ground on our left; one boy looks at a cocoon, one, with books, looks on. The intensity of the attitudes and expressions is a characteristic of the highest value. It is one of the gems of this year.
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Showing the boys of the Bluecoat School on Newgate in London, this picture was offered by Sotheby's to the school's successor, Christ's Hospital School in Horsham, Surrey, in around the year 2000, and now forms part of the school's collection.
Title: Prayer (1877)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1877
Athenaeum, 5 May 1877:
Prayer (283) shows a chapel with a woman lost in devotion, a capital piece of effect.
Athenaeum, 26 May 1877:
Mr E. Crowe's Prayer (283) is not so good as his other works. A French girl is depicted kneeling before a crucifix in a side chapel of a large church; her action is full of expression, her figure is neatly, soundly and firmly painted; the whole is solid and full of light, but the effect is hard, the colour is cold, and there is need of breadth in many parts.
Title: Bridal Procession at St. Maclou, Rouen (1877)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1877
Athenaeum, 26 May 1877:
Mr. Crowe's Bridal Procession at St.Maclou, Rouen (389) exhibits the same technical characteristics [as Prayer], but though less agreeable, it has abundence of light, and there is a truly spontaneous sense of humour in the face and air of the big Suisse who marches before the newly-wedded folks. The choice of this subject was surely a mistake on Mr. Crowe's part, whose 'serious' character needs better themes, and fails in trivial ones.
Title: Boys of Blue Coat School, London (1877)
Medium: oil on panel
Size: 17 x 24 cm
This painting was offered at auction in 1991.
Title: Initials (1877)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Dudley Gallery, 1877
The Scotsman, 24 November 1877:
Mr Eyre Crowe's 'Initials' - a girl inscribing her name upon a tree - is somewhat vulgar and disappointing.
Title: Hodge (1877)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Dudley Gallery, 1877
Athenaeum, 1 December 1877:
Mr Eyre Crowe's Hodge (127) - it ought to be Pat, as the man who sits taking his beer in an ale-house is decidedly Irish - has a solid, rather dry, spirited expression, marked by humour in the action and face.
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The description of this picture is similar to the scene portrayed in an oil painting on panel, 32 x 24 cm (12 5/8 x 9 7/16 inches), which was auctioned by Bonham's, Bath, on 16 July 2007, under the title 'A Good Whiff', fetching £320. It is possible that both pictures are the same.
Title: School Treat (1878)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1878
The Times, 11 May 1878:
Mr. Eyre Crowe has shown an equal power of getting rid of the picturesque in his 'School Feast' [sic] (567), from which all that charms in painting has been as completely expunged as it is from 'The Return of Captain Cameron' [by another artist]. The two pictures, considering their size and the position of the painters, are among the curiosities of the year in this respect.
The Times, 18 May 1878: [in relation to another artist's work]
Nothing needs so robust a courage and so self-dependent a spirit in the artist as the treatment of contemporary themes ... You must go groping among the interests, the relationships, and the feelings of all this crowd to apportion and appreciate them ... Mr. Staniland has been greviously weighted with the painters' usual difficulty to make an English crowd picturesque ... how marvellously Cope and Eyre Crowe and J. Clark have missed it we have noticed in another article.
Illustrated London News, 18 May 1878:
The vice of hardness in execution is one to which many more clever modern painters seem to be addicted. It mars the effect of Mr. Eyre Crowe A.R.A.'s otherwise most able 'School Treat' (567), a wonderfully bustling and painstaking composition, admirably grouped, full of varied movement and graphic expression; but throughout, in handling, as hard as the nether millstone.
Title: A Quiet Read (1878)
Medium: oil
Size: 40 x 51 cm
Current owner: Private collection
This painting was not exhibited at the Royal Academy. It was auctioned at Sotheby's on 21 March 1990, fetching £1,800. It appeared for sale again at the Christopher Wood Gallery in autumn 1990, offered at an estimated price of £8,500. A reproduction of the painting, showing the back view of a lady sitting in a garden, with a dog sleeping by her side, is in the Sotheby's catalogue.
The painting was on the books at Mallett Fine Art, 141 New Bond Street, London until 1996, when it was sold to a private collector. A company called MyArtPrints.com is currently (2008) offering reproductions of this image, stating incorrectly that the painting is still owned by the Mallett Gallery.
Title: Bluecoat Boys returning from their Holidays (1879)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1879
Current owner: Private collection, U,S.A.
Athenaeum, 31 May 1879:
The scene is outside the building. Mr. Crowe does not trouble himself to produce triumphs of tone and tint, as he might profitably do, but he designs with care and spirit, and paints conscientiously; the charm of this picture lies in the characters and faces of the lads. We do not see why the buildings should look as if they had but just now undergone 'restoration' and been scraped to seem quite new.
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This painting was
probably purchased from the Johnson Fine Art Gallery in Montreal
in the late 19th century. It is now owned by the grandson of the
purchaser, who has given kind permission for the painting to be
reproduced here.
Title: Marat: 13th July, 1793 (1879)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1879
'Charlotte Corday, who had tried vainly two or three times to get admitted to see Marat, was overheard by him asking for an interview and he ordered her to be called in ... When she entered the room he elicited from her the names of Girondist deputies at Caen. He then said, "They will soon all be guillotined". Charlotte Corday then stabbed him with a knife, etc.'
Illustrated London News, 17 May 1879:
... Returning to the remaining works by R.A.'s or A.R.A.'s, we have to note no novelty of subject or treatment; unless it be in the case of Mr. Eyre Crowe, who represents the Duc d'Enghien cutting off, just before his execution, a lock of his hair for his secretly married wife (943), and Charlotte Corday about to enter the bath-room of Marat (301) - in both cases the unpleasantness of the themes being aggravated by excessive grimness of treatment.
Athenaeum, 31 May 1879:
Marat - 13th July, 1793, is a good design for a subject which has been painted in France a great deal too often, and sufficiently often in England. Marat sits in his bath, writing on a board placed before him. Charlotte Corday, not looking like the inspired heroine whom the Parisian artists depict, pushes open the door at Marat's call and enters the room. Mr. Crowe has avoided the murder and its accompaniments, and he has represented the light of the room and the numerous accessories with care and skill, so that we may fully depend on them. Is Marat old enough?
Art Journal, August 1879:
The more important figure pictures in the room are the stabbing of Marat by Charlotte Corday (301), from the able pencil of Eyre Crowe, A., and the 'No Surrender' (324) ... by Andrew C. Gow. There is perhaps a little dryness in Mr. Crowe's treatment; but both are remarkably able works, and we regret that want of space prevents out lingering over their excellences.
Title: The Blind Beggar (1879)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1879
'And lo! thy guiding dog my care implores'
One of five paintings by Crowe appearing at the 1879 exhibition, The Blind Beggar was clearly inferior compared to the others. It was mentioned in passing in the Athenaeum, (31 May 1879) and dismissed without any words of criticism, positive or negative. The other newspapers and magazines ignored it completely.
Title: The Queen of the May (1879)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1879
Athenaeum, 31 May 1879:
We are much less attracted by The Queen of the May (1041) [than by Execution of the Duc d'Enghien], which shows a party of rough fellows, comprising one dressed as a clown, who lead an unlovely girl in a common cart, This is far from being one of the painter's best pictures.
Title: Execution of the Duc d'Enghien, 1804 (1879)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1879
'On hearing the sentence of the military commission condemning him to be shot, which was his first intimation of the fatal verdict, he asked for a pair of scissors, which were handed to him by some men of the firing party. He cut off a lock of his hair and handing it, along with a letter and a ring, asked to have these last tokens forwarded to the Princess Charlotte Rohan-Rochefort, to whom he had been privately married'
Illustrated London News, 17 May 1879:
... Returning to the remaining works by R.A.'s or A.R.A.'s, we have to note no novelty of subject or treatment; unless it be in the case of Mr. Eyre Crowe, who represents the Duc d'Enghien cutting off, just before his execution, a lock of his hair for his secretly married wife (943), and Charlotte Corday about to enter the bath-room of Marat (301) - in both cases the unpleasantness of the themes being aggravated by excessive grimness of treatment; and why, we would ask, is the head of Charlotte Corday so disproportionately large and elongated?
Athenaeum, 31 May 1879:
By far the best of Mr. Crowe's contributions is Execution of the Duc d'Enghien (943). A lantern placed on the ground close the fortress walls reveals the Duke, gallantly clad, in the act of cutting lovelocks from his hair to be sent to his wife, by the hands, we suppose, of an old officer who stands near and shows some compassion for the victim. The gaunt musketeers are seen in the broken light, one rank behind the other, and ready for their office. The figures tell the story capitally and in a moving way. We fail to recognise the redress of artificial light, but the picture is rich in tone, as it appears to us, with some lack of richness in the colour.
Copyright (c) 2005 Kathryn J. Summerwill. All rights reserved.