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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: Drawing Lots for the Guelph Succession at Celle, A.D. 1592 (1896)Medium: oil Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1896; Liverpool, 1896
It is stated in the conclusion of Duke Christian's speech to his brother, 'To preserve the splendour of our house only one of us should marry, so that one will be the head of the new line ... ' They drew lots: seven balls, one of which was gilt, the others silvered, were thrown into the helmet ... Fate decided in favour of George the youngest but one, etc.
Reproduced in Royal Academy Pictures, 1896, p. 67
Athenaeum, 2 May 1875:
Art Journal, June 1896, p. 172:
--------------- Crowe visited Celle in the late summer of 1895, and undoubtedly sketched some of the details of the room there. The picture was exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool in the autumn of 1896.
Title: Charles IX (1896)Medium: oil
Crowe mentioned working on this painting in his 1896 diary, and it was listed in an inventory of his possessions taken after his death in 1910. It is not known to have been exhibited, and does not appear under this title in the sale catalogues of his remaining works auctioned in 1911.
Title: Trial for Bigamy (1897)Medium: oil Size: 30 x 42 inches Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1897
Reproduced in Royal Academy Pictures, 1897, p. 117
Athenaeum, 15 May 1897:
Manchester Courier, 10 May 1897:
------------------- Trial for Bigamy is mentioned in Pamela Gerrish Nunn's Problem Pictures: Women and Men in Victorian Painting (1995, p. 65). Nunn contrasts various paintings of the 1880s and 1890s depicting relationships between men and women, which she describes as 'chocolate-box vignettes, vapid pot-boilers ... escapist ... flip', with Crowe's more serious work. Trial for Bigamy depicts a contemporary rather than historical or fictional event, and uses realistic details and muted colours; by these means, 'the adversaries are brought out of the assembled crowd enough to assist the narrative but not so as to melodramatize their roles'. The picture was based on the Crown Court in the Town Hall at Leeds, which Crowe had undoubtedly visited during one of his trips to the north as an Inspector of government art schools.
Title: The Gipsy's Rest (1897)Medium: oil Size: 11 x 18 inches Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1897; Liverpool, 1897
Reproduced in Royal Academy Pictures, 1897, p. 13
Athenaeum, 15 May 1897:
Crowe made his first sketch of gypsies at Shenfield Common in Essex in May 1873. He rediscovered the sketch more than 20 years later, and made a new painting of the foreground at the same site on 23 July 1896. The picture was exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool in the autumn of 1897. The picture, then called The Gipsy Encampment, was one of those remaining in Eyre Crowe's possession at his death, and was sold for £2 12 6 at an auction of his remaining works at Christie's in London on 18 March 1911. A painted sketch for the painting (presumably either the original from 1873 or one executed in 1896), was given to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge by Michael C. Jaye in 2004. Details of this sketch and an image are available on the museum's online catalogue.
Title: The Crow-Boy (1897)Medium: oil Size: 11 x 14 inches (25 x 36 cm) Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1897; Liverpool, 1897
Athenaeum, 15 May 1897:
According to Eyre Crowe's diary, he had first painted this subject at Henley in 1872. He found the picture again when he moved his effects out of storage and into his Chelsea studio in 1894, and took the picture on holiday with him to Great Yarmouth, where he traced the outline and began to repaint the boy on the cornfield stile. The picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in the summer of 1897, and at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool in the autumn of the same year. The picture, called Jungen Bursche am Gatten in German, was sold at the Walldorf Auctionhouse, Germany, in July 2002, fetching 3,750 Euros.
Title: Peter the Great (1897)Medium: oil Crowe mentioned
this historical composition in his 1897 diary, but it
was apparently never made into a completed picture.
Copyright (c) 2005 Kathryn J. Summerwill. All rights reserved. |