[Sketches and Undated Artworks]
[Alphabetical List of Artworks]
[Pictures in galleries]
[Artworks of the 1840s]
[Artworks of the 1850s]
[Slavery paintings and sketches]
[Artworks of the 1860s]
[Artworks of the 1870s]
[Artworks of the 1880s]
[Artworks of the 1890s]
[Artworks of the 1900s]
Although Eyre Crowe had first exhibited a work at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1846, and had also exhibited in 1848, 1849, 1854 and 1857, it was not until 1858 that his paintings were first noted in the reviews of contemporary periodicals and newspapers.
Paintings exhibited in the next two years followed Crowe's usual themes, depicting events of 16th-18th century history and literature. They were not always reviewed kindly, but were at least noticed. 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.
Notes on Crowe's series of paintings on the theme of American slavery, also worked on in the 1850s, are to be found separately.
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: The Boulogne Fisher's Wife (1850)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: British Institution, 1850
Title: Henry James senior (1853)
Medium: oil
According to Crowe in With Thackeray in America, he painted this portrait in New York while travelling in America as Thackeray's secretary, and presented it to Mrs James. Their son Henry James, the novelist, remembered the occasion and described it in his autobiography.
Title: Margaret Crowe (1853)
Crowe sketched his mother on her deathbed in Paris in 1853. In July 1902, when he mentioned this in his diary, the sketch was in the possession of his niece Frances Maria Wynne.
Title: Cardinal Richelieu and Pere Joseph etc. (1854)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1854
Title: The Bridge over the Seine opposite Mount Valerian (1855)
Medium: watercolour over pencil
Size: 10 x 17 inches
This scene was auctioned at Sotheby's on 21 May 1981. In 1855, Crowe was living in Paris. He had moved back to London by January 1856.
Title: The meeting of Louis XI and Edward IV on the Bridge of Pecquigny (1855)
Medium: painting
This scene was auctioned at Sotheby's on 16 May 1988. It fetched £2,200.
Title: Delivery Entrance of Palais des Beaux Arts at the Exposition Universelle of 1855 (1855)
Medium: pen and black ink, brush and gray wash over graphite
Size: 8 3/4 x 12 5/8 in. (22.2 x 32 cm)
Current owner: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1967 (67.708.3)
This sketch was made during Eyre Crowe's time in Paris between 1852 and 1856. It is inscribed in pen and black ink at upper left of recto: "The Last day!", and inscribed in graphite at top center of recto: "Paris Exhibition of Paintings 1855".
Title: Louis XI at Sainte Chapelle, Paris (n.d., possibly c.1855)
Medium: ink drawing
Size: 10 x 18 inches
Current owner: Private collection
This sketch, signed 'Eyre Crowe', but undated, was auctioned on ebay in August 2008.
Louis IX of France had brought the relic of Christ's Crown of Thorns to the royal chapel of Sainte Chapelle in 1248. In the 14th century Louis XI had a concealed oratory built at the chapel, from which he could attend mass unobserved. The sketch shows him watching the proceedings to the grille on the right of the drawing.
The purchaser of the sketch has drawn my attention to a number of incidents suggesting that the sketch might have been drawn in the 1850s. Eyre Crowe was living in Paris between 1853 and early 1856, and is known to have painted another scene depicting Louis XI in 1855 ('The meeting of Louis XI and Edward IV on the Bridge of Pecquigny', see above). The subject of Louis XI was well known in 1855 thanks to Charles Kean's portrayal of the king in Dion Boucicault's 'Louis XI' at the Princess Theatre. Kean was sketched in this role by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, an acquaintance of Crowe's from his time in the Royal Academy Schools. According to the purchaser of the sketch, the choice of subject and staging has affinities with some of the works of other first generation Pre-Raphaelites, most notably James Collinson's 'The Renunciation of Queen Elizabeth of Hungary' (c.1848-50), and John Everett Millais' 'The Disentombment of Queen Matilda' (1849).
Title: Joseph Archer Crowe (1855)
The existence of this portrait of Crowe's brother is known through Crowe's diary entry for 31 December 1902, in which he wrote that it had been unfortunately damaged in falling off the wall of his home.
Title: Boswell's Introduction to the Literary Club (1856)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Mr Gambart's Gallery, 120 Pall Mall, 1859; Pall Mall Winter Exhibition, 1861
Engraving by W.H. Simmons, published by Moore of London, c.1862
The Times, 24 Nov 1859:
Mr. Eyre Crowe – among his many pictures illustrative of literary history – has produced nothing of such equal technical merit as his group representing the introduction of Boswell to the Literary Club at the Turk’s Head. The figure of Boswell, delightedly receiving the accolade of the great Samuel, is particularly happy, both in likeness and action. Dr. Johnson is also very faithful to the received idea of the great social and literary dictator. Besides these, the picture embraces portraits of Goldsmith, Burke, Garrick, Sir William Jones, and Reynolds, the latter recognizable only by his ear-trumpet, for the face is untrue to any portrait we have seen of Reynolds at any period of his life. The groups are well composed, and the picture altogether carefully and unaffectedly conscientious.
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According to Crowe's later diary entries, this painting was sold to the art dealer Gambart in 1856, preventing it from being exhibited at the Royal Academy. It was in the collection of Mr Hurst of Rochdale, then auctioned at Christie's in June 1899 and bought by an art dealer named Nathan Mitchell for 42 guineas (£44 2s 0d). It was auctioned again in London on 21 March 1910, fetching £29 8s 10d.
Title: A Scene at the Mitre: Dr Johnson, Boswell, Goldsmith (1857)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1857
Published in The Bookman, September 1909
It is not known who first purchased this picture, but it was bought in by Christie's auction house from Hayward and Leggatt on 7 December 1864 for £38 17s 0d. It was then sold to John Knowles. It was auctioned again by Christie's on 7 April 1865, and sold to the art dealers Messrs Agnew for engraving purposes for £79 9s 0d.
Title: Goldsmith and his nieces (1858)
Medium: oil
This painting was auctioned on 17 May 1860 at Christie's in London.
Title: Benjamin Franklin at Watts's in Lincoln's Inn Fields, A.D. 1725 (1858)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1858
Athenaeum, 15 May 1858:
Mr Crowe paints with curious dry colour. His Franklin in the Printing Office (570), with the beer-drinking printers taunting him for drinking water, was not worth painting, because there was nothing heroic or commendable in Franklin's drinking water.
Art Journal, June 1864:
... the subject, which is very ably treated, was suggested to the artist by seeing at Washington the identical [printing] press used by Franklin.
Title: Pope's Introduction to Dryden, at Wills' Coffee House (1858)
Medium: oil
Size: 68 x 90 cm
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1858; International Exhibition, London, 1862
'I had the honour of bringing Mr. Pope up to London, from our retreat in the forest of Windsor, to dress à la mode, and introduce at Will's Coffee Room' (Sir C. Wogan's letter to Swift)
Published on the ARC website
Athenaeum, 15 May 1858:
His other picture is interesting as a portrait picture, but has little story or expression, and shows small imagination, but much industry. It is called Pope's Introduction to Dryden (1104). Sir C. Wogan is introducing the clever Windsor boy and showing his verses to the old poet in his snug nook at the window, while Steele, Tonson, Addison, Congreve, Vanbrugh and others club round in appropriate action.
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Pope's Introduction to Dryden was owned in 1862, when it was shown at the International Exhibition at South Kensington in London, by a W. Reed. It descended to Canon Martin Reed by 1924. It was put up for auction at Sotheby's in London on 10 November 1981 and 12 November 1992, and again in 1998, and is still in private ownership.
A sketch of the man on the left hand side, standing on the upturned chair, was executed in 1857 and sold by Abbott & Holder to a private owner for £150 on 26 October 1991.
Title: Milton Visiting Galileo in the Prisons of the Inquisition (1859)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1859
'There it was that I visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking of astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licencers thought.'
'Galileo's daughters, who were nuns in a convent close by Galileo's prison, tended him during his incarceration; and the eldest, who was his favourite, read seven penitential psalms, a recitation which formed part of Galileo's sentence.'
Engraving by J Cooper of Milton visiting Galileo in the Prisons of the Inquisition, by Eyre Crowe (1859)
Published in the Art Journal, June 1864
Athenaeum, 21 May 1859:
Mr Crowe's Milton visiting Galileo in the Prisons of the Inquisition (569) is very cold in painting and silly in conception. The old gentleman on his shavings could not have discovered anything, not even a needle in a bottle of hay; the nun daughters are caricatures and Milton looks a dolt...
The Times, 18 May 1859:
Mr Crowe's Milton visiting Galileo is carefully painted - almost too carefully. It is not well in the presence of the great Florentine to be so conscious of the velvet of his trunks and the Indian corn husks he rests upon. But there is praiseworthy conscientiousness in every part of the picture.
Art Journal, 1859, p. 170:
This is an admirable subject, but it is materially damaged by the way the background material is painted up. Galileo is stretched upon a couch of dried sedges, tended by his two daughters, who were nuns in a convent prison; but Milton sits at the door, as if he was not of the party - an arrangement which disintegrates the composition. As well as can be seen, the figures are most carefully drawn and painted.
Art Journal, June 1864:
There is much careful and excellent work in this picture, and a novelty in the arrangement of the figures that is highly to be commended.
Title: The Roundhead (1859)
Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1859
'Few of the Puritans, what degree soever they were of, wore their hair long enough to cover their eares...From this custom of wearing their haires, that name of Roundhead became the scornful terme given to the whole Parliament party.'
Athenaeum, 21 May 1859:
...His other picture, though dry enough, and very full of the over-padded lay figure, is clever in expression, and worth juicier painting and a richer surface. It is called The Roundhead (921) and represents a new convert having his love-locks cut off, to show his connexion with the austere sect. The barber's ascetic, saturnine face is admirable, - the victim's by no means bad; still, altogether, this is rather a hide-bound chip of a picture.
Art Journal, June 1864:
A strikingly humorous work, suggested by a passage in the Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson. One of Cromwell's Ironsides is seated in a barber's shop, having his head cropped to the recognised pattern; his wife and child accompany him. The subject may not be what is called 'High Art', but the treatment must be admitted as 'Good Art'.
Copyright (c) 2005 Kathryn J. Summerwill. All rights reserved.