'Waiting: An English Fireside of 1854-5': Ford Madox Brown's First Modern Subject PictureAuthor(s): Mary BennettSource: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 128, No. 1005 (Dec., 1986), pp. 903-904Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/882855 .

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24. GEORGII MERVLAE / ALEXANDRINI / ANTIQVITATIS / VICE- COMITVM / LIBRI X. This title (Fig.07) is signed 'CERRANVS DELIN.' and 'Caesar Bassanus F.'. Georgio Merula left this history of the Visconti family, commissioned by Lodovico Maria Sforza, unfinished on his death in 1494.49 It was first published in Milan in 1500 and a second edition, of which this is the title, appeared in 1630 as part of a series of local histories whose publication was projected in 1622 by the Milan Consiglio dei Decurioni. Their decorations were designed by Giovanni Battista Crespi, who had in 1621 been appointed director of the Accademia Ambrosiana founded by Cardinal Federico Borro- meo.50 See also No.30 below.

25. ADNOTATIONES / ET MEDITATIONES / IN EVANGELIA QVAE / IN SACROSANCTO MIS= / SAE SACRIFICIO / TOTO ANNO / LEGVNTVR; / CVM EVANGELIORVM CONCORDANTIA / historiae integritati sufficienti. / Accessit & Index historiam ipsam / Evangelicam in ordinem temporis vitae / Christi distribuens / Secunda editio. / Auctore HIERONYMO NATALI / Societatis IESV Theologo. / Antuerpiae excudebat Martinus Nutius, / Anno Domini. C1)I).XCV. / SVPERIORVM PERMISSV. This title was designed by Marten de Vos.5 5

26. COMMENTARIORVM / AC DISPVTATIONVM / in / Vniversam doctrinam / D. THOMAS / DE SACRAMENTIS / ET CENSVRIS / TOMI DVO. / Auctore AEGIDIO DE CONINCK BELLANO / Soc. IESV, in Academia Louaniensi / S. THEOL. Professore. / Secunda editio aucta et recognita. / ANTVERPIAE / Apud Haeredes MARTINI NVTI. / M.DC.XVIV.52

27. IEROSOLYMITANA / PEREGRINATIO / ILLUSTRISSIMI / PRIN- CIPIS / NICOLAI CHRISTOPHORI / RADZIVILI / DVCIS OLICAE ET NIESVISII / PALATINI VILNENSIS / MJLITIS IEROSOLYMI- TANI, ETC. / Primum a THOMA TRETERO / Custode Varmiensi / ex Polonico Sermone in Latinum translata. / Nunc variz aucta, et correctius / in lucem edita. / ANTVERPIAE / EX OFFICINA PLANTINIANA / Apud Viduam et Filios / Ioannis Moreti. / M.DC.XIV.

28. 'T VADERS / BOECK / 'TLEVEN ENDE SPREVCKEN / DER VADEREN / Bescreuen door / DEN H. HIERONYMVS / PRIESTER / ende andere verscheyde / AVTHEVREN / In thien boocken by een vergadert / Door / HERIBERTVS ROSWEYDVS / Priester der Societeyt / IESV. / T'ANTWERPEN / By Hieronymus Verdussen / inde Cammerstraet inde royen Leeuw / Anno 1617. This title is signed 'Pet. Paul. Rubenius invenit. Ioan. Collaert. sculp.'. 3

29. DE SS. TRINITATIS MYSTERIO / OPVS / Auctore Fr. Theodoro Bergomensi / Cappucino. This title (Fig.42) is signed 'Greg. Grassus Aquilan. Inv. C. Audran Sc.' The Barberini arms with the Franciscan arms in chief and a cardinal's hat must be for Antonio Barberini, who took the Capuchin habit in 1592 and was created a cardinal by his brother, Urban VIII in 1624.54

30. TRISTANI / CALCHI / MEDIOLANEN. / HISTORIAE / PATRIAE / LIBRI / XX. This title is signed 'CERANVS DELINI.T L.P. Blancus Sculpsit Med.' Calco's work, written in the late fifteenth century, was not published until 1627, and was the first of the histories of Milan projected in 1622 to appear.3i See also No.24 above.

31. LA. PROSPETTIVA / PRATICA / DI. M. IACOPO / BAROZZI. DA / VIGNOLA / ARCHIT. ET. PROSTETTIVO / ECCELL / CON. I. COMENTARII / DI. M. EGNATIO / DANTI / ALL' ILLUSTRISS. ET. ECCELL S / IL. S. IACOPO. BVONCOMPAGN / MARCHESE. DI VIGNOLA / DVCA. D'ARCI. ET. DI. SORA / C. GEN. DI. S. CHIESA. This somewhat crude title, representing a triumphal arch from which hang various complex geometrical solids, incorporates a bust whose head is miss-

ing. It seems to be for an unrecorded edition of Vignola's Le Due Regole Della Prospettiva, Rome, 1583, which has a comparatively sophisticated title signed by Cherubino Alberti. It seems likely, however, that the title in Brussels antedates the 1611 Rome edition, which is dedicated to the young Marcan- tonio Borghese, who had become Prince of Sulmona in 1610.

32. VASA. A. POLYDORO. CARAAGINO. PICTORE ANTIQUITATISQ IMITATORE. PRESTANTISS. / INVENTA. CHERVBINVS. ALBERTVS. IN AES. INCIDIT. ATQ EDIDIT / ROMAE. ANNO CIC. IC.LXXXII / 1628 / Illustrissimo Principi Francesco Card. Barberino / Cherubini Alberti Haeredes dant donant et dicant ex animi sententia. / Cum Privilegio Summi Pontificis. Ten numbered plates including the title. Plates two to ten are signed 'POLYDORVS DE CARAVAGIO. I. ROMAE' and '.C.AB', 'Cherub.f', 'CHERVBINVS FE', 'C.ALBERTVS FOR', or a variation on one of these. 56

33. Two plates of knives both with the monogram 'CA' for Cherubino Alberti, the second signed 'Frde. Salviati. In.' and dated 1583. These plates may have been regularly sold with the suite of vases listed above (No.32). Aegidius Sadelor copied all twelve plates as a single suite in 1605.57

34. OPERE / PER ARGENTIERI / ET ALTRI / DI / Iacomo Laurentiani / M.D.C.XXXII. / Romae Superiorum licentia. Ten plates, including the title. The plates are all signed I.L. The title, placed fifth, is extra large and folded over at the top, as are the five plates which follow it.

49F. PETRUCCI: 'Tristano Calco', Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XVI, Rome

[1973], pp.537-41. 50M. ROSCI: 'Giovanni Battista Crespi', Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XXX, Rome [1984], pp.705-11. 511 am grateful for this information to M. Vergauwen-Van Elsen, of the Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp. This title is illustrated, without an attribution, in JUDSON and VAN DE VELDE, op.cit. at note 45 above, II, Fig.7. 52This date is given as 1624 in c.j. NUITs: Essai sur l'imprimerie des Nutius, Brussels [1858], 2nd ed., but is as transcribed here. 53 JUDSON and VAN DE VELDE, op.cit. at note 45 above, I, pp.198-201, II, Fig.146. 54A. MEROLA: 'Antonio Barberini', Dizionario Biografico Degli Italiani, VI, Rome [1964], pp.165-66. I am grateful to Michael Holmes for heraldic assistance. 55F. PETRUCCI, op.cit. at note 49 above.

56The suite was originally published in 1582. See Kunstbibliothek Berlin, op.cit. at note 18 above, p.161, 1130. 57 I. COLLIJN: op.cit. at note 11 above, pp.33 and 86-87.

' Waiting: An English Fireside of 1854-5': Ford Madox Brown's first modern subject picture

BY MARY BENNETT

RECENTLY re-emerged after being lost sight of since 1909 is the 1851-52 study for Ford Madox Brown's Waiting (Fig.64). Brown took it up and made it into a picture in 1854-55 with considerable retouching and the addition of a topical allusion in the miniature on the table of a soldier, away at the Crimea. He then renamed it An English Fireside of 1854-5.1 The more highly finished version, of the same size, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1853 (private collection),2 having been painted from the study in 1852 but using a professional model for the head. The study was posed by the artist's wife Emma, both in 1851 and again in 1855; their daughter Catherine is sprawled on her lap. Emma had already posed for earlier pictures and was to appear in Madox Brown's most important works of the 1850s.

'Oil on panel, 30.5 by 20 cm. (12 by 8 in.); signed and dated 'F.Madox Brown/55'. First exhibited at the Paris International 1855 and sold when at the Liverpool Academy 1856 (where it was called An English Fireside, in the Winter of 1854-5), to John Miller, the collector, of Liverpool; subsequently with J.K. Pyne and Henry Boddington of Manchester. Bought in 1909 from the Leicester Gallery exhibition (when reproduced in The Art Journal [1909], p.251), by Dr W. Wingate, and thence by descent. Purchased by the Walker Art Gallery, Merseyside County Council, through Messrs Phillips, Son and Neale, 1985, with the aid of contri- butions from the Friends of Merseyside County Museums and Art Galleries, the Pilgrim Trust, the Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund, and the National Heritage Memorial Fund.

Detailed descriptions of its reworking in 1854-55 is given in the artist's diary; see VIRGINIA SURTEES, editor: The Diary of Ford Madox Brown, New Haven and London [1981]. 2Exhibited Liverpool 1964, Ford Madox Brown (24); reproduced in W. HOLMAN HUNT: Pre-Raphaelitism and The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood [1905], I, p.279. 3SURTEES, ed.cit. at note 1 above, p.78.

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64. Waiting: an English fireside of 1854-5, by Ford Madox Brown. 30.5 by 20 cm. (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool).

In May 1851 the long delayed and immense Chaucer (Art Gal-

lery of New South Wales, Sydney), was successfully on show at the Royal Academy and the artist was at last free to develop the new ideas which had been simmering since at least 1848, when he first came into contact with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The chief of the paintings he began in the summer and winter seasons of 1851-524 were important experimental steps in his

exploration of the effect of light in close examination of nature, with the overriding aim to arrive at an immediacy of vision and a

telling image. Three pictures took full advantage of his life with Emma and Catherine to explore aspects of domesticity and each seems to incorporate timeless religious overtones more obviously presented in his chief work of the winter, Jesus washing Peter's feet (Tate Gallery). The first, The pretty baa-lambs (City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham), a brilliant evocation of summer heat, while still traditionalist as an eighteenth-century costume-piece and with an eye to Dutch seventeenth-century models, presents an ambivalent image of the Madonna and Child theme. Waiting,

begun during the winter evenings at the artist's home in Stockwell, South London, presents the eternal image of mother and child with unstressed simplicity. An unusually posed study from Emma, 'with the head back laughing',5 painted in the winter evenings in the London studio was left unfinished but recollection of his work at this period may lie behind its metamorphosis in the later 1850s, with the appearance of a new baby, into a madonna and child theme as Takeyour son Sir! (Tate Gallery). The monumental

Jesus washing Peter's feet, in turn, attempts to bring the renaissance tradition up-to-date with the onlooker as close-up participant amongst real people.

Waiting is also a combination of traditionalist and original ideas and is the first essay by the artist in an idiom which was to take on such importance for him immediately afterwards in The last of England and Work. It stems from the type of subject popularised, for example, by Charles West Cope, R.A. (whose work the artist had admired),6 but the sentimental artificiality present in Cope's domestic subjects, similarly in contemporary costume, is alien to Madox Brown's intentions.7

Waiting is an entirely modest middle-class scene. It is presented wholly without sentiment: objectively, undramatically and with- out obvious narrative content. The setting appears to be in no

way stage-managed, even to the extraordinary pose of the sleeping child which the artist seemingly witnessed and painted as he saw it in front of him. The result is an image as distinguished as many a Madonna and Child of an earlier tradition. The very smallness of scale is an expression of the gentleness of the wholly private scene, the onlooker barely outside the picture, standing in place of the missing husband, on the other side of the rug on which lies an embroidered work-bag. This privacy is a little diluted in the more highly finished picture, where the muted tones are replaced by a cooler more sharply contrasted colouring to achieve a closer

focus, which is further accentuated by the carefully considered arched mount.

The most important feature is Madox Brown's experiment with artificial light. The pretty baa-lambs places the same models outside in direct sunlight. Here two kinds of artificial light are

explored to provide complementary effects: the cold opal glow of the Salumbra8 oil lamp sharply focusses the woman's hands and the sleeping child and its rays fade into blurred shadows

protectively wrapping round the figures; the live flames reflected from the fire seem to dance across the child's nightgown and

glitter on the fire irons. Such an interior effect by lamplight appears to be unique in English art of this period.9 Madox Brown was to take up the idea again in the small delicately understanding portrait of William Michael Rossetti of 1856

(National Trust, Wightwick Manor).

4His diary (Ibid, pp.74, 76, 78) records works taken up at this time when he moved house to Stockwell. Old work taken up: water-colour study of Chaucer (lost), oil

study of Chaucer (Ashmolean), landscape study of Shorn (private collection), sketch for Wyclif (City Art Gallery, Bradford). New work begun: The Baa Lambs, Portrait of Mrs. Seddon (private collection), view of Paul's Cray church (lost sight of since its sale at auction c.1854), Jesus washing Peter's Feet, study for Waiting, study of Emma's head, 'finished' picture of Waiting (continued at Hampstead when

designing Work).

5SURTEES, ed.cit. at note 1 above, p.78. 6Madox Brown expressed his admiration for Cope's pictures at the 1851 Royal Academy in a letter to Lowes Dickinson (F.M. HUEFFER: Ford Madox Brown: A Record of his Life and Work, London [1896], p.78). From the context he must refer to Cope's Laurence Saunders... Protestant martyr, No.381, where a mother carrying a child appeared in the left-hand panel of the triptych (see Art Journal [1869], p.179). Madox Brown's earlier, 'costume' Infant's Repast, 1848-49 (sketch at

Wightwick Manor; picture lost), draws on a type popularised by Cope. 7 Compare in particular Cope's rather later Mother and Child, 1852 (Victoria and Albert Museum), and Prayer Time: Mrs. Cope and her daughter Florence, 1854 (Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston); the latter, similarly a middle-class interior by a fireplace. However, also at the 1851 Royal Academy was J.R. Herbert's undemonstrative interior study, in daylight, of Children of the painter; a

finished sketch (GRAHAM REYNOLDS: Painters of the Victorian Scene, London [1953], plate 28); but Herbert that year was only 'so so' to Madox Brown (HUEFFER,

op.cit. at note 6 above). 8Identified by Jane Insley, Science Museum, in letter to the writer, 11th February 1983. 9A parallel outdoor effect was being explored by Holman Hunt that same winter. His Light of the World (Keble College, Oxford), was begun on the canvas on 7th

November; Madox Brown visited him and Millais at their lodgings on the 9th

(J.G. MILLAIs: The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, London [1899], I, p.131.).

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