What You Can Learn About the Life of British Women by Viewing Paintings by Victorian Artists (Part 1)

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Some canvases look like novels - you can look at them, look for hidden symbols in which the artist has encrypted the details of what is happening, and gradually build a whole coherent story about what is happening here. The main themes of such plot paintings are often love, but in the 19th century, painters often thought about the fate of women, for whom romantic stories did not always end happily.

Old Robin Gray

Scottish artist Thomas Fayed often turned to stories from the lives of ordinary people. For the middle of the 19th century, this choice was not as obvious as it might seem today, because rich customers rarely paid for such paintings. The painting "Old Robin Gray" is based on the plot of the ballad of the same name, which was very popular at the time.

Young beauty Jenny did not wait for her fiancé Jamie, who went to sea. The young man was going to earn money for the wedding, but his ship did not return, and now the girl's family is in distress. A wealthy acquaintance offers Jenny a marriage that will help them survive:

The girl agrees to the wedding, although her heart is broken, but she is going to become a good wife and mother of the children of the man who helped her in difficult times:

An opera based on this ballad was written; artists and musicians of different eras often turned to it. Thomas Faed dwelled on the most dramatic moment of this sad story - Jenny, out of a sense of duty, decides to marry an unloved but kind person. It is believed that the end of this ballad is good enough, because the girl and her family will no longer be in poverty, and the middle-aged husband may sincerely love her. For that era, compared to poverty or decline, such an outcome did seem like a fortunate one.

Awakening of conscience

For the modern viewer, this canvas will most likely seem to be just a sketch of a happy moment in the life of two lovers: a man at the piano sat a girl in a rather strict outfit on his knees - a dress "under the neck" and a shawl on her hips, but the beauty stood up for a second, as if she heard something- then in the spring garden. The open window is reflected in the mirror on the wall and shows us a picture of a beautiful sunny day, the man is clearly happy, what does the conscience have to do with it?

In fact, to create this canvas, the famous Pre-Raphaelite artist William Hunt sank to the very bottom of his contemporary world. While working, the painter settled in a brothel in the St. John's Wood area of London in order to plausibly paint the decor of the room, because for the viewer of the mid-19th century it was obvious that the woman in the picture belongs to the category of "ladies of the half-light". This is clearly indicated by the absence of a wedding ring and her vulgar outfit, completely unacceptable in broad daylight. However, in addition to the completely legitimate indignation, looking closely, a resident of Victorian England would see many details in the picture showing that the artist treats the unfortunate woman more like a victim: a cat under the table playing with a dead bird, tangled yarn and a glove thrown on the floor (possibly, the woman was abandoned by her husband and entangled in the net of vice), and even a watch with a golden figure of a woman, "caught" in a glass dome - everything speaks of her dependent position.

From this point of view, the title of the picture unambiguously tells us that the young kept woman thought about her situation for a second and, perhaps, in a second she will break this vicious connection. Moreover, this canvas, according to experts, is a response to an earlier painting by William Hunt "The Light of the World", which depicts Jesus Christ knocking on a closed door. This door obviously has not been opened for a long time, and there is no handle from the outside - it can only be opened from the inside, but it was this knock that the fallen woman, who, by the will of fate, became a toy in the hands of men, may have heard in her heart.

Exiled

In the painting of the classic and theorist of English painting, a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, Richard Redgrave, a real tragedy is played out. The head of the family drives out into the night and the cold his daughter, who has come home with an illegitimate child in her arms. The canvas fully reflects the harsh puritanical views of the era when the loss of honor for a woman was indeed "a fate worse than death." In this case, the wanderings of a young mother from cold and hunger on the street together with the newborn seem so terrible that the sympathy of the viewer, even a very strict one, involuntarily turns out to be on her side.

It is surprising that out of the entire large family, only one of the girls decides to ask the father for forgiveness - perhaps the other daughter. The mother, realizing the meaninglessness of prayer, looks at what is happening a little detached. Whether she agrees with her husband or simply does not have a “right to vote” in the family - one can only guess. The rest of the family wring their hands in horror. If we remember that the fall of one daughter always affected the reputation of the surname and deprived other sisters of the chances of a good marriage, then the feelings of these people become more understandable.

Especially for those who are interested quirks of the Victorian era, a story about what the British ate and how they looked after their health 150 years ago.