721. Charles Ricketts and The Vasari Society (5)

Although Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) was one of the most important influences on Ricketts's work, he did not write often about this Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter. In a chapter on early Venetian painting in The Prado and Its Masterpieces (1903), Ricketts dedicated a paragraph to Rossetti, comparing his influence to that of the fifteenth-century painter Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco):

I think that if we turn for a moment to Rossetti and his influence in England upon his contemporaries, or upon en slightly his juniors, such as Burne-Jones and Morris, we have something analogues in the wave of luminous thought, caught, refracted, and developed beyond its initial impulse perhaps, and touching other men, those even who were not actually inside the circle or peculiarly apt to understand : and we note in the influence of the founder of the aesthetic movement in England something not unlike the influence of Barbarelli in Venice - an influence of suggestion, an influence making towards the expression of personality and the worship of beauty.
(The Prado and Its Masterpieces, p. 122)

D.G. Rossetti, ''Golden Water (Princess Parisade)'

From the collection of Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon

[The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Creative Commons License (BY-NC-ND)]

Just before the Prado book was published, Ricketts's friends Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper ('Michael Field') had compared him to Rossetti, but Ricketts insisted that the comparison was flawed: 

[...] Rossetti was a man of action, instinctive, self-centred, or central: a fat man, in fact, whilst I am a spare man, a spectator, not a man of action, outwardly and inwardly a contemplative man.

(Self-Portrait, 1939, p. 104)

In 1928, once again, he was likened to Rossetti and objected:

[...] he is ome of the most singular & original men in art; even his latest & most undelectable works, done when he was half-blind & mad with chloral, are unlike anything else.

(Letter to Mary Davis, 3 October 1926)

In 1928 Ricketts published a review of Hall Caine's Recollections of Rossetti (London: Cassell & Co., 1928): 'The Tragedy of Rossetti. A Corroding Secret. Genius Amongst Us, Not of Us' (The Observer, 14 October 1928):

The key to most of Rossetti's qualities and limitations is to be found in his Italian atavism. [...] In all the essentials of his mental composition he belonged to another country and perhaps to another time. 

[...]

Rossetti never painted grass as Ruskin saw it; to him, as with Dante, it had the hue of new-cleft emeralds.

The designs he executed before 1860 have a directness and conciseness unique even in Italian art; even the relation of the figures to the frame - "la couple" as Dégas [Degas] would say, is new. [...] 

[...] his was the gift to enlarge the purposes of art. To-day, because the level of our general culture is less and the War has put a gap in the continuity of our European conscience, Rossetti has become inexplicable at least to some reviewers. His life raises morbid curiosities, and owing to the singular and unique character of his gifts, he seems a man of another epoch, and another place - in brief, not one of us.

D.G. Rossetti, 'Ballad of Fair Annie'
(drawing, c. 1855)
[See Rossetti Archive]

In 1924, for Part V of the Second Series of The Vasari Society for the Reproduction of Drawings by Old Masters, Ricketts wrote a short description of Rossetti's 'Sketch Illustrating a Ballad', a drawing from the collection of J.P. Heseltine:

This exquisite drawing has been described as 'The Two Sisters', in all probability it illustrates the ballad of 'Fair Annie'. The racy and mordant penmanship belongs to the artist's practice during the fifties (circa 1855). Rossetti's compact and dramatic designs of this type are without precedent in the art of the past, they count amongst the most individual achievements of this profoundly original and significant artist.

The drawing was later reproduced in Virginia Surtees' The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). A Catalogue Raisonné (1971) - the catalogue entree does not mention or quote Ricketts's short piece about the drawing or The Vasari Society's reproduction.

Shannon and Ricketts owned eleven or more drawings by Rossetti, one of which was rediscovered by Ricketts before 1890: 'Mary Magdelene at the Door of Simeon the Pharisee'. All are now in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum. (See, for example 'Mary Magdelene'.)

720. Charles Ricketts and The Vasari Society (4)

In 1936, Christie, Manson & Woods issued the catalogue of The Famous Collection of Old Master Drawings Formed by the Late Henry Oppenheimer, Esq., F.S.A., which was for sale from 10-14 July. Oppenheimer (born in Frankfurt am Main, 1859) had died in London four years earlier, in 1932. One of the items was a drawing by Goya, which was acquired for the Frick Collection, and had been reproduced by The Vasari Society, Second Series, Part II, in 1921.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, 'The Anglers' (1812-20)
[Frick Collection, New York]

Charles Ricketts wrote the accompanying note about 'Anglers under a Rock' (Collection of Henry Oppenheimer, Esq. From the Fairfax Murray Collection. Brush Sketch in sepia. 19.5 x 13.5 cm':

The chances which control the preservation of painters' sketches and studies have, so far, deprived us of early examples by Goya. The style of this design classes it with something like certainty within the period when he executed the Disasters of War. The writing on the paper below the wash in the upper part of the composition is not a comment on the design itself, as is sometimes the case with Goya's sketches.

The editor of the series added that the inscription (in another hand) contains a transaction about a loan from 1799.

The book collection of Henry Oppenheimer was also sold by Christie, Manson & Woods on 27 July 1936. It contained a complete set of The Vasari Society reproductions and, moreover, divided over four lots were no less than 36 copies of the Second Series, Part II, which reproduced some of the most important drawings from the Henry Oppenheimer Collection. 

Charles Holmes devoted an essay on the collection in The Studio (September 1936) - 'Henry Oppenheimer - A Collector and His Ways'. One of the illustrations was the Goya drawing (page 131). Holmes remembered Oppenheimer as a remarkable man who had 'no specialist knowledge' and did 'not concentrate upon any single province of art', as most collectors did. He wrote:

Where the field covered is as wide as Henry Oppenheimer's, the knowledge needed is more than any single man can expect to acquire. My friend Charles Ricketts alone came near to such universality of connoisseurship.

The Goya Drawing at The Frick

The drawing - brush and brown wash on paper - is now titled simply 'The Anglers', and dated 1812-20, which, indeed, is from the artist's later life when he worked on the Disasters of War (1810-1820). The Frick's description reads:

Goya’s works on paper poignantly document the brutalities of war and the social turmoil that plagued Spain, often depicting members of the working class. For this drawing, Goya repurposed a bill dated July 1 of the year 1799, legible at the top of the sheet. To disguise the area of text, Goya uses a dark brown wash that places the fishermen beneath an overhanging shadow, reminiscent of a stormy sky or the interior of a cave. Drawing on used paper was unusual for Goya. The blank reverse of this sheet has led to the suggestion that the artist was inspired by an existing blemish on the paper, which prompted the scene from his imagination. Lending theatricality and drama to an everyday activity, the figures stand in sharp contrast to their light-filled background, a common motif in Goya’s drawings.

Ricketts and Goya

In addition to his brief annotation, Ricketts wrote an entire chapter on Goya in his study The Prado and Its Masterpieces (1903): 'The Spanish School and the Art of Goya'. It discusses his paintings (especially portraits), character, influence, designs for tapestry, and etchings:

The art-lover will constantly find in the paintings of the Spaniard food for astonishment and study; yet only in his prints does Goya really aim at a perfect or balanced effect in art. It is here that he elaborates his 'convention,' that he is supremely and adequately himself.

[...]

It is by his power of design - an original, varied, and nervous form of design - that he excels even more than by his vivacity of workmanship and his marvellous if unequal gift of expression.

The second part of this passage was quoted by Joseph Darracott in his exhibition catalogue All for Art (1979). The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge now owns the three original drawings from the collection of Ricketts and Shannon (these were never reproduced by The Vasari Society): 'Comico descubrimiento', 'The pen is mightier than the sword' and 'Segura union natural' (see All for Art, nos. 130-2).

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, 'Segura union natural' (undated)
[Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge]
[Creative Commons License (BY-NC-ND)]

The last of these three drawings is, to quote Darracott, 'a light-hearted comment on the indissoluble bond of marriage'.

The three drawings from the collection of Ricketts and Shannon can be found on the museum's website (search for Goya).

719. Charles Ricketts and The Vasari Society (3)

The brief articles Ricketts wrote for the Vasari Society featured artists he often mentioned in his books The Prado or Titian, or in reviews and articles in magazines and newspapers. However, there are a few names that do not appear elsewhere in his work.  

Alfred Stevens

The British sculptor Alfred Stevens (1817-1875) was not an irregular topic of conversation for Ricketts and Shannon, but he never wrote an article about his work. In 1915, D.S. MacColl wrote the introduction to an exhibition catalogue for the National Gallery: Catalogue of Cartoons, Paintings and Drawings by Alfred Stevens for the Decoration for the Dining Room at Dorchester House. These works were lent by George Holford and Alfred Drury.

The Dining Room in Dorchester House
with the chimneypiece by Alfred Stevens on the left side of the room (c. 1905)

The drawing reproduced in the first part of the Second Series of The Vasari Society was lent by Alfred Drury, ‘Study of a Nude Women’, and Ricketts's piece was a cautious one:

This drawing is late in the career of the artist; it may have been done in preparation for some part of the decoration intended for Dorchester House: the workmanship approximates to that period of Stevens's activity. The figure holds an indefinite object -- possibly an urn.

Gravelot

A name that doesn't seem to show up anywhere else in Ricketts's work (including letters) is that of the late 18th-century French rococo book illustrator, engraver, painter and draughtsman Hubert-François Bourguignon, commonly known as Gravelot (1699-1773). He worked in London from 1732 to 1745.

For The Vasari Society, Ricketts discussed a drawing from the collection of the National Gallery of Scotland, 'Man in Flowing Wig Showing a Picture to a Lady with Fan':

This graceful sketch combines something of the France of Watteau and the England of Hogarth, and evokes, in its manner and technique, something which Gainsborough will realize better and with a more spontaneous ability; it might illustrate the De Goncourt's definition of a portion of Gravelot's works, 'touchés dans une manière de dessin légère et claire, dans un esprit d'Hogarth coquet.' It is more than probable that this drawing was executed in England, the character of the lady's dress pointing to this.

Nowadays, the undated drawing is called 'A Fair Connoisseur'.

Hubert-François-Bourguignon Gravelot, 'A Fair Connoisseur' (undated)
[Photo: National Gallery of Scotland,
see: National Gallery of Scotland website]

718. Charles Ricketts and The Vasari Society (2)

From the moment the Vasari Society for the Reproduction of Drawings by Old Masters presented its first portfolio in 1905 until the publication of Part VIII of the Second Series in 1926, Ricketts wrote commentaries on several reproductions. His notes did not concern works from his joint collection with Shannon, but rather works from other collections. 

Antoine Watteau, 'Three Studies of a Black Man's Head'
[auction catalogue of the collection of Max J. Bonn, 1922]

Out of 27 notes, sixteen are about drawings form various institutions:

• Ashmolean Museum (4 notes);
• British Museum (10 notes);
• Collection Royal Library, Windsor Castle (1 note); 
• National Gallery of Scotland (1 note).

Eleven other notes describe works from private collections:

• Max J. Bonn (1877-1943), economist, collector of old master drawings (collection sold at Sotheby's, 14 February 1922) (1);
• Duke of Devonshire  (Victor Cavendish, 1868-1938), collection of Chatsworth House (1);
• Alfred Drury (1856-1944), sculptor (1);
• Alfred E. Gathorne-Hardy (1845-1918), politician, a catalogue of his collection of drawings was published in 1902 (1);
• John P. Heseltine (1843-1929), stockbroker, artist and art collector, sold his collection to Colnaghi & Obach, 1912 (auctions followed in Amsterdam and London, 1913-1920) (1);
• Arthur Hungerford Pollen (1866-1937), journalist, businessman, inventor (1);
• Henry Oppenheimer (1859-1932), collector of prints, drawings, medals and antiquities (3);
• Edward G. Spencer Churchill (1876-1964), army officer, art collector, Trustee of The National Gallery (1).

In his twenty-seven notes, Ricketts discussed works by fifteen artists.

 

• Goya Sec.Ser.II-19
• Gravelot, Hubert François VIII-33
• Leonardo da Vinci Sec.Ser.III-3/4; Sec.Ser.III-5
• Leonardo da Vinci (Manner of) II-3
• Mantegna, Andrea III-6
• Michelangelo Sec Ser.II-6
• Pisanello I-10
• Pisanello (School of) I-11
• Raphael Sec.Ser.I-3; Sec.Ser.III-6; Sec.Ser.IV-6; Sec.Ser.IV-8; Sec.Ser.IV-9; Sec.Ser.V-7; Sec.Ser.VII-6
• Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Sec.Ser.V-20
• Rubens, Peter Paul I-20; II-22; II-23
• Stevens, Alfred Sec.Ser.I-19
• Van Dyck, Antony II-27
• Venetian School V-11
• Watteau, Antoine VIII-32; IX-27; Sec.Ser.IV-17; Sec.Ser.V-16