Gulliver Exhibited to the Brobdingnag Farmer

Physical description

Oil painting depicting Gulliver being exhibited to the giant Brobdingnag farmer, from Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels'.

Date

1836 (painted)

Artist/maker

Richard Redgrave, born 1804 - died 1888 (painter (artist))

Materials and Techniques

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

Height: 63.5 cm approx., Width: 76.2 cm approx.

Object history note

Given by John Sheepshanks, 1857

Descriptive line

Oil painting by Richard Redgrave entitled 'Gulliver Exhibited to the Brobdingnag Farmer', from Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels'. Great Britain, 1836.

Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)

Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860, Ronald Parkinson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: HMSO, 1990, pp. 240-41
This is the full texy of the catalogue entry:

"REDGRAVE, Richard, CB, RA (1804-1888)
Born Pimlico, London, 30 April 1804, the son of an engineer and manufacturer, in whose office he first worked as draughtsman and designer. Entered RA Schools 1826. Worked as a drawing master in the 1830s. Exhibited 141 works at the RA between 1825 and 1883, 17 at the BI 1832-59, and 20 (including four watercolours) at the SBA 1829-35 and 1870-9. Early works were landscapes and costume pieces, mainly l8thcentury and in the manner of C R Leslie; from the 1840s he specialised in modem genre and social comment, before returning to landscape, particularly around his home in Abinger, Surrey, relieving the pressure of his administrative duties. Elected ARA 1840, RA 1851; Secretary of the Etching Club 1837-42. In 1847 he began his official career in art education as Master at the Government School of Design, becoming Head Master in 1848, Art Superintendent 1852, Inspector General 1857, and Director 1874. He was Inspector of the Queen's Pictures, compiling a catalogue of the Royal Collection, 1857-79. As he wrote in 1856: 'I regret to find that I am so identified with office work that it is almost forgotten that I am a painter'
(F M Redgrave Richard Redgrave: A Memoir. . . p l 71 ). He published An Elementary Manual of Colourr ... (1853), The Sheepshanks Gallery (1870), and, most famously, with his brother Samuel, A Century of Painters of the English School ... (2 vols, 1866). He was offered a Knighthood in 1869, which he declined; created Companion of the Bath 1880. Died Kensington, London, 14 December 1888. His daughters Frances (who compiled the Memoir of her father) and Evelyn were also exhibiting artists.

LIT: Art Journal 1850, pp48-9 (referred to below as the 'autobiography'), with engr portrait; Art JournaI1859, p206; Athenaeum 22 December 1888, pp854-5 (obit); F M Redgrave Richard Redgrave, CB, RA: A Memoir compiled from his diary 1891 (referred to below as Memoir); F G Stephens in Magazine of Art XV, 1891-2, pp26-9; ed S Casteras and R Parkinson Richard Redgrave 1804-1888 1988, V &A and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA, exhibition catalogue

Gulliver Exhibited to the Brobdingnag Farmer
FA169 Neg HD5313
Canvas, 63.5 X 76.2 cm (25 X 30 ins)
Sheepshanks Gift 1857

Exhibited at the BI in 1836 (the size given in the catalogue as 35 X 39 inches, presumably including the frame), and bought by James Mollison in order for him to make an engraving. Redgrave noted in his 1850 'autobiography':

I exhibited a picture at the British Institution, 'Gulliver on the Farmer's Table', which was bought for the purposes of engraving. It was my first success. It is true the price was a small one, but it led me to hope for better times. The work is now in the possession of my friend, Mr Sheepshanks, of Rutland Gate.

The Memoir also records Redgrave's pleasure when the Prime Minister and others saw the painting at Rutland Gate, finding them 'intent on the details of my "Gulliver", which afforded much amusement' and receiving 'a spontaneous compliment or two'. He remarked that he had 'attempted to give Gulliver of the stature of the human race - and to show the Brobdingnags as giants - hence the accessories that surround him. . . are intended to give scale to the background figures.'
The work illustrates an episode from chapter 2 of part 2 of Jonathan Swift's famous satire Gulliver's Travels (1726) in which the hero encounters the giant people of Brobdingnag: 'This man [the neighbouring farmer of the hero's master], who was old and dim-sighted, put on his spectacles to behold me better, at which I could not forbear laughing very heartily, for his eyes appeared like the full moon streaming into a chamber at two windows'. Redgrave captures very well the comic if peculiar mood of this episode, and it is interesting and perhaps characteristic that he subdues the harshly satirical tone of Swift's narrative.
The Athenaeum noted the publication of the print in 1838:

Mr Redgrave's Gulliver in Brobdingnag is on a completely opposite plan from Mr Leslie's [presumably C R Leslie's 'Gulliver's Introduction to the Queen of Brobdingnag' exhibited at the RA in 1835]. The latter exhibited Glumdalica and her maids on the scale of common womanhood, - dwarfing down the traveller to the littleness of a dragon-fly. Mr Redgrave has left him in his natural painter's proportions, but surrounded him by faces so gigantic, as, by their monstrosity, to exceed the limits of our credence. We suspect the Captain is one of the many beings who are to be imagined, but not represented. The engraving of Mr Redgrave's picture is by Mr Mollison, and cleverly executed. There is a certain metallic tone about it, however, which is harsh and unpleasing to the eye.

In terms of the subject, Altick comments that the most noteworthy paintings illustrating Gulliver's Travels were produced in the 18th century, Sawrey Gilpin's pictures of the Houyhnhnms, for example. In the early 19th century the first two parts of the book, set in Lilliput and Brobdingnag, were particularly popular, but neither Leslie's nor Redgrave's interpretations met with great enthusiasm. Only a few works inspired by Gulliver's Travels were exhibited thereafter, artists seemingly preferring to turn to Swift's own life for the subjects of their paintings.
Jeremy Maas has convincingly suggested that the face of the farmer is Redgrave's self-portrait. This is more evident in the full-size study of the farmer's head and hand, also in the V&A collections.

PROV: Bought 1836 by James Mollison for £21; bought by John Sheepshanks before 1850, and given by him to the museum 1857

EXH: BI 1836 (456); Richard Redgrave 1804-1888, V&A and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1988, (2)

ENGR: Steel engr, Jarnes Mollison 1838; wood engr by Best & Co, in Album du Magasin Pittoresque Paris 1862, pl 14.

LIT: Athenaeum 30 June 1838, p461; Art JournaI 1850, p48, 1859, p205; Memoir, p172; R Altick Paintings from Books: Art and Literature in Britain 1760-1900 1985, p382; Casteras and Parkinson pp 100-1

Ronald Parkinson."

Materials

Oil paint; Canvas

Techniques

Oil painting

Categories

Paintings

Collection code

PDP