Physical description
Landscape, oil on canvas.
Place of Origin
Great Britain, UK (painted)
Date
1854 (painted)
Artist/maker
Richard Redgrave, born 1804 - died 1888 (artist)
Materials and Techniques
oil on canvas
Marks and inscriptions
'Richd Redgrave 1854'
Dimensions
Height: 103.5 cm estimate, Width: 137.1 cm estimate, Height: 138 cm frame, Width: 172.5 cm frame
Object history note
Given by Mrs Richard Redgrave, 1889
Historical context note
Redgrave had one of the most varied and interesting careers of any British artist, and as such is represented in more than one part of this exhibition. This picture shows him as an accomplished painter of landscapes, and was considered the best landscape in the 1854 Royal Academy exhibition. In the 1850s, with his several responsibilities as art teacher, curator, and administrator, he sought more peaceful refuge during the summer months with his wife and children at their home in the country, in Abinger, Kent. Nearby, in the adjacent county of Surrey close to where his father was living, he painted this view. It was much admired by critics for its visual truth: 'he renders truly what is before him, no common merit that he is not attempting to improve on nature'. Redgrave was able to relate a great deal of minute detail without, as sometimes happened in Pre-Raphaelite works, the painting being overwhelmed by it.
Descriptive line
'An Old English Homestead', oil on canvas by Richard Redgrave, Britain; signed and dated 1854.
[Frame dimensions 138 x 172 cm]
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860, Ronald Parkinson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: HMSO, 1990, pp. 247-48
This is the full text 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
An Old English Homestead
183-1889 Neg FE741
Canvas, 103.5 X 137.1 cm (40¾ X 54 ins)
Signed and dated 'Richd Redgrave 1854' in red br
Given by Mrs Richard Redgrave 1889
Exhibited at the RA in 1854, and, according to the Memoir, painted at Sutton, Surrey, 'near where my father was staying ... It is a good example of his minute treatment of woodland scenery'.
Contemporary critics also noted the artist's truth to nature. The Illustrated London News, which published an engraving after the picture, compared the faithfulness of Redgrave's art to that of Hobbema: 'He renders truly what is before him; no common merit that he is not attempting to
improve on nature'. The Art Journal thought
This subject has not been selected for its romantic or picturesque character. As an association of ordinary material, it contains nothing more than what is seen every day, in the country ... This picture to be estimated, must be examined very closely: it contains in the immediate foreground a patch of weeds and herbage, emulating in curious execution the most minute and accurate details of this kind that have ever been accomplished; but at the distance from the eye at which all this is lost, it is felt that the verdure of the picture is somewhat crude
The Athenaeum believed Redgrave's landscapes
though minute, delicate, and almost too feminine in touch, are the most successful in this year's Exhibition. No other pictures can approach them in amount of labour ... in infinity of leafiness, variety of depths, air, and multiplicity of local tintings, he is unequalled. We should like to see grander masses of light and shade, and greater firmness in the treatment of the foreground trunks ... The blue sky is beautifully repeated in a modified form by the blue thin mist of the wood.
An inscription on the back of the canvas, with an elaborate monogram, reads 'Rd Redgrave 1854/Kensington/Painted with Copal'.
EXH: RA 1854 (212); Richard Redgrave 1804-1888 V&A and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1988 (107)
ENGR:Illustrated London News19 August 1854, p160; Butterworth & Heath for the Art Journal 1859, p207
LIT: Athenaeum 13 May 1854, p595; Art Journal 1854, p162; Illustrated London News 19 August 1854, p160; Art Journal 1859, p207; W Sandbv History of the Royal Academy of Arts II 1862, p293; Memoir 1891, p118; G Reynolds Victorian Painting 1966, pp152, 158, 175; Casteras and Parkinson pp136-7 (repr
Ronald Parkinson."
Vikutoria & Arub?to Bijutsukan-z? : eikoku romanshugi kaigaten = The Romantic tradition in British painting, 1800-1950 : masterpieces from the Victoria and Albert Museum / selected by Mark Evans [Japan : Brain Trust], 2002. 185 p. : ill. (chiefly col.) ; 30 cm.
Exhibition History
The Romantic Tradition in British Painting 1800-1950: Masterpieces from the Victoria and Albert Museum (Prefectural Museum of Art, Hyogo, Kobe, Japan 28/01/2003-06/04/2003)
The Romantic Tradition in British Painting 1800-1950: Masterpieces from the Victoria and Albert Museum (Koriyama City Museum of Art 22/11/2002-27/12/2002)
The Romantic Tradition in British Painting 1800-1950: Masterpieces from the Victoria and Albert Museum (Matsuzakaya Museum, Nagoya, Japan 19/10/2002-11/11/2002)
The Romantic Tradition in British Painting 1800-1950: Masterpieces from the Victoria and Albert Museum (Chiba Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan 24/08/2002-06/10/2002)
Materials
Oil paint; Canvas
Techniques
Oil painting
Subjects depicted
Landscape; Sheep; Cow (animal)
Categories
Paintings
Collection code
PDP
