Object Type
Oil paintings showing ancient ruins in a romantic setting appealed to an intense nostalgia for the Medieval past. Such works were widely commissioned and collected from the end of the 18th century and remained popular throughout the 19th century.
Subjects Depicted
Bolton Abbey, a ruined Priory by the River Wharfe in the West Riding of Yorkshire, is located in a picturesque setting of wild moorland, much admired by artists. Queen Victoria particularly admired this painting when she visited the National Gallery of British Art, part of the South Kensington Museum in 1858.
People
Henry Cole, the first Director of this Museum, persuaded the successful painter and designer Richard Redgrave (1804-1888) to join him at the newly regenerated Schools of Design (the ancestors of the Royal College of Art). Redgrave was appointed in 1847, becoming Headmaster in 1848. Eventually Redgrave became Inspector-General for Art in 1857. Redgrave continued to exhibit his work at the Royal Academy until 1883, and became Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures from 1857 until 1880. He catalogued most of the paintings in the Royal Collection.
Physical description
Oil on canvas depicting Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire
Place of Origin
Great Britain, UK (painted)
Date
1847 (made)
Artist/maker
Richard Redgrave, born 1804 - died 1888 (artist)
Materials and Techniques
Oil on canvas
Marks and inscriptions
'Richd Redgrave 1847'
Dimensions
Height: 31.7 cm, Width: 77.5 cm, Depth: 9.3 cm, Height: 58.3 cm framed, Width: 102 cm framed
Object history note
Given by John Sheepshanks, 1857. By Richard Redgrave CB, RA (born in London, 1804, died there in 1888)
Exhibited at the Royal Academy 1848
Descriptive line
Oil painting by Richard Redgrave entitled 'Bolton Abbey, Morning'. Great Britain, 1847.
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860, Ronald Parkinson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: HMSO, 1990, pp. 244-45
This text is the full 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
Bolton Abbey - Morning
FA172 Neg GA1200
Canvas, 31. 7 X 77.5 cm (12½ X 30½ ins)
Signed and dated 'Richd Redgrave 1847' on rock to 1 of centre foreground
Sheepshanks Gift 1857
Exhibited at the RA in 1848 as 'Autumn - Morning' (a companion to 187, 'Spring', which was accompanied in the catalogue by a slightly adapted quotation from Thomson's The Seasons: 'The trout's dark haunt beneath the tangled roots/of pendent trees'). Redgrave had contributed designs for wood-engravings to illustrate a 1842 edition ofThe Seasons; they do not relate to the present composition.
The Art Journal thought that 'everywhere the picture has been studied with a care that has yielded the best results. It is seldom that so much excellence is displayed in two opposite departments of Art [that is, landscape and figure compositions] as we see in the works of this painter'. The Athenaeum critic concurred: 'Mr Redgrave's art is not confined to the transcription of the human form or to indoor effects: - he has also distinguished himself in landscapes ... [he] has shown so much power in these as to make us desire to see from his pencil some picture combining landcape with human forms'. The artist wrote in his diary on 8 February 1858: 'Went to South Kensington at eleven o'clock, and found the Queen, the Prince, and his brother the Duke of Saxe-Coburg there ... The Queen was pleased to admire my landscape of "Bolton Abbey"'.
Bolton Abbey, a ruined priory by the river Wharfe in the West Riding of Yorkshire, is located in a picturesque setting of wild moorland much admired by artists. Ruskin wrote in Modern Painters in 1846 that 'It is to the association of this power and border sternness with the sweet peace and tender decay of Bolton Priory, that the scene owes its distinctive charm'. The Memoir records that up to 1860 it was one of several places Redgrave visited in successive summers. He went on a sketching tour with his friend C W Cope in the late 1830s, and was in the area of the Rivers Greta and Tees some 40 miles north of Bolton Abbey; a visit to the Abbey in the later 1840s is also indicated in the Memoir. Redgrave described the view as 'looking down the stream - the portion of the abbey still used as a church being seen on the cliffs' .
EXH: RA 1848 (189); Richard Redgrave 1804-1888 V&A and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1988 (83)
LIT: Athenaeum 20 May 1848, p512; Art Journal 1848, p169; W Sandby History of the Royal Academy of Arts 1862, II, p294; Memoir pp46, 70, 171, 183; Casteras and Parkinson pp128, 130
Ronald Parkinson."
Labels and date
British Galleries:
Queen Victoria admired this painting when she visited the National Gallery of British Art, part of the South Kensington Museum. It belongs to the tradition of picturesque landscape painting, which appealed to the British public of the period. The subject was not intended to make any social comment, as did many other new paintings of the time. [27/03/2003]
Production Note
dated 1847
Materials
Oil paint; Canvas
Techniques
Oil painting
Subjects depicted
Landscapes; Abbeys; Bolton Abbey
Categories
British Galleries; Paintings
Collection code
PDP
