Page 57 - Studio International - May 1970

1
Victorians James Clark Hook RA From Under the Sea Oil on canvas
Coll: City Art Gallery, Manchester
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at Manchester City Art Gallery, Mosley Street, Manchester

`Ungoverned machines—outcast feeling—pro- (bought for Queen's Park in the 1880s). The the plunging perspective of the rails, the grim
duction as an end in itself— escape into question of Renaissance inspiration is critically intensity of the returning miners (for whom
romanticism.' revealing in connection with Leighton's well- danger is a daily possibility), and in the
Siegfried Giedion's formula for the official art known Hero and Leander, the format of which radiance of the waiting wife and child who
of the nineteenth century—in his Architecture derives from Donatello's St George on Orsan- assume a symbolic value. It is here, of course,
You and Me—is, though seldom seriously michele : in both a tense waiting figure is that Hook's interest in Tintoretto, Carpaccio
discussed, still in debate, and should be placed full-length in a niche with relevant and Cima is at its most fruitful and any talk
acknowledged by any new display of the action shown in a predella below. Leighton of eclecticism— the chief spectre of so much
relevant art-works. This must be done while shows the cast-up body of the drowned nineteenth-century art—is beside the point.
still preserving a certain sympathetic Leander and introduces a form of dramatic The realist section closes with Cecil Lawson's
neutrality. As well as giving weight to irony in that Hero has evidently still to see panoramic masterpiece The Minister's Garden
polemical and didactic considerations, what the spectator sees. This results in a 1878, placed on a landing from which lead
museums at least are obliged to attempt to heightening of emotional tone. Such a com- galleries devoted to large-scale High Victorian
build up an ambience responsive to the parison points towards the troubling lack of works and Newlyn School and NEAC paint-
individual works. Ambience can free response emotional restraint which characterizes much ings, both supported by sculpture. The scale
and establish some feeling for the conscious later nineteenth-century work. of the High Victorian room is set by Leighton's
preoccupations and unconscious conformities Other comparisons are available, however. A celebrated Captive Andromache and Watts's Good
of the given group of works. At Queen's Park double-return staircase, supported on slender Samaritan (presented to the city by the artist
there is the advantage of a building designed cast-iron columns, leads to the upper galleries. in honour of the prison reformer Thomas
specifically as an art gallery (by J. Allison, It gives generous hanging space for works Wright). This heroic scale is continued, how-
1883-4) at the very moment when the High offering a vision of the real world—from the ever, in Stanhope Forbes's The Lighthouse,
Victorian picture was at the peak of its milieux of Tissot, Frith and Greaves (Chelsea painted from a boat in the harbour at
success but when its conscious rejection by the Regatta) to more deliberate subject pictures Newlyn, but characterized also by a franker
New English Art Club was also under way. such as Eyre Crowe's Dinner Hour at Wigan, treatment of subject mattter and handling,
The gallery now suitably houses an impres- Herkomer's Hard Times and James Clarke and of course a new approximation to the
sive concentration of works executed in Hook's From Under the Sea of 1864. The last of effect of real daylight. A series of war paint-
Britain between 1860 and 1910. these is the most revealing in this context. The ings at the entrance to the Regimental
One of the most characteristic branches of key to the clarity, tightness of design and im- Museum of the 14/20th King's Hussars and
High Victorian art—mythology painting— plicitness of comment in this painting—unique the Manchester Regiment (also housed at
occupies the surprisingly grand Hall. Their in Hook's rather loosely composed and Queen's Park) gives rise to another series of
Renaissance inspiration makes a natural psychologically unengaging work—lies in the comparisons.
liaison with a cast after a Della Robbia subject. The year before the picture was There is a sufficiently comprehensive group of
Coronation built into the wall. A group of painted (at Botallack Mines, St Just) a tragic works of this problematic period to further
Carrara marbles—with Gilbert's Perseus in and horrible calamity occurred when a link the exploration of such comparisons. The fact
bronze—echoes quite precisely the treatment snapped in the chain as it drew to the surface that the public idea of art is still largely
of the nude in paintings by Leighton, Poynter, a skip containing nine miners and a boy, all governed by 'the art of the ruling taste' of the
Waterhouse and Hacker. The rapport is sus- of whom were killed. Hook surpasses his other nineteenth century (in Giedion's phrase)
tained elsewhere in the galleries by classicizing work in this picture by presenting his makes this exploration an important task. q
porcelain figures from the Minton factory emotional response implicitly—it resides in MARK HAWORTH-BOOTH