Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves

by Jacqueline Yallop

  The contradictions of Robinson’s career at the South Kensington Museum were not entirely confined to the past, however. He could not shake off his attachment to the South Kensington collections, nor the idea that he should continue to play a part in shaping them. In 1873, little more than five years after Robinson’s ignominious dismissal, Henry Cole retired from his post as Director, worn out by battles with the government and half a century of life as a civil servant. He was replaced by Philip Cunliffe-Owen, who had been primed by Cole as his successor: after a number of posts in the Science and Art Department, he was officially made Cole’s deputy in 1860, taking particular responsibility for the British contributions to the International Exhibitions which took place all over Europe during the 1870s. He was efficient and shrewd, and praised by The Times for being ‘robust and capable of much hard work. . . the capable man of business’.9 More significantly, he had no axe to grind with Robinson. His work on the International Exhibitions had kept him largely out of Robinson’s way, and he had spent so much time travelling that he had been able to maintain a healthy distance from the worst of the squabbles. Besides, he made no claims to be an expert on objects or collecting and so did not see Robinson as any kind of direct threat to his authority. He was content to be an organizer and, when he succeeded Cole as Director, he was happy to focus on administration. He was a man, noted The Times, of ‘little expert knowledge, [who]. . . had little to do with the actual purchases of objects’.10

  With Cole out of the way, Robinson launched something of a charm offensive. He kept an eye out at sales for lots that might tempt the museum and began offering some of his own pieces on loan in the hope that they might prove indispensable. He moved quickly and confidently. By 1879, over 300 of Robinson’s objects were on display as loans, but with a view to a sale, including a stunning twelfth-century Flemish standing cross with a base inlaid with crystal; an elaborately decorated dress sword; a set of eighteenth-century Italian clerical vestments; strings of jewels, silver chalices, old Venetian glass, blue-and-white china, bronzes, wood carvings, ivories and books. The objects were magnificent and conspicuous and they filled gaps in the existing collections. But Cunliffe-Owen was wary about directing public money towards Robinson without being sure it was to the museum’s advantage, and he drew on support and expertise from other national institutions to bolster his position. The pieces were scrupulously inspected by Franks at the British Museum, who found them ‘remarkable for the taste displayed in collecting them’, and by the painter Edward J. Poynter, a member of the Royal Academy who was, at the time, Principal of the National Art Training School and who was later to become Director of the National Gallery. He too approved, writing to Cunliffe-Owen that ‘ALL the specimens appear to me to be admirably chosen for their artistic value.’11 With the government establishment in accord, Robinson found his objects once again taking pride of place in the South Kensington galleries.

  To consolidate the impression that he was still invaluable, Robinson offered the pieces as part of a deal which, he assured Cunliffe-Owen, would be ‘as advantageous as possible to you’. There would be no haggling over price: Robinson was prepared to offer the museum a bargain, selling the whole lot at a rate ‘very much smaller’ than the market value.12 This still amounted to the not inconsiderable sum of £6,800, and the museum, perhaps unsure about exactly how generous Robinson was inclined to be towards an institution that had sacked him, called on Poynter and Franks again for advice. When both advisers approved the price as being ‘very moderate’, however, the deal was made.13 It was a marked divergence from Cole’s desire to concentrate on modern manufactures, a very obvious demonstration that after his retirement in 1873 the museum moved more rapidly to adopt a policy that owed much to Robinson’s early collecting. The idea of making contemporary acquisitions was gradually abandoned, so much so that by 1880 the displays of modern manufactures that had been at the heart of the original museum were moved from the main building to an outpost in Bethnal Green. In their place, Cole’s successors concentrated their efforts on creating a vibrant visual encyclopedia of connoisseurship. Potential acquisitions were no longer assessed on whether they could be used to improve public taste or as models for students but instead, as Poynter said, ‘for their artistic value’.

  A decade after he had been dismissed by Cole from the South Kensington Museum, it was as if Robinson had never left. The eagerness and zeal of youth was quickly rekindled, and once again he was undertaking lengthy journeys to Europe to buy on behalf of the museum, sending back extravagant deliveries of packing cases which piled up awkwardly in the corridors ‘awaiting instructions’ on his return: in January 1882 alone, he sent the museum twenty-nine cases of miscellaneous objects from Italy, as well as seventeen cases of marbles and bronzes.14 Once again, Robinson was apt to commit sums for acquisitions with little regard for the due forms of process or finance. In January 1881, during a huge snowstorm that brought much of London to a standstill, Robinson, undeterred by the weather, acquired two Florentine inlaid marble tables at a sale at Christie’s. They were rare and lovely, but expensive. Robinson bid for them without a second thought, and wrote unrepentantly to Cunliffe-Owen that ‘there was no time to tell you about them and I am aware that your funds for purchase for this year are exhausted – However, I considered them so important that I determined to purchase them.’15

  By 1881, Robinson was writing to the amenable Cunliffe-Owen to explain that recent months had ‘quite revived the old habits. . . In short almost without intending it, I have found myself doing just the same kind of work as before.’16 A year later, he was plainly preening himself in front of the museum board, making sure that everyone knew to whom credit was due for years of success. ‘May I be allowed to remind your Lordship,’ he wrote to Earl Spenser, ‘that it is to my having assumed personal responsibility. . . and to having risked my own pecuniary resources on occasions that the Nation owes a large proportion of the great monuments of art which form the pride and glory of the Museum. . . The building of the South Kensington Collection has been mainly my work.’17 Henry Cole, who would be dead within a few weeks, had little chance to set the record straight.18 Robinson was displaying a talent for rewriting the past to fit the way he saw things, and he seemed to be reinstating himself with ease into the museum’s history books. Better still, as a recognized dealer and an independent man, he was vigorously running a double life, combining public and private business without fear of reprimand, and keeping himself determinedly unfettered. He refused to accept a salary from the museum, maintaining a discreet distance from its committee of art referees, and choosing for himself whether to be in London, at Newton Manor or travelling in Europe. He was making all his own decisions about the buying and selling of objects. He was earning substantial sums of money from private clients, and winning priceless prestige for his work at the museum. It was the best of both worlds.

  Robinson was astute enough to recognize the value of his work with museums to his broader activity as a dealer: the National Gallery, Birmingham Museum, Dublin Museum and the Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle all benefited from both his connoisseurship and his commitment to supplying pieces for public display at little or no profit. Occasionally, he even offered works as donations: in April 1877, for example, he bought El Greco’s Christ Driving out the Moneylenders from the Temple for £25. 20s. 0d from a sale at Christie’s and later presented it to the National Gallery. At South Kensington, this policy was mingled with a lingering sense of responsibility. He often sold objects to the collections there at cost price, and was flexible about payment so that the museum could stagger instalments to suit its budgets. He offered only what he considered the finest pieces, worthy of a place in the galleries, and he was happy to take back works that the staff rejected. When he returned from a trip to Italy in early 1881, he brought with him a wealth of objects wheedled out of churches, palaces and private collections, allowing the museum to make a choice depending on what could be afforded. ‘I want it to be thor
oughly understood’, he said reassuringly to Cunliffe-Owen, ‘that I have bought these things entirely on my own account, to please myself, and that I have not the slightest desire to urge them on the Museum.’19 Nevertheless, in the end, Robinson made a very satisfactory transaction, selling a range of pieces from a 1560 sundial from the Pitti Palace in Florence, priced at £8, to a sixteenth-century wooden coat rail, at 8 shillings.

  As ever, Robinson’s relationship with the museum was complicated. In everything he did, there was ambition and pride, but there was also an unshakeable, altruistic belief in the importance of the collection and its value to generations of visitors. Robinson was delighted to be back at the centre of things because he believed so fervently in what he was doing – and that he was the best man to do it. He trusted his own judgement absolutely and he had faith in his ability to use his talents for the future glory of South Kensington. He boasted an imposing knowledge of European art, and was certain he could find the most important pieces; he understood the markets, and was confident of getting the best deals. He saw himself as a champion for collectors and what they could achieve.

  Yet Robinson spent the best part of the late 1880s and 1890s in a very public, and damaging, crusade to highlight the faults at South Kensington, complaining that his own heyday of astute and visionary collecting had been replaced by a ‘mechanical system, carried out by mere laymen, superabundant clerks, secretaries and shopkeepers’.20 He could not free himself of the idea that he should have influence over the beloved collection; even as an established dealer, leading a life quite separate from the museum and more than twenty years after he had been sacked, his relationship with the objects at South Kensington remained intimate and highly personal, his desire for control absolute. He typified the ambiguous unresolved distinction of the time between public and private collecting; in turn, this confusion helped fuel a character that was naturally difficult and contradictory. He even stood before a government select committee in July 1893 to reiterate the litany of complaints that had started life in his battles with Henry Cole. His old habits died hard. He did not seem to be able to shake off his discontent with those whose views failed to match his own, and he was openly critical of the museum that had first nurtured his talents.

  But, as a collector, Robinson’s energy and expertise, confidence and commitment could not be faulted. His ongoing dedication to collecting – no matter on whose behalf – could never be doubted. And, in many ways, his stubborn insistence on publicly raising issues about South Kensington and its collecting policy was good for collectors. His constant letters of complaint to The Times, his frequent articles and his impassioned contributions to public discussions continued to cement the idea that it was, as he had once claimed, a ‘national duty’ to encourage good collecting and the systems that made it possible. He clearly raised the profile of collecting in general, pushing it into public notice alongside other political and economic matters. His vociferous criticisms helped ensure that the debate about what and how to collect remained lively in the public eye for the rest of the century.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Changing Times

  Robinson’s collecting continued to focus on the expensive and the rare. As his wealth grew, so did the amounts he invested. He assembled a collection of nearly 300 rare Renaissance portrait and commemorative medals cast in copper, tin, gold or silver; he developed a substantial collection of paintings by major British artists including Constable, Gainsborough, J. S. Cotman, Girtin, Landseer and Turner; he took to buying Louis XVI clocks, Japanese lacquerware and jewellery. His expenditure was so large that, despite his dealing success and a rash of sales in his final years, Robinson had little over £500 in his account at the London, County and West-minster Bank at his death in 1913.1 It was a collection to impress, a lifetime’s work and a testament to his knowledge and energy. In recognition, he was acquiring a number of titles: Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, Curator of the Royal Society of Painters and Etchers, honorary member of the Academies of Art in Rome, Florence, Bologna, Antwerp, Madrid and Lisbon, and Knight Commander of the Order of Isabella in Spain and Portugal. Then, in 1882, at the age of fifty-eight, Robinson received the acknowledgement he had always felt he deserved for his role at the forefront of British collecting: he was appointed Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures.2

  By the time Robinson was appointed as Surveyor, the Queen was sixty-three years old, and had been widowed for over twenty years. Art had been something she had shared with her husband and, without him at her side, her enthusiasm for collecting waned. During the 1870s and 1880s, when she finally resumed public and political life long after Albert’s death, she found affairs of state sat too heavily to allow for personal pleasures: she was travelling extensively on a tiring succession of engagements in an attempt to suppress a growing republican voice and she had little free time to think about buying or commissioning works, even had she wanted to. Without special attention, the collection became little more than a passive receptacle for randomly acquired pieces. It became increasingly muddled and disordered, separate from the life of the sovereign and no longer an integral part of royal affairs. And for Victoria, there was something more: a lingering sense of loss that was made particularly poignant by the paintings and sculptures she had enjoyed in happier times. The collection acted as a reminder of life as it had once been and as a memorial to Albert’s taste. The Surveyor was expected to maintain the status quo and to content himself with the minor administration associated with keeping the collection in reasonable shape. He was expected to make periodic reports and deal with any gifts from grateful subjects. He was not required to create opportunities for either acquisition or public exhibition. There was not a lot to do. It was the prestige of the role that was important, embedding its holder firmly in the ranks of the elite establishment – and it was this that Robinson cherished. Finally, in 1887, at the Queen’s Jubilee, he was knighted, confirmation of the distance he had travelled from his days as an impoverished art student.

  As a collector, however, it was important for Robinson that his objects, too, were given official recognition, and as the century drew to a close he began to make numerous overtures to public collections to secure the future of his pieces. He demonstrated a special fondness for the Whitworth Institute in Manchester, which had been established with the fortune left by Sir Joseph Whitworth, a manufacturer of machine tools. The Institute was in the process of developing an art gallery under the governorship of William Agnew, a fellow London art dealer. Robinson knew Agnew well, and was happy to ‘show any assistance in my power’ to make the new Whitworth scheme a success.3 At first this remained a vague commitment, but the Manchester board was determined to keep him to his word and was soon negotiating to buy 1,000 items from Robinson’s magnificent collection of textiles, even luring him into ‘coming from my own home to personally arrange the specimens’.4 The pieces had to be teased out of Robinson, who had a collector’s reluctance to relinquish them, but the sale was finally settled in 1891. For the modest sum of £3,570, he delivered a collection of European ecclesiastical textiles from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, vestments from the celebration of High Mass, rare altar tapestries and a handful of British embroideries of exquisite workmanship and design.5

  Apparently undeterred by the fact that until recently he had been openly and vehemently critical of the work of the South Kensington Museum, Robinson also approached the curators there, confident that he had long ago earned the right to a permanent welcome. Rather remarkably, he was greeted with patient goodwill. The latest in the long line of Henry Cole’s successors, Caspar Purdon Clarke, was, perhaps fortunately, known ‘for geniality and good fellowship. . . a well-liked man both by his subordinates and the general public’.6 Perhaps he saw Robinson as little more than an eccentric old duffer, an occasional thorn in the side; or perhaps he was clear-sighted enough to see beyond any personal difficulties with Robinson to the prized pieces the museum was being offered. Whatever the re
asons for his tolerance, he listened enthusiastically to Robinson’s proposals, and, although he politely turned down the full extent of the collection Robinson had hoped to deposit, he happily agreed to take a smaller selection for display in 1901. In the end, this amounted to seventy-three choice objects, including a miniature Spanish prayer book, set with rubies, which had belonged to Charles V; another Charles V jewel, the ‘Bezaar stone’, set in gold, and presented to the king by Hernan Cortes, the ‘conqueror of Mexico’; a fourteenth-century Hungarian reliquary cross; and the walking staff which had once belonged to Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal to Elizabeth I.

  But even as the pieces were being prepared for display, as a permanent recognition of Robinson’s achievements as a collector, it was becoming clear that times were changing. The works were being assessed and arranged by the museum’s Assistant Director, Arthur Banks Skinner, who had climbed through the ranks during his twenty years at South Kensington. Robinson had written the display labels to accompany the pieces, presumably because he believed that he was best placed to explain them to the public. Skinner, however, whose ‘knowledge of works of art was singularly wide and accurate’ and who ‘enjoyed the confidence and esteem of many foreign collectors and heads of museums’, had his reservations.7 ‘These descriptions were prepared by him, and in my opinion are open to considerable doubt,’ he explained to Purdon Clarke, before asking incredulously, ‘Do you wish them to go out as they are?’8 Purdon Clarke, ever the diplomat, proposed a compromise. He suggested that the labels remained unedited, but that it was made abundantly clear that they were Robinson’s own idiosyncratic work, and not a reflection of the museum’s scholarship.