6. ‘Les sculptures du musée du South Kensington’, Gazette des Beaux Arts (14: 1863), p. 458.
7. Ibid.
Chapter 2
1. Report from the Select Committee on the South Kensington Museum (1860), National Art Library (NAL), pp. 10–11.
2. ‘Obituary of Sir Henry Cole’, The Times, 20 April 1882.
3. Ibid.
4. Henry Cole, speech on 16 November 1867, published in H. Cole, Fifty Years of Published Work (London: George Bell, 1884), p. 293. A more detailed discussion of Henry Cole’s vision for the museum can be found in Anthony Burton, ‘The Uses of the South Kensington Art Collections’, The Journal of the History of Collections, 14 (2002), pp. 79–95.
5. Quoted in Marjorie Caygill and John Cherry (eds), A. W. Franks. Nineteenth-century Collecting and the British Museum (London: British Museum Press, 1997), p. 18.
6. J. Ruskin, Evidence to the 1857 National Gallery Site Commission; M. Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, edited by Jane Garnett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 32.
7. J. C. Robinson, An Introductory Lecture on the Museum of Ornamental Art of the Department, quoted in Anthony Burton, ‘The Uses of the South Kensington Art Collections’, p. 85.
Chapter 3
1. The Times,14 August 1848.
2. G. Reitlinger, The Economics of Taste: The Rise and Fall of Picture Prices, 1760–1960 (London: Barrie and Rockliffe, 1961), vol. I. p. 30.
3. New York Times, 21 August 1897, p. BR7.
4. Gustav Waagen, Works of Art and Artists in England, translated into English by H. E. Lloyd (London: John Murray, 1838), p. 98.
5. Punch, 28 (June 1855), p. 129.
6. The Catalogue of the Soulages Collection, compiled by J. C. Robinson, with contributions from Henry Cole (London, 1856). Archive of the Victoria and Albert Museum; The Graphic, 1:1 (4 December 1869), p. 2.
7. Mabel Tylecote, The Mechanics’ Institutes of Lancashire and Yorkshire before 1851 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1957), pp. 69–75.
8. Ibid., p. 221.
9. It is difficult to be sure of accurate figures since membership, and the number of Institutes, as well as their nomenclature, was constantly changing. In addition to Mechanics’ Institutes, there were, for example, Mutual Improvement Societies, Institutes for the Advancement of Knowledge, People’s Colleges and Artisans’ Institutes. W. A. Munford gives a figure of 610 institutions of the type of Mechanics’ Institutes in England as well as twelve in Wales, fifty-five in Scotland and twenty-five in Ireland, and Jeffrey Auerbach suggests there were 600 Institutes with half a million members. See W. A. Munford, ‘George Birbeck and the Mechanics’ Institutes’, in English Libraries 1800–1850: Three Lectures delivered at University College, London (London: Lewis, 1958) and J. Auerbach, The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999).
10. Report from the Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures, 1835–6.
11. John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera, letter 59, and The Crown of Wild Olive, Lecture IV (14 December 1869).
12. L. Jessop and N. T. Sinclair, The Sunderland Museum: The People’s Palace in the Park (Tyne and Wear Museums, 1996), p. 5.
13. Magazine of Art, 1 (1878), p. 154.
14. James J. Sheehan, Museums in the German art world from the end of the old regime to the rise of Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 115.
15. Ibid., p. 116.
16. Chambers Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts, 335 (2 June 1860), p. 342.
17. The Builder, 22 June 1872.
18. John Ruskin, letter to Henry Swan, 13 May 1885, from transcript at the Ruskin Gallery, Sheffield.
19. Sheffield Independent, 11 August 1887, p. 6; Art Union, 8 (January 1846), p. 17. The 1872 Nottingham exhibition featured objects on loan from South Kensington; the Halifax exhibition was organized by the town’s Mechanics’ Institute.
20. Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science (Devonshire Commission), 4th Report, (1874), p. 14.
21. For an excellent discussion of the eighteenth-century world of the gentleman’s art club, see Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies 1580–1800: The origins of an associational world (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Walpole is quoted on p. 78.
22. C. E. Clement and L. Hutton, Artists of the Nineteenth Century and Their Works (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1897), quoted in C. Denney, At the Temple of Art: the Grosvenor Gallery, 1877–1890 (London: Associated University Press, 2000), p. 54.
23. Evidence to the 1857 National Gallery Site Commission, in Collected Works, 12, pp. 412–13.
24. Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, edited by Stephen Wall and Helen Small (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003), p. 67.
25. ‘The Mausoleum Marbles’, Chambers Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts, 317 (28 January 1860), pp. 49–52 (p. 52); ‘The British Museum’, The London Review of Politics, Society, Literature, Art and Science, 29 (March 1862), pp. 304–5 (p. 304).
26. Cutting annotated ‘Some Manchester News (Times?) 1845’, in scrapbook of George Wallis, vol. II, p. 81, the Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Chapter 4
1. J. C. Robinson, letter to William Maw Egley, October 1845, copy of Robinson papers, NAL: copies of much of Robinson’s correspondence as well as articles, memos, etc. are deposited at the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, and were consulted there unless otherwise stated. Egley, a painter of miniatures, was one of Robinson’s closest friends.
2. Quoted in A. McClellan, Inventing the Louvre: art, politics and the modern museum in eighteenth-century Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 98, a book which also gives an excellent account of the impulses behind the development of the Louvre.
3. Dominique Vivant-Denon, diplomat, courtier and director of the Louvre from 1802 to 1814, quoted in McClellan, Inventing the Louvre, p. 140.
4. John Ruskin, Letters on Architecture and Painting, delivered at Edinburgh, November 1853 (London: Smith Elder, 1854), vol. I. p. 50.
5. J. C. Robinson, ‘Our Public Art Museums. A retrospect’, The Nineteenth Century, 42 (1897), p. 941.
6. Jules Janin, ‘A Summer and A Winter in Paris’, in George Newenham Wright, France Illustrated, vol. 4 (London: Peter Jackson, 1845–7), p. 170.
7. Richard Redgrave, one of Henry Cole’s closest friends and allies, visited the apartment with Cole in 1855: see F. M. Redgrave, Richard Redgrave: A memoir compiled from his diary (London: Cassell, 1892), pp. 147–8.
8. Quoted in H. E. Davies, The Life and Works of Sir John Charles Robinson, 1824–1913, p. 14.
9. J. C. Robinson, letter to William Egley, August 1851.
10. This was during a later trip to Italy, in 1859, on behalf of the South Kensington Museum, at a period when armed battles were increasingly common. J. C. Robinson, letter to Henry Cole, 25 April 1859.
Chapter 5
1. Henry Morley, ‘A House Full of Horrors’, Household Words, VI (4 December 1852), pp. 265–70.
2. Art Journal (1855), pp. 150–52; J. C. Robinson’s introduction to the Catalogue of Decorative Art (1855).
3. Quoted in Anthony Burton, Vision and Accident: The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1999), p. 38.
4. J. C. Robinson, letter to Henry Cole, 7 November 1855, Cole correspondence, NAL; Building News, 6 March 1857, p. 225.
5. J. C. Robinson, ‘Our Public Art Museums: A Retrospect’, Nineteenth Century (December 1897), p. 955.
6. J. C. Robinson, Introductory Addresses on the Science and Art Department and the South Kensington Museum, 5 (London, 1858), p. 23.
7. J. C. Robinson, letter to Henry Cole, 25 October 1855, Cole correspondence, NAL.
8. J. C. Robinson, Catalogue of the Museum of Ornamental Art (Part 1) (London, 1855), Introduction.
9. Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, edited by Michael Cotsell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 24
5.
10. Ibid., p. 223.
11. The Builder (19 April 1856), p. 213.
12. General Post Office salary from Hansard, Income Tax Bill, third reading, 12 March 1857 (HC DEB, 12 March 1857, vol. 144, cc2272–5); others from R. V. Jackson, ‘The Structure of Pay in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, Economic History Review 4 (1987), pp. 561–70.
13. J. C. Robinson, ‘On Our National Art Galleries and Museums’, Nineteenth Century (December 1892), p. 1022; J. C. Robinson, Italian Sculpture of the Middle Ages and Period of the Revival of Art (London: Chapman and Hall, 1862); J. C. Robinson, letter to Henry Cole, 2 May 1858, Cole correspondence, NAL.
14. Athenaeum, 7 September 1878.
15. Interview with an unnamed artist by Moncure D. Conway, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 51 (October 1875), pp. 486–503.
16. New York Herald, (11 February 1871), n.p.
17. ‘National Gallery’, Quarterly Review (1859), p. 375.
18. J. C. Robinson, letter to Henry Cole, 17 December 1858, Cole correspondence, NAL.
19. J. C. Robinson, ‘Our Public Art Museums: A Retrospect’, Nineteenth Century (December 1897).
20. Ibid., p. 942.
21. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 160, p. 1308.
22. Journal of the Society of Arts, 16 (1868), p. 179.
23. Art Journal (1865), pp. 281–2.
24. See Geoffrey Swinney, ‘Museums, Audiences and Display Technology’, University Museums in Scotland Conference, 2002.
25. Précis of the Minutes of the Science and Art Department, South Kensington Museum, 1852–3, p. 425.
26. J. C. Robinson, letter, unknown recipient, 18 March 1863.
27. Diary entry, 3 February 1863; quoted in Burton, Vision and Accident, p. 70.
28. See Burton, Vision and Accident, pp. 70–71.
29. Art Journal (1863), p. 230.
30. Précis of the Board Minutes of the Science and Art Department, 1863–1869, pp. 242–5.
31. For further details of the Select Committee, see Elizabeth Bonython, The Great Exhibitor: The Life and Work of Henry Cole, p. 235.
32. Museum minute note, 23 December 1867, quoted in Burton, Vision and Accident, p. 71.
33. Letter to J. C. Robinson, 4 January 1868, quoting Board Minute of 30 December 1867.
34. Letter to J. C. Robinson, 20 January 1868.
35. A. W. Franks, letter, 8 May 1878, British Museum, Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities.
36. ‘The Apology of my Life’, in Caygill and Cherry (eds), A. W. Franks, p. 318.
37. Ibid., p. 320.
Chapter 6
1. Layard made his comments when Robinson was being considered for the vacant post of Director at the National Gallery in 1871. Quoted in Helen Davies, The Life and Works of Sir John Charles Robinson, 1824–1913 (Ph.D., University of Oxford, 1992), p. 67.
2. A pamphlet on Newton Manor written by Robinson for the Dorset Field Club in September 1896. Robinson Papers, NAL.
3. Ibid.
4. Marian Robinson, letter to Henry Cole, no date.
5. William Gladstone, letter to J. C. Robinson, 8 November 1869.
6. Princess Vicky’s visit to Newton Manor is recorded, briefly, in the lengthy Times obituary for Robinson (11 April 1913), but few details are known. (Copies of Robinson Papers, NAL.) The young princesses were Charlotte, Victoria, Sophie and Margaret. There were four other children: the family’s eldest son, Wilhelm, born in 1859, succeeded his father as Emperor in 1888.
7. No. 4 Account Book, in copies of Robinson papers, NAL; also from Davies (see note 1). The account book was kept (as with much of Robinson’s paperwork) irregularly during 1877 and concerns paintings only. The extent of Robinson’s dealing in other media can only be guessed at, bearing in mind the high levels of activity noted.
8. The University of Glasgow runs a project looking at the culture of exhibitions and art dealing in London between 1878 and 1909. See www.exhibitionculture.arts.gla.ac.uk
9. Obituary, The Times, 24 March 1894.
10. Ibid.
11. Museum minutes, May 1879, Robinson archives, Victoria and Albert Museum.
12. J. C. Robinson, letter to Philip Cunliffe-Owen, 15 May 1879, Robinson archives.
13. Museum minutes, May 1879, Robinson archives.
14. Museum minutes, December 1881; January 1882, Robinson archives.
15. J. C. Robinson, letter to Philip Cunliffe-Owen, 20 January 1881, Robinson archives.
16. J. C. Robinson, letter to Philip Cunliffe-Owen, 6 January 1881, Robinson archives.
17. J. C. Robinson, letter to Earl Spenser, January 1882, Robinson archives.
18. Cole died suddenly on 18 April 1882.
19. J. C. Robinson, letter to Philip Cunliffe-Owen, 6 January 1881, Robinson archives.
20. J. C. Robinson, ‘On Our National Museums and Galleries’, Nineteenth Century (December 1892), p. 1022.
Chapter 7
1. A note from Robinson’s bank manager on 23 October 1912, six months before he died, gave the balance of his account as £573 2s 7d. Copy of the Robinson Papers, NAL. It was quite possible, of course, that he operated several accounts.
2. Robinson ‘inherited’ the position from Richard Redgrave (1804–88), a painter. He was Surveyor from 1856 until his retirement in 1880. He and Robinson knew each other well: Redgrave held a number of posts at the South Kensington Museum and the Science and Art Department, and was a staunch ally of Henry Cole.
3. Notes for a speech made by J. C. Robinson at the inauguration of the Whitworth Institute, undated. Copy of Robinson papers, NAL.
4. Ibid.
5. The negotiations were completed in July 1891, almost two years after the Institute first opened. See Ann Sumner, ‘Sir John Charles Robinson: Victorian Collector and Connoisseur’, Apollo (October 1989), pp. 226–30.
6. Obituary, The Times, 30 March 1911.
7. Obituary, The Times, 9 March 1911.
8. Memo from A. B. Skinner to C. Purdon Clarke, 7 August 1901, Robinson archive. Skinner, who entered South Kensington as a Junior Assistant in 1879, went on to succeed Purdon Clarke as Art Director in 1905, when Purdon Clarke left to become Director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. He remained at the museum until 1908.
9. G. F. Waagen, ‘Thoughts on the New Building to be Erected for the National Gallery of England’, Art Journal (1853), p. 102.
10. Details of Robinson’s dismissal as Surveyor can be read in a series of letters in the archives, and in The Times obituary. The Queen died at Osborne House on 21 January 1901, and Robinson was told of his dismissal at the end of February.
11. Catalogue of a valuable collection of Drawings by Old Masters formed by a well-known amateur over the last 40 years, Christie, Manson and Woods, 12 May 1902.
12. Obituary, The Times, 11 April 1913.
13. History of the Victoria and Albert,
Chapter 8
1. Quotations, as well as details of the Schreibers’ journeys, are taken from Charlotte’s entertaining and comprehensive journals of collecting, published in 1911 in a two-volume edited version by her third son Montague Guest and covering the years 1869–85. A later edited version, by her grandson, the Earl of Bessborough, was published in 1950, giving more details of her early life and first marriage. The original journal manuscripts are in the National Library of Wales. References given here are to the 1911 published version, unless otherwise stated: Journal, 1 June 1871.
2. Journal, 9 March 1871.
3. Journal, 25 April and 12 April 1871.
4. Journal, 28 May 1871.
5. Journal, 11 April 1871.
6. Journal, 3 June 1871.
7. Journal, 19 May 1871.
8. Baroness Staffe, The Lady’s Dressing Room, translated by Lady Colin Campbell (London: Cassell’s, 1892), p. 125.
9. For a more comprehensive narrative of Charlotte’s youth, see Revel Gues
t and Angela V. John, Lady Charlotte: A Biography of the Nineteenth Century (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989).
10. See Guest and John, Lady Charlotte, p. 10.
11. Ibid., p. 18.
12. Journal, 1 February 1834, Bessborough edition.
13. Journal, 15 August 1833, Bessborough edition.
14. Journal, 15–18 August 1833, Bessborough edition.
15. Quoted in the Introduction to the Bessborough edition.
16. Journal, 11 January and 10 September 1837, Bessborough edition.
17. Journal, 3 July 1838, Bessborough edition.
18. Journal, 4 November 1839, Bessborough edition.
19. Journal, 18 January 1853, Bessborough edition.
Chapter 9
1. Schreiber, Journal, 8 April 1873.
2. Figures taken from International Historical Statistics, Europe 1750– 1988 (London: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 665–9.
3. J. C. Robinson, ‘Our Public Art Museums: A Retrospect’, in Nineteenth Century (December 1897), p. 956; see also Burton, Vision and Accident, pp. 98–9.
4. Journal, 23 March 1874.
5. Editor’s note to Charlotte’s Journal, vol. II, p. 334. Details of Duveen’s life and business can be found in the biography of his son, Meryle Secrest, Duveen: A Life in Art (New York: Knopf, 2005).
6. Journal, Introduction.
7. Ibid.
8. Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England, vol. 5 (London: Puttnam, 1898), p. 66.
9. C. Lamb, ‘Old China’, The Last Essays of Elia (Pennsylvania: Carey and Lea, 1823), pp. 194–204.
10. Maurice Jonas, Notes of an Art Collector (London: Routledge, 1907).
11. Punch, 21 (July 1851), p. 10.
12. ‘Acute Chinamania’, Punch, ‘Almanack’ 1875, 68 (17 December 1874), n.p. This was part of a series of satires by George du Maurier, who waged a long-running crusade against what he saw as the affectations of the Aesthetic movement and its taste for collecting china.
Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves Page 37
