Lot Essay
The picture is a smaller contemporary version of Hughes's well-known painting in the Manchester City Art Gallery, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1852. Hughes had been attracted to Pre-Raphaelitism on reading the PRB journal The Germ in 1850, and was soon on close terms with the leading members of the circle. The Manchester painting was his first work painted according to Pre-Raphaelite principles, and appeared at the Academy the same year as Millais' famous version of the same subject (Tate Gallery). The death of Ophelia as described by Gertrude in Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 7 (the lines are inscribed on the picture's frame; see above) had held a consistent appeal for painters working in the Romantic tradition. Those who treated it had already included Joseph Severn (c.1831), Richard Redgrave (1842) and Delacroix (1844), and in the future it would be attempted by Rossetti (1864), G.F. Watts (c.1864), J.W. Waterhouse (1889, 1894, 1910) and the Scottish artist William McGeorge. (Waterhouse's 1894 version and the McGeorge have been sold in these Rooms during the past eighteen months.) Hughes himself returned to the theme in a totally different composition dated 1871 (Toledo Museum of Art).
There has been much confusion between Hughes's various accounts of Ophelia's death, particularly the Manchester painting and our version, which are so close in design and date. However, in their article published in the Journal of Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Studies in 1988 Leonard Roberts and Mary Virginia Evans have convincingly separated the history of the two works. On Rossetti's recommendation the Manchester picture was bought by his early patron Francis MacCracken, a Belfast shipping-agent, but in June 1854 MacCracken sold it at Christie's and it was bought by the young Leeds stockbroker T.E. Plint, who was currently forming the most remarkable collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings to be assembled at this date. Following Plint's premature death in July 1861, it appeared again at Christie's. It then passed through a series of further collections before it was acquired for Manchester in 1955.
Our picture remained in the artist's possession and thereby acquired an interesting exhibition history denied to the larger version in Plint's collection. In the summer of 1857 it was included in the famous semi-private exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite pictures held in Russell Place, the first ever collective showing of the circle's work. It failed to sell, and the following autumn Hughes contributed it to another celebrated exhibition, that of British art held in America, jointly organised by Ernest Gambart and William Michael Rossetti. Again no buyer came forward, mainly, no doubt, because the opening in New York on 19 October coincided with a cataclysmic financial crash, although it cannot have helped that The Crayon, a magazine normally noted for it pro-Pre-Raphaelite stance, dismissed it with the comment that it was 'a powerful representation of a maniac, but not of our Ophelia.'
Hughes withdrew the picture, which was never seen at the two subsequent venues, Philadelphia and Boston. It returned to England, and in the winter of 1858 Gambart exhibited it at his French Gallery in Pall Mall. Again it attracted a hostile notice, though this time more predictably from the conservative Art Journal. Even their critic found 'the principle (of) the beautiful' in the exquisitely handled naturalism of the setting, but he could not resist one of those digs at the conception of the figure which are commonplace in reviews of Pre-Raphaelite paintings at this date: 'Ophelia - poor Ophelia - is a pale wax figure, modelled with particular attention to ... such repugnant features as present themselves in the full bloom of Pre-Raffaelite (sic) art ... The head of the figure is large and vulgar in character, and the gaunt arm and coarse hand in no ways justify the infatuation of Hamlet.' By now, however, when, largely due to Ruskin's influence, Pre-Raphaelite-inspired paintings were mushrooming on the walls of the Academy, such views were becoming old-fashioned; and indeed not long afterwards the picture was bought by Sir Walter James, an ancestor of the present owner. James was the Liberal MP for Gateshead, Newcastle, and would later be given a baronetcy by Gladstone. He may well have known other collectors who lived in the area, such as James Leathart and Robert Newall. Leathart, a passionate collector of Pre-Raphaelite pictures who served as Mayor of Gateshead and a local JP, seems a particularly significant figure in this context since he was a staunch patron of Hughes and owned several examples of precisely this period - The Annunciation and The Nativity at Birmingham (both 1858), The Woodman's Child in the Tate (1860), and The Rift in the Lute at Carlisle (RA 1862). James had bought his Ophelia by 1862 when he lent it to another important exhibition, the great International Exhibition at South Kensington. The link with Leathart is strengthened by the fact that he lent The Woodman's Child.
There can be little doubt that our picture was substantially painted at the same time as the Manchester version, exhibited at the RA in 1852. Everything about it points to this conclusion, even the phrase 'heads in sky' in the inscription, which suggests that Hughes was working on both pictures concurrently. Our version may well have been started as an elaborate study for the larger work and completed as an independent picture with variations of detail. This was common Pre-Raphaelite practice, the small versions of Holman Hunt's Light of the World and The Scapegoat (both Manchester) offering significant parallels. Equally, it would have been Pre-Raphaelite practice to retouch the picture before an exhibition or purchase, and it may be that Hughes worked on the figure in the later 1850s before sending the work to Russell Place, New York, or Gambart's gallery in Pall Mall. The treatment of the drapery particularly suggests that this is a possibility.
Whatever the case, the picture must have been complete by 1862, and represents a major addition to the works of Hughes's most intensely Pre-Raphaelite phase. It need hardly be added that a Pre-Raphaelite painting of this date and importance, in which a leading exponent is seen working on a considerable scale according to the strictest original principles, is very seldom seen on the market.
We are grateful to Leonard Roberts for his help in preparing this entry.
There has been much confusion between Hughes's various accounts of Ophelia's death, particularly the Manchester painting and our version, which are so close in design and date. However, in their article published in the Journal of Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Studies in 1988 Leonard Roberts and Mary Virginia Evans have convincingly separated the history of the two works. On Rossetti's recommendation the Manchester picture was bought by his early patron Francis MacCracken, a Belfast shipping-agent, but in June 1854 MacCracken sold it at Christie's and it was bought by the young Leeds stockbroker T.E. Plint, who was currently forming the most remarkable collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings to be assembled at this date. Following Plint's premature death in July 1861, it appeared again at Christie's. It then passed through a series of further collections before it was acquired for Manchester in 1955.
Our picture remained in the artist's possession and thereby acquired an interesting exhibition history denied to the larger version in Plint's collection. In the summer of 1857 it was included in the famous semi-private exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite pictures held in Russell Place, the first ever collective showing of the circle's work. It failed to sell, and the following autumn Hughes contributed it to another celebrated exhibition, that of British art held in America, jointly organised by Ernest Gambart and William Michael Rossetti. Again no buyer came forward, mainly, no doubt, because the opening in New York on 19 October coincided with a cataclysmic financial crash, although it cannot have helped that The Crayon, a magazine normally noted for it pro-Pre-Raphaelite stance, dismissed it with the comment that it was 'a powerful representation of a maniac, but not of our Ophelia.'
Hughes withdrew the picture, which was never seen at the two subsequent venues, Philadelphia and Boston. It returned to England, and in the winter of 1858 Gambart exhibited it at his French Gallery in Pall Mall. Again it attracted a hostile notice, though this time more predictably from the conservative Art Journal. Even their critic found 'the principle (of) the beautiful' in the exquisitely handled naturalism of the setting, but he could not resist one of those digs at the conception of the figure which are commonplace in reviews of Pre-Raphaelite paintings at this date: 'Ophelia - poor Ophelia - is a pale wax figure, modelled with particular attention to ... such repugnant features as present themselves in the full bloom of Pre-Raffaelite (sic) art ... The head of the figure is large and vulgar in character, and the gaunt arm and coarse hand in no ways justify the infatuation of Hamlet.' By now, however, when, largely due to Ruskin's influence, Pre-Raphaelite-inspired paintings were mushrooming on the walls of the Academy, such views were becoming old-fashioned; and indeed not long afterwards the picture was bought by Sir Walter James, an ancestor of the present owner. James was the Liberal MP for Gateshead, Newcastle, and would later be given a baronetcy by Gladstone. He may well have known other collectors who lived in the area, such as James Leathart and Robert Newall. Leathart, a passionate collector of Pre-Raphaelite pictures who served as Mayor of Gateshead and a local JP, seems a particularly significant figure in this context since he was a staunch patron of Hughes and owned several examples of precisely this period - The Annunciation and The Nativity at Birmingham (both 1858), The Woodman's Child in the Tate (1860), and The Rift in the Lute at Carlisle (RA 1862). James had bought his Ophelia by 1862 when he lent it to another important exhibition, the great International Exhibition at South Kensington. The link with Leathart is strengthened by the fact that he lent The Woodman's Child.
There can be little doubt that our picture was substantially painted at the same time as the Manchester version, exhibited at the RA in 1852. Everything about it points to this conclusion, even the phrase 'heads in sky' in the inscription, which suggests that Hughes was working on both pictures concurrently. Our version may well have been started as an elaborate study for the larger work and completed as an independent picture with variations of detail. This was common Pre-Raphaelite practice, the small versions of Holman Hunt's Light of the World and The Scapegoat (both Manchester) offering significant parallels. Equally, it would have been Pre-Raphaelite practice to retouch the picture before an exhibition or purchase, and it may be that Hughes worked on the figure in the later 1850s before sending the work to Russell Place, New York, or Gambart's gallery in Pall Mall. The treatment of the drapery particularly suggests that this is a possibility.
Whatever the case, the picture must have been complete by 1862, and represents a major addition to the works of Hughes's most intensely Pre-Raphaelite phase. It need hardly be added that a Pre-Raphaelite painting of this date and importance, in which a leading exponent is seen working on a considerable scale according to the strictest original principles, is very seldom seen on the market.
We are grateful to Leonard Roberts for his help in preparing this entry.