Art, Artisans and Apprentices: Apprentice Painters & Sculptors in the Early Modern British Tradition

By James Ayres

Before the foundation of academies of art in London in 1758 and Philadelphia in 1805, most individuals who were to emerge as artists trained in workshops of varying degrees of relevance. Easel painters began their careers apprenticed to carriage, house, sign or ship painters, whilst a few were placed with those who made pictures. Sculptors emerged from a training as ornamental plasterers or carvers. Of the many other trades in a position to offer an appropriate background were ‘limning’, staining, engraving, surveying, chasing and die-sinking. In addition, plumbers gained the right to use oil painting and, for plasterers, the application of distemper was an extension of their trade. Central to the theme of this book is the notion that, for those who were to become either painters or sculptor, a training in a trade met their practical needs. This ‘training’ was of an altogether different nature to an ‘education’ in an art school. In the past, prospective artists were offered, by means of apprenticeships, an empirical rather than a theoretical understanding of their ultimate vocation.

James Ayres provides a lively account of the inter-relationship between art and trade in the late seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries, in both Britain and North America. He demonstrates with numerous, illustrated examples, the many cross-overs in the ‘art and mystery’ of artistic training, and, to modern eyes, the sometimes incongruous relationships between the various trades that contributed to the blossoming of many artistic careers, including some of the most illustrious names of the ‘long’ eighteenth century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Jun 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781782977438

James Ayres

As the third generation of his family to have been actively engaged in the visual arts, James Ayres was, in effect, apprenticed from childhood to work in paint, plaster wood and stone. Following graduation from Goldsmiths College, London University and the Royal Academy Schools, a fellowship in the US introduced him to the arts of British North America.

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INTRODUCTION

Biographies of Early Modern painters and sculptors in Britain and Colonial America show that whilst some individuals were articled to a successful studio many, perhaps most, were apprenticed to a particular trade of varying degrees of relevance. In general these lives of the artists touch on matters of training before moving on to what are perceived to be the substantive concerns in the life and work under review.¹ Understandable though this position may be the brevity of information on training too easily gives insufficient importance to an historical reality. Before the full emergence of schools of art, an apprenticeship in a trade with some aesthetic values provided an important means to an end for those who had artistic aspirations or were to develop them.

For individuals who escaped the limitations of an exclusively trade training their workshop experience, when transferred to a studio, equipped them to realise their artistic aspirations. Many of the founder members of the Royal Academy of Arts in London sprang from such a background. One such was the first, and sadly the last, Royal Academician to serve as that institution’s house painter (see p. 197). Such a direct line, between the trade and the art, was a feature that gave that body a vitality, in its early years, that it has never quite recaptured.

This is a sprawling subject which I shall endeavour to centre on the very long eighteenth century (at its most extended c. 1660–1837) but which will be reviewed in terms of what preceded and succeeded it. For example, the high standard of craftsmanship that characterise the material culture of Georgian Britain had its origins in the apprenticeship system which stemmed from the medieval guilds. The decline in that method of training coincided with, or maybe attributed to, the rise of consumerism, industrialisation and the emergence of Empire: an age of both evolution and revolution.

Beyond, or rather within, the wider historical context the principal concern of the chapters that follow are the particulars of each of a given series of crafts. In these accounts consideration will be given to tools and materials, the nature and length of apprenticeships and the extent to which a tyro was expected to produce a proof piece or masterpiece at the conclusion of his time. As a craft history rather than an art history the emphasis will be on the processes rather than the products. Not that the intention is to produce a manual in the exact meaning of that word. On the contrary, the focus will be on the nature of the training in different crafts as reflected in the skills that they involved. From that starting point the way in which some tradesmen evolved into sculptors and painters will be considered.

Down to the third quarter of the seventeenth century there was little distinction between the so-called fine and decorative arts. Even so the evolution from artisan to artist could stem from the restrictive practices of a given craft or from some admissible relaxations of such regulations. Why, and for what reasons, were plumbers to be permitted by Guild authority to apply oil paint and how did some members of that craft emerge as easel painters? How was it that plasterers became entitled to apply lime-wash and distempers and, in some instances, become mural painters? What was the motivation that persuaded some woodcarvers to transfer their allegiance to marble? In what ways did some chasers inform the wider artistic community?

The crafts of the visual arts, in common with other trades in general, were regulated in major urban centres by the guilds or livery companies. These fraternities were at their most specialist and powerful in the City of London. For this reason the reach and influence of the capital was formidable and extended across the Atlantic.² The crafts, like the arts, were inevitably and indelibly metropolitan – urbanity was, by definition, urban. In Britain this was mitigated by the custom amongst the aristocracy and gentry of spending only the season in town. Much of the year was spent in country houses where the elite became ambassadors of sophistication. A comparable situation obtained in the North American Colonies. In the Old South individual plantations were equipped with wharfs from which tobacco, indigo and cotton were exported direct to Britain and to which the latest fashionable goods from London, Bristol and Liverpool were imported.

In representing special interest groups the guilds were therefore at their most powerful in the larger towns and cities. For this reason many of the craft fraternities emerged in association with the urbanisation on which they were dependent. In England the first challenge to guild authority occurred in early Tudor London. It was then that Italian Renaissance artists reached these shores at the behest of the king – a situation that left guild members as impotent onlookers. Although the gradual decline of these fraternities as trade organisations did not begin until the seventeenth century their wavering authority was to have a deleterious impact on apprenticeships as a system of training.

The number of craft trades involved in the visual arts was legion. The range and extent of training that was expected, demanded and met was truly remarkable. Although we may too easily presume an understanding of the activities that constitute painting we are less familiar with the staining of cloths and transparencies or the defining nature of limning. Similarly sculpture once possessed an exact meaning in which die-sinkers, gem engravers and chasers occupied an honourable position. The understanding of these crafts in the visual arts receded as training in an apprenticeship was displaced by education in an art school. All these issues were to have an impact not only on artists but on the work that they produced. In this sequence of events artisans become affiliated to the Combinations (proto-Trade Unions) as artists aspired to a professional status under the diktats of academies.

Until the 1840s some painters and many sculptors emerged in their art from a trade background. Of the painters, Peter Monamy (1681–1749), Charles Catton RA (1728–1798) and Robert Smirke RA (1752–1845) had begun their careers as house, sign or carriage painters. And what was true for painters was also the experience of many sculptors. Sir George Frampton RA (1860–1928) was in his early years a trade stone carver who was sometimes reduced to venturing forth as a field ranger. By these means the craft-based visual arts survived, here and there, down to the First World War.

The widening chasm between fine and applied art may have begun in the eighteenth century. Sir Joshua Reynolds certainly saw a distinction between the intellectual dignity … that ennobles the painter’s art; that lays the line between him and the mere mechanic.³ When confronting such prejudices it is reassuring to recall Oscar Wilde’s assertion that: there are moments when art almost attains the dignity of manual labour.⁴

Notes

¹      An example being Ronald Paulson’s Hogarth, 1991, where the subject’s apprenticeship as a silver engraver is outlined in vol. I, pp. 38–39

²      Arms of the Painter-Stainers of London used as a sign by the English-born, London-trained painter and decorator Thomas Child in Boston, Massachusetts, fig. xxx

³      Joshua Reynolds 1778, p. 72

⁴      Oscar Wilde The Model Millionaire in Isabel Murray ed. The Collected Shorter Writings of Oscar Wilde, London, 1979, p. 90

Chapter 1

ART & MYSTERY

The words Art & Mystery occur, with some regularity, in the indentures or agreements that were drawn up between a master and the parents or guardians of a prospective apprentice. In the language of Early Modern Britain Art was understood as the craft and Mystery as the secrets of the trade in which the master agreed to provide instruction.

If craft has been seen in differing ways the word art has enjoyed, or been subject to, a promiscuous range of interpretations, few of which are objective. Its etymology may be traced via old French to the Latin route in which ars signified that which was put together, joined or fitted.¹ This was precisely the sense in which Horace used the word in one section of his Ars Poetica. In that work he describes a series of limbs from different animals being put together to form one assemblage.² It seems that this physical and practical understanding of Ars or Art persisted down to early seventeenth century London. In 1637 the Button Makers Company petitioned the Privy Council regarding their concerns about the intrusion of aliens into their craft. In their Petition these tradesmen were seeking to establish a closed-shop with "all lawful powers grantable to artists of like condition (my italics).³ This usage survives in the now outmoded artificer and continues in the term artisan". In these circumstances it was perfectly reasonable that many youths would be apprenticed to trades relating to painting and sculpture and that some would later emerge as artists in the modern sense of the word.

In simple terms medieval England was a cultural continuum for despite the tiny elite the vast bulk of the other ranks were party to, if not members of, the one tradition. There was also a parallel continuity between art and craft, manual activities for which God himself could be claimed as the first creator.⁴ On such a basis, and with the authority of the Almighty, the Gothic tradition maintained its vigour to the last and exhibited no symptoms of decline. Indeed the great innovation, now known as the Perpendicular style, gave it an added impetus. Consequently when the Italian Renaissance reached these shores it confronted a strong pre-existing religious and cultural tradition. The most obvious, and certainly the first, example of this collision of aesthetic outlook may be seen in Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster Abbey. This supreme example of Perpendicular Gothic was completed in 1512, the very year that Pietro Torrigiano began work on the king’s bronze tomb that was to occupy the centre of the self-same building.⁵ A remarkably pure example of the high Italian Renaissance in an alien Northern setting. Perhaps inevitably, for such a revolutionary work in England, Torrigiano’s activities did not go unnoticed amongst English artisans. By 1516 hand-bills were pasted up anonymously on the walls in London streets accusing the king of favouring foreign craftsmen to the detriment of those who were native-born.⁶ Possibly as a somewhat tardy response to such pressure a Proclamation was issued in 1523 which excluded all but the elite from employing foreign artisans. This elite was defined as a Member of Parliament or individuals with an annual income of £100 or more.⁷ In effect this was a sumptuary law which probably had the effect of making work by foreign artisans and artists all the more desirable and fashionable. This may have given the new Renaissance idiom the driving force which ultimately eclipsed the late Gothic tradition. By the mid-sixteenth century artists and craftsmen, with something of a classical taste, began arriving in England from the Low Countries. These immigrants settled in areas like Southwark, south of the Thames in Surrey, and therefore beyond the control of the London guilds. As a consequence classicism in England was, for several generations, to be mediated through Dutch eyes. In addition to Southwark there were, in the London area, a number of free-trade zones which enabled foreigners to practice their craft irrespective of the provisions of the Proclamation of 1523. By 1678 the corporate memory of that Proclamation appears to have faded from memory. On 16 November of that year the sculptors John van der Stein (fl. 1678–1700) and Arnold Luellan (Quellin 1653–1686) and their servants (probably apprentices) were granted a dispensation to work for the crown – a Licence to Forainers employed at Windsor [Castle] to remain here without molestation. Some of these individuals may have been Roman Catholics which could, possibly, account for this extra measure against the protectionism of native artisans. In 1708 an act of Parliament was passed for naturalizing of foreign Protestants. Under this provision the German-born painter Johann Zoffany RA (1733–1810), obtained letters of denization despite being a Catholic. Far less liberal was the prohibition that the Corporation of London placed on Freemen who, from 1731, were not to be permitted to take on black apprentices.⁸

The Proclamation of 1523, as a form of sumptuary law, established two cultural registers; one for the elite and another for the vast majority of the English population. This is a feature that Robert Redfield, writing in the 1930s, defined as the great tradition which he contrasted to the little tradition.⁹ This thesis has more recently been developed by Peter Burke who argues that the aristocracy and gentry continued to participate in the little tradition down to the seventeenth century. Burke also notes that craftsmen, like agricultural workers, spoke what was, in effect, a dialect of specialist terms within their largely visual culture with its oral component. More to the point Burke goes on to assert that craftsmen were inevitably better at using their hands than using words … The artefacts which they produced are our most immediate contact but that it is necessary to translate this material culture from paint, or wood, or stone, into words. It also explains why, in 1798, some surprise was expressed that a carver and gilder like Jackson could write so well.¹⁰ These issues are surely part of the timeless conundrum that things are more difficult to read than words. In this respect many of the writers on the visual arts, from Vasari (1550) to Hogarth (1753) were well placed as practitioners, to provide a bridge between the visual and the verbal. This direction of travel, this sequence of thinking, could also operate in reverse; from the lexicons of the written word to the practicalities of the man-made object. Such was the position of the great Dr Samuel Johnson (1709–1784). It was he who, when praising a group of canvases by James Barry (1741–1806), went on to observe that; Whatever the hand has done the mind has played its part.¹¹

The biographical approach to art history which Vasari may be seen to have established, has proved to be remarkably persistent. However, as a painter and architect, an important feature of his encyclopaedic work is that it was prefaced by an account of the materials and procedures deployed by the artists whose lives he chronicles. This important element is often omitted from later editions of the Lives.¹² To Vasari we should perhaps attribute the cult of the individual with regard to painters and sculptors. This was inevitably followed by the rise in anecdotal evidence, a corpus of information which, compared with statistical analysis, is often viewed with suspicion. Certainly economic historians like John Michael Montias and Lorna Weatherill have done much to widen and deepen our understanding of art and artisans within a wider socio-economic framework.¹³ In retrieving the past, statistical findings have their value, but so too does the recorded word of mouth. Surely those who bore witness to the events of their own time, the mood of the moment, the character of their contemporaries, have valuable evidence to offer? The utility of such testimony is evident in J. T. Smith’s Nollekens and His Times (1828) and in Joseph Farington’s Diary (1793–1821). Indeed Horace Walpole (pub. 1762–1771) and Edward Edwards (1808) identify their respective publications on Painting as Anecdotes.¹⁴

In Early Modern Europe many of the artists who wrote about their vocation were not above describing the rudiments of their craft. In contrast a painter like Reynolds was so anxious to emphasise the intellectual dignity and social status of easel painting and painters that he elided the details of the mechanic parts of his art. Such disdain did not go unrecognised by his contemporaries. For John Williams, under the alias of Anthony Pasquin (1796), the great Sir Joshua was as injurous to the true principles of painting as a fine prostitute to the establishment of morals.¹⁵

Although Oil & Colourmen were long established in London, Sir Joshua and his contemporaries in the capital were amongst the first to be able to purchase ready-made, industrially produced, oil paints. Consequently he and his contemporaries were in a position to distance themselves from the craft of their art. For Reynolds such hauteur was near disaster. His pigments on the one hand had a tendency to fade or, alternatively, his use of bitumen caused them to darken and crack. Most seriously this was an attitude which made him an easy victim of the Venetian Secret with its promise of an elixir of everlasting Titian.¹⁶ In the deployment of materials and techniques failures, like successes, serve to demonstrate the importance of the artist’s craft in realising a given concept.

As noted above, those artists who functioned in a pre-industrial situation were profoundly aware that the crafts that brought handmade objects into existence were an integral part of their presence. Analogy may offer a usefully oblique approach to the visual arts in a way that by-passes the drifting meaning of words. In some senses these arts may be characterised as a combination of the material (the utilitarian or secular) with a concept which may be described as the spiritual component of a work of sculpture or painting. These problems of usage and definition may involve an ostensibly simple noun like patron. And yet in the Anglo-French of medieval England a patron signified a pattern – a maquette or a model for a work of art.¹⁷ Only later did the patron also come to signify the client. As late as the seventeenth century these patrons or patterns would form part of a detailed specification which the maker or artist was to follow in accordance with the contract.¹⁸ By these means the client formed an active part in the creative process. In contrast the purchase of a ready-made object was not patronage but commerce.

This raises important questions as to the degree to which a patron might have sufficient knowledge and discernment to discharge his or her responsibilities effectively. Inevitably clients possessed various levels of understanding and expertise and therefore their involvement as patrons differed. On an architectural scale many of the prelates in medieval England were described as builders of their respective abbeys or cathedrals – although this was generally little more than a courtesy offered to these individuals as patrons in both senses of the word. In some cases though the princes of the church are known to have participated more actively as craftsmen or, more generally, as labourers. For example, St Hugh of Avalon (1140–1200) as Bishop of Lincoln often bore the hodload of hewn stone or binding lime to assist with the construction of the Cathedral. By the sixteenth century the wider availability of paper encouraged patrons to become involved in the design process. In 1539 a fort at Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, was to be built according to the platte devised by the King, although this plan may well have been drawn up by others and received little more than Henry VIII’s imprimatur it nevertheless received his visual approval.¹⁹ Certainly many royal or aristocratic clients, on the basis of a liberal education, were very well informed. Take, for example Queen Elizabeth I’s instructions to her limner Nicholas Hilliard (c. 1547–1619) that he should take her portrait in the open alley of a goodly garden where there would be no shadowe.²⁰ This demonstrates that the queen was well aware that such a location would offer the most flattering light. A similarly active engagement existed amongst patrons in relationship to monumental sculpture. In common with many aristocrats, both before and since, the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury spent much of his time in his last years in the late 1580s working on the design of his own tomb.²¹ In the following century Lord Arundel went so far as to argue that one who could not design a little would never make an honest man.²² For some grandees their responsibilities as clients were not particularly active but their visual perception could remain acute: A man of Polite Imagination … can converse with a Picture, and find an agreeable companion in a Statue. One such was the antiquarian and libertine 1st Earl of Charlemont (1728–1799) who was quick to condemn Richard Dalton’s drawings of Halicarnassus as faint and inadequate copies, a view that was shared by many of his contemporaries.²³ For others the role of the patron was little more than administrative. Horace Walpole (1717–1797) on a visit to Northamptonshire considered it:

a great sacrifice for I quit the gallery [at Strawberry Hill] almost at the critical minute of consumation. Gilders, carvers, upholsterers and picture cleaners are labouring at their several forges, and I do not love to trust a hammer or brush without my own supervisal … ²⁴

FIGURE 1. Francis Hayman (1708–1776 The Artist and his Patron c. 1748–50, oil on canvas (71.8 × 91.4 cm). This image demonstrates the active participation of the client in the creation of a picture in a largely pre-consumerist age. (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Alternatively patronage could be far more hands-on than was the case with an aesthete like Walpole. This was particularly true of the applied arts. In the preface to Joseph Moxon’s Mechanic Exercises or Doctrine of Handy Works (published in parts from 1678) its author states that: it is very well known, that many Gentlemen in this Nation, of good Rank and high Quality, are conversant in Handy-Works: And other Nations exceed us in numbers of such. Although Moxon fails to identify the Nations or individuals he had in mind a number of possibilities might be considered. Among these was the Swedish nobleman Carl Gustaf Wrangle (1613–1676) who worked at a lathe in his workshop in Skokloster Castle.²⁵ In this activity Wrangle may have been following royal precedence for turnery was the craft that was indulged in by Christian IV (1588–1648) of Denmark. Examples of this work, allegedly by the king, can be seen in Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen. In France, no less a figure than the Sun King, Louis XIV, gained a reputation as an amateur lock-smith. As Moxon was evidently aware, European precedent permitted the elite to work at a craft. At the very least this would have enabled them to have an informed insight into the quality of what was made for them. Some such individuals appear to have made the patrons or patterns that were used as the basis for the works they commissioned – a far more practical basis than a mere drawing. For example the landowner Sir George Savile MP (1726–1784) went so far as to make a scale model (1 inch: 1 foot) in oak of a five-bar gate which was passed to his estate carpenters to make-up at full size (Fig. 2). This may have been unusual but it was by no means exceptional since there was a market in London for Gentlemen’s Tool Chests which contained implements for working wood of the type sold in the 1770s by William Hewlett (Fig. 3). By 1785 The Daily Universal Register, the precursor of The Times, included an advertisement for the sale of such tool kits.²⁶ These are not isolated examples. Dr Bartholomew Moss, the Dublin physician and amateur cabinet-maker left, on his death in 1761, a set of tools fit for a gentleman or nice mechanic. One such gentleman was William Windham (1717–1761) of Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk who was such an enthusiastic wood turner, boat builder and bookbinder that he reserved two large rooms in his house as workshops.²⁷ In the early nineteenth century the involvement of the gentry and aristocracy in these activities was probably quite widespread, they were, after all, members of the leisured classes. In 1817 Capt. Sherston of Stowbury near Wells was described as: a good mechanic … [with] an excellent lathe; at present he is busily occupied in completing a musical clock.

By 1830 the Rev John Skinner who recorded this observation in his Journal would go on to describe Owen, one of his two sons, amusing himself with his lathe which was installed in the Rectory at Camerton in North Somerset. Similarly Henry Peyto Verney (1773–1852) of Compton Verney House, Warwickshire, is known to have purchased tools and lathes for making the prototypes of the various mechanisms he devised. In North America an inventory of George Washington’s possessions (taken in 1799) recorded 1 Chest of Tools in his study. In 1786 Thomas Jefferson purchased a chest of tools from Thomas Robinson in London.²⁸

In some rare instances it seems that such interests were not confined to gentlemen. For example the aristocratic Mary Talbot (1776–1855) owned a couple of woodworking lathes. One of these was purchased for her in 1811 by her husband from Mr Hotzapful (Holtzapffel of London) for £24–6s-6d and included a tool case.²⁹ These were sent to Penrice Castle their country house in south Wales. The second lathe was located in their other establishment, Melbury House, Dorset. These two lathes were used by Mary Talbot for making dolls in their house in Wales whilst the device in Dorset was employed for the production of beautiful beads for necklaces, bracelets etc. etc. made from the bark of a Scotch fir tree.³⁰ Although these skills were of varying relevance to our theme they demonstrate that potential patrons might well have a hands-on understanding as to how things were made. Such individuals would have pronounced views on the quality of the craftsmanship in the works of art they commissioned or purchased and a practical understanding of the work of the artists they employed. In these circumstances "Sculptors of eminence [would] not submit to the directions of the ignorant employer … however powerful his station in life may be".³¹

From about 1716, if not before, artists in London had access to ready-made oil paints, manufactured by horse mills, the products of which were sold by oil and colourmen to both house and easel painters. For many decades this trade was dominated by the Emerton dynasty of Colourmen. By the 1770s the Reeves brothers had devised their watercolour cakes – the first of what might be described as convenience paints to be marketed.³² The ramifications of this innovation would be extensive and long lasting. Professional artists who were not specialist limners could now use watercolour out-of-doors and paint landscapes in the presence of nature. In addition amateurs, in both the exact and inexact meaning of the word, could now more easily participate in an art that had previously been largely the preserve of specialists. Amongst architects their drawings could now more often be given polychromatic washes – a feature that may well have influenced the type of light and airy colour schemes that came into fashion for interiors at about this time. For aspiring naval and army officers drawing had long been part of their training in various military academies – now these range finding landscapes and coastal studies sprang into lively colour. In all these circumstances an active participation in the visual arts was not only possible, but almost compulsory for the elite. Queen Charlotte was a student of Gainsborough and George III was tutored in architecture (and architectural drawing) by Chambers. Amongst the aristocracy the 2nd Lord Harcourt (1736–1809) exhibited his etchings with the Society of Arts and for some families easel painting could become a feature of their shade of blue blood – as was the case with the 3rd, 5th and 6th Dukes of Rutland. Despite such aristocratic precedent the north Somerset rector the Rev John Skinner (1772–1834) was ambivalent with regard to the social position of painters. In noting his son Joseph’s natural talents for drawing he fleetingly thought of placing him with Benjamin Baker of Bath (1776–1838) for his learning to paint in oils but concluded that this profession of an artist is infra-dig. The contradictions inherent in that phrase were probably widely shared at that date (2 August 1830) – easel painting may, by this time, have been a profession but it was not quite proper.³³

FIGURE 2. Model gate made of oak by Sir George Savile (1726–1784): his marble bust by Nollekens is illustrated as Fig. 124. This 5-bar gate is made to a scale of 1 in : 1 ft, producing, what remains to this day, a standard width of 10 ft 4 in (215 cm) (Author’s Collection)

FIGURE 3. Two "Gentlemen’s tool chests" retailed by the London ironmonger William Hewlett in c. 1773. A number of potential patrons of the visual arts possessed a hands-on understanding of a craft (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Virginia)

With industrialisation and the rise of consumerism the traditional notions of patronage were in decline.³⁴ By gradual increments the well informed patron of the past gave way to purchasers who acquired works of art from dealers who sold old masters or contemporary works that were speculatively produced. As early as the 1750s some regretted that:

generally speaking [many artists had become] the property of picture dealers (at that time their chief employers) and held by them in somewhat the same kind of vassalage and dependence that many authors are by booksellers.³⁵

This situation was fraught with potential conflict. The Swiss-born painter Jean André Rouquet (1701–1758) observed that English artists fought against the interests of the picture dealers.³⁶ As the nature of patronage changed so too did the relationships between clients and artists which were, in part, a consequence of the intervention of art dealers. Despite this quiet revolution old attitudes persisted. When King George III visited the Academy exhibition on 22 April 1796 it was his presumption that the works on show were commissioned by true patrons.³⁷ Only a few months later, on 9 July 1796, Henry Fuseli RA (1741–1825) admitted that he had trouble working on given subjects which he is employed to paint. His best exertions are when he had only to consider how he shall satisfy himself.³⁸ In much the same vein George Morland (1763–1804) was compelled, through his profligate lifestyle, to submit to the drudgery of undertaking commissions.³⁹ In general portraiture was, almost by definition, the product of a commission – a role not necessarily enjoyed by all such clients.

Of all the miseries under the sun to which poor mortal man is heir, Heaven preserve, or rather release me from those of a patron … Scarcely a year passes but I am to be found stuck up somewhere [in an exhibition] about the walls of Somerset House.⁴⁰

With the rise of consumerism art was increasingly acquired off the peg in exhibitions – paintings and sculptures which were ready-made and available for purchase. In the historic sense of the word patronage was all but dead.

The seeds of this change, from patronage as a prospective activity, to consumption as a passive indulgence, date back before the Reformation – but in medieval England such transactions were the exception.⁴¹ Mass, or at least bulk production, continued as a minor feature in the arts of Tudor and Stuart England. For example, once canvas sizes were standardised, carvers and gilders were able to produce picture frames in anticipation of their sale. A similar situation prevailed in early Georgian London amongst the sign-makers, a specialist trade involving painters, carvers and blacksmiths. These tradesmen were centred on Harp Alley off Shoe Lane, Fleet Street.⁴² This was where Thomas Proctor (Fig. 62) stocked "all sorts of Signs, Bushes, Bacchus’s, Bunches of Grapes and Show-Boards from what he claimed was The Oldest Shop" in the Alley.⁴³ These were clearly standard products for which bulk production made sense. As such, this aspect of Proctor’s trade is a clear, and rather early, example of consumerism in the visual arts. However, he and others in the Harp Alley workshops, also worked on commission. In this way these craftsmen straddled two distinct approaches in the sale of their work. An awareness of these changes may have been present in the minds of those who were responsible for the foundation of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce in 1754 (now the Royal Society of Arts, RSA). One the most significant figures behind this Society was the drawing teacher William Shipley (1715–1803) who was well placed to propose that this organisation should give:

Rewards for the Encouragement of Boys and Girls in the Art of Drawing, and it being the opinion of all present that the Art of Drawing is absolutely necessary in many Employments, Trades and Manufactures and that the Encouragement thereof may prove of great utility to the Public, it was resolved to bestow Premiums on a certain number of Boys and Girls under the age of Sixteen, who shall produce the best Pieces of Drawing …⁴⁴

By 1797 the link between art and manufacture was also noted by Academicians like the chaser George Michael Moser (1704–1783), the sculptor John Flaxman (1755–1826) and the painters Joseph Farington (1747–1821), John Hoppner (1758–1810) and Benjamin West (1738–1820) (see pp. 88–89 below).⁴⁵

In a list of premiums, drawn up by the Society of Arts in 1758, prizes were offered for drawings that related to the polite arts which included such subject matter as the human figure, Beasts, Birds, Fruit or Flowers (although some of these prizes were reserved for those who attended the St Martin’s Lane Academy). The same list also offered premiums for design drawings for weavers, calico-printers, cabinet-makers (see Fig. 9)and coach-makers as well as for manufacturers working in iron, brass, porcelain, earthenware or any other Mechanic Trade that requires Taste.⁴⁶

Of the various materials used for drawing in both art and industry, for both aesthetic and technical purposes, charcoal and ink have a long history and these were joined by silver-point and the humble lead pencil. The latter was in fact composed of graphite which, being brittle, was encased in wood. In Britain graphite was found in the Lake District where it was known as wadd, and in New England the source of this black-lead, as it was also known, was in Rhode Island. In neighbouring Massachusetts pencils using this mineral were manufactured by the family of the writer Henry Thoreau (1817–1862) who took an active part in the business.⁴⁷ In the 1750s the graphite mines in Borrowdale near Keswick were owned by an Irish Gentleman by the name of Shepherd. He ensured that this mineral was only extracted in an occasional summer simply because enough could be extracted to satisfy the small demand in England for several years.⁴⁸

In Hanoverian England references to the association between art and industry refer to manufacturies, simply because these early manifestations of industrial development were the manual factories that preceded the more fully mechanised enterprises.⁴⁹ Consequently, the distinction between an early industrialist’s manufactory and an artist’s studio (fully staffed with apprentices, journeymen, and other assistants) may have been less evident than they subsequently became.

The practical approach that saw the fine arts as the basis for the production of the applied or decorative arts seems to have been a widely held, if not unchallenged, view. Joseph Farington recorded both positions in his Diary in 1797. He notes that although there was a general belief that the fine arts [could be an] elegant amusement purchased at considerable expense it was important for a Commercial People to remember that these arts will enrich as well as embellish the nation.⁵⁰ This was a time when the fine arts were increasingly being purchased as pre-existing objects, a situation made possible by the burgeoning number of exhibitions of contemporary art.

The first collection of contemporary paintings in England that was fully accessible to the public was formed by the Foundling Hospital in London (est. 1739) although it should be added that by this date country house tourism was already in place offering access to numerous private collections.⁵¹ A number of artists contributed their works to the Foundling Hospital including Hayman, Highmore, Hudson, Hogarth and Ramsay and their canvases were later joined by those of Gainsborough, Reynolds and Benjamin West (see p. 433 below).⁵²

By 1760 the first annual exhibition of contemporary art was shown in the rooms of the Society of Arts. Then on 25 April 1769 the Royal Academy followed this precedent with the opening of their first such show, a tradition that continues to this day. The Academy’s regulations for their exhibitions stipulated that No copies Nor any Pictures without Frames will be admitted. It was also determined that an entrance fee would be payable to prevent the gallery from becoming too crowded by improper Persons. The works for sale were to be marked in the catalogue by an asterisk suggesting that a majority of works were commissioned.⁵³ With the exception of portraiture, that was generally created for a specific client, these shows were, in the long run, to be dominated by speculative productions.

The Academy’s exhibitions became, with their royal patronage, an immediate success with the London social season, but their impact on the visual arts was not always welcomed. In 1781 an article appeared in The Morning Chronicle that noted their adverse effect in their tendency to make the artist force his effects … making their work more assertive.⁵⁴ Exhibitions were not seen simply as neutral undertakings for the encouragement of the arts but events that played an active role in influencing the work that was produced to show in them. A similar tendency was noted in the competitions that were held for students at the Royal Academy Schools. In 1772 the student sculptor Thomas Englehart (1745–1809) won the gold medal for a relief and triumphed over his contemporary in the schools: John Flaxman (1755–1826). Englehart’s success was not universally applauded. One critic favoured Flaxman’s submission and observed that: What is original seems at first to many merely outré, and every deviation from the beaten track must needs be error.⁵⁵

Here the implication is that the gold medallist worked to the taste, the received opinion, of the judges whereas Flaxman’s more outré work was more original. From these attitudes it is evident that in the changed circumstances in which artists now functioned they were not simply at liberty to experiment, they would eventually be all-but compelled to do so.

In previous generations successful artists would employ a whole studio of assistants; be they apprentices, journeymen or specialists in particular aspects of their art or its craft. By these means a given work of art, though emanating from an individual, was in fact the product of a team working under the aegis of the studio. The autographed work was then less central to the concerns of the age than it would later become. This position is reflected in the surviving inventories for the great houses of eighteenth century England. In 1710 Drayton House, Northamptonshire was graced by One Picture of a girl with a lamb. Thirty seven other Pictures of Several sorts and Sizes. Similarly the 1743 inventory for Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire, lists prints … of harlots progress … in Pear tree frames wth Gilt Edges and a whole length of Queen Elizabth in a Gilt frame.⁵⁶ In the age of patronage the emphasis was on the subject, and even the picture frames, but not on the artist. The Queen Elizabth was the famous Ditchley Portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (1561/2–1636).⁵⁷ By 1772 this outlook had changed and the Ditchley inventory for that year lists among other pictures 19 Hogarth’s Prints of Marriage a la Mode the Harlots Progress &c and 4 others thus giving primacy to the artist’s name.

The presence of signatures on works of art in Britain is, generally speaking, a phenomenon that followed the Reformation.⁵⁸ Once introduced the autographed work was to acquire, over time, more social prestige and consequent financial value. These intrinsic and extrinsic properties would eventually offer mutual advantage to both the purchaser and the maker. One of the earliest examples of a signature on an English statuary’s work dates to 1573. In that year John Guldon of Hereford placed his name on the monument to John Harford in Bosbury Church in the county.⁵⁹ This whole question of the identification of the maker occurs in the 1581/82 Book of Ordinancies of the Painter Stainers of London. Article 8 in this list of regulations states that all works produced by members of the fraternity were to carry the marks of the house [studio/workshop] … to be appointed by the Master and Wardens [of the Guild]… to be known for good work. One penny to be paid for every piece so marked.⁶⁰ It is not known if this type of hallmark, such as that which had for long been administered by the Goldsmith’s Company, was ever introduced on a regular basis. Furthermore, although the approved mark was presumably recorded by the Company, it would probably have taken an enigmatic abstract form that did not reveal a name – rather like a mason’s mark. Such a mark of the house would have done nothing to foster the cult of the individual amongst painters and sculptors in the way that signatures would later do.

The workshop system, in which artists and artisans not only produced an item but also provided a service, persisted into the eighteenth century and beyond.⁶¹ In other words a portrait painter would not simply create a likeness on the canvas, but would organise its framing, crating, dispatch and hanging. The sense of a contractual obligation is implicit in the following receipt issued by the painter Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797) in 1783.

The employment of the joiner, being something of an afterthought, suggests that this tradesman uncrated the painting and hung it on arrival. This receipt for a painting is comparable to a bill dated 12 June 1821 for a mirror frame supplied by George Cooper of Piccadilly (opposite St James’s Church) to Thomas Stevens Esq.

In comparing these two transactions the similarity between art and artefact is obvious. Significantly only the typically high value of the plate glass for the mirror is covered by an insurance premium.

As we shall see an artist’s workshop in Early Modern Britain employed apprentices, journeymen and other assistants. Only some of these individuals could hope, in the long term, to become master craftsmen and still fewer would evolve into artists in their own right. Whatever their aspirations this was a system in which all could maintain some sort of employment. For a minority with connections, luck, skill or ability (in roughly that order) success could beckon. Apprenticeships for trades of many kinds conformed well to the needs of studio practice. Numerous crafts offered skills that were relevant to either painters or sculptors. For this reason the following three or four chapters will consider, in some detail, the Guilds and the apprentices they supervised. This will show how, in the years following the Civil War and into the mid-eighteenth century, the power of the Guilds as trade organisations declined as that of Academies rose in influence and the social position of artists changed. These events were accompanied by a parallel and associated transition from empirical training to a theoretical education in the fine arts. In other words there was a discernable shift from an apprenticeship to a pupilage. During this move from one system to the other there was some inevitable overlap. For this reason establishments like the St Martin’s Lane Academy or the Duke of Richmond’s cast gallery offered part-time schooling. Most significant was the demand for drawing from the naked, something that was not hitherto available to apprentices and seldom affordable for their masters. The life classes, in the St Martin’s Lane establishment, were therefore conducted during the evenings at the end of the working day and those who attended ranged from youthful apprentices to established artists.

As has been noted this evolution in art education was coupled with the rise of consumerism and the potential this gave artists to produce works in anticipation of selling them. In this respect the foundation of the Royal Academy with its annual market place (the exhibitions) may be seen as the response, by a collective of artists, to industrialisation and consumerism.⁶⁴ With speculative production and the availability of industrially produced oil paints it was both necessary and possible for painters to keep costs to a minimum. This probably had a deleterious impact on the workshop system amongst painters. Whilst these studios were now able to employ far fewer assistants the autographed work grew in importance. Now that artists were functioning as largely solo performers the presentation of their work to the public gained in importance. For this reason private galleries, or show rooms as they were known, were attached to the studios of successful artists – or space was rented for this purpose. A considerable income could be generated by the show-rooms. In 1781 some 20,000 individuals paid one shilling each to view John Singleton Copley’s Death of Chatham. Some decades later in January 1813 Copley’s fellow American Benjamin West PRA took the Great Room at 125 Pall Mall (a former home of the RA) to exhibit his enormous canvas (34 × 16 ft/1036 × 488 cm) Christ Rejected by the Jews. The picture was shown beyond a proscenium arch to increase its already theatrical effect still further (Fig. 136).⁶⁵ These show Rooms were not confined to painters for both Chantrey and Westmacott displayed their sculpture in such galleries.⁶⁶

Sculpture was always a capital intensive activity. This was one reason why the most successful practitioners continued to employ a large number of assistants well into the nineteenth century. Furthermore sculptors like Flaxman maintained the tradition of fine artists making applied art – as, for example, chimneypieces. The equivalent decorative work by liberal painters, items like chimney boards and overmantel pictures, gradually fell into disfavour amongst them whilst sculptors remained oblivious to this kind of apartheid in the visual arts. Not that these diverse activities were always necessarily seen with such equanimity by their potential clients. Lady Luxborough’s opinion of Prince Hoare of Bath (1711–1769) may have been typical. Hoare, she observed, although a statuary … deigns to exercise his art in sculpture on humble paper [-mâché] ceilings although her ladyship had the good grace to acknowledge that his work was very handsome.⁶⁷

As we have seen the availability of mass produced paints, especially in London, enabled painters to function with the aid of very few assistants – particularly by comparison with past practice. For this reason a landscape or history painting could be a speculative venture involving the minimum of financial risk. Consequently commissions were to become the exception. By the 1790s the painter Sir Peter Francis Bourgeois (1756–1811) was resistant to more contractural obligations and consequently sold his canvases by auction where some sold better, some worse as is usual with such sales. By 1796 many works in the Academy’s annual show were painted purposely for exhibition.⁶⁸ As noted above this led to the assumption that the remaining works on show were commissions. These approaches to the making and marketing of a particular canvas could be undertaken in one of two ways. In 1796 Robert Smirke RA (1752–1845) agreed to paint Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man on speculation and then, a couple of years later in 1798, accepted a commission to portray Otahite for a fee of £300.⁶⁹

The use of ready-made and prepared canvases by painters led, inexorably, to standardised dimensions for these and the frames that encompassed them. This seems to have occurred at a surprisingly early date. The physician Sir Theodore de Mayerne (1573–1655) was given a recipe for priming canvas by a Walloon, living in London in the early seventeenth century, who was a specialist imprimeur. At this time Dutch painters were using ready-made oak panels imported from the Baltic – a trade with which English merchants were certainly engaged. A century later, when Kneller painted his series of portraits of members of the Kit-Cat dining club between 1702 and 1717 they were painted on canvases that, even then, were considered to be of an unusual dimension – 36 × 28 in (91.5 × 71 cm). So standardised had canvases become that oddities of this dimension have been known ever since as Kit-cats.⁷⁰

The availability of ready-made oil paints was, as noted above, followed in the 1770s by the watercolour cakes developed by the Reeves Brothers and finally, in 1841, by John G. Rand’s collapsible metal tubes for oil paint.⁷¹ In the wake of these innovations a vast army of amateur artists were, for the first time, able to work in these media. Because bladder colours, the precursors to tube oil paint, were difficult to use (or rather reuse) professional painters were, more often than not, compelled to have their paints and pigments prepared in house. Once manufactured paints became widely available this became an aspect of their craft that many painters were able to abandon. For Reynolds, and his contemporaries in London, painting could be freed from the bondage of manual craft and accepted as a liberal art with cerebral aspirations. Freed from these practical considerations, and with far fewer (if any) assistants, successful painters could now work long and curious hours. In 1796 Benjamin West was subject to so many interruptions in the day, of late He paints most by Candle light after tea till 12 o’clock [midnight] or later and that the strong light from his lamp enables him to see better than by day light.⁷² Working in this way could result in rather theatrical effects, not that this discouraged Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830) from following West’s example. Lawrence was known, whilst residing in Jermyn Street, and later in Bond Street: to paint by the overpowering blaze of a large screen reflecting several Argand lamps, from nine or ten at night until three or five in the morning; and, after a few hours rest, go to his palette again.⁷³

In Stuart England a few knighthoods were bestowed on foreign artists – although in the case of Peter Paul Rubens this honour may have had more to do with his activities as an international diplomat than his prodigious gifts as a painter.⁷⁴ The first English artist to be so honoured by the Hanoverians was Sir James Thornhill (1675–1734) but he came from a gentry family in Dorset so his knighthood (of 1720) scarcely marks the rising status of artists at that time. This was an age in which social position mattered. Nevertheless personal demeanour could advance some fortunate individuals. Take, for example William Kent (1685–1748). Although his training was limited and his background modest he emerged from provincial Yorkshire as a figure of consequence on the national design scene. From humble beginnings, probably as a coach painter, he became the archetypical self-made man. Perhaps there was a streak of envy that led one commentator to remark that Kent was:

among those fortunate men who, without high qualities of mind or force of imagination, obtain wealth and distinction through good sense, easy assurance, and that happy boldness of manner which goes rejoycing along the way where original merit often hesitates and stumbles⁷⁵

Although the alleged lack of a high quality of mind must remain a matter of opinion, Kent certainly became dependent upon the patronage of the high born Richard Boyle 3rd Earl of Burlington which conferred some reflected status.

In the century in which Kent was born social class was an unavoidable issue although in this respect the professions held a distinct position. For the Quaker George Fox (1624–1691), who had been apprenticed as a shoe-maker, there were just three professions: the clergy, physicians and lawyers. Not that their situation was unassailable. For Nicholas Culpeper writing in 1649 the liberty of our Commonwealth [was] most infringed by three sorts of men: Priests, Physitions, Lawyers. Late in the century Gregory King identified six degrees of persons which suggests a more subtle social gradation, and therefore the mobility in status, of which Kent may have been one of the beneficiaries. Certainly, in the London of Queen Anne, Peter Earle estimated that about one fifth of the population had a claim to be categorised as middle class.⁷⁶ Across the Atlantic, in the American slave-owning state of Virginia, Patrick Henry (1736–1799) identified four classes of people: the well-born planters, the hearty yeoman, the lower orders of landless poor whites and the slaves (who represented about 40% of the population).⁷⁷ For later generations of artists the potential for crossing these social divides increased. The painter John Opie RA (1761–1807), from far off Cornwall, was one such. After his move to London it was said of him that His habitual ruggedness of address was stigmatised by the courtly observer despite which many of the members of polite society accepted this with a kind of joyful astonishment.⁷⁸

Anecdotes of this kind are inevitably more concerned with the artist than with the art. It would seem that as painters emerged from their obligations to their patrons they could more easily develop as personalities in their own right. One rather superficial manifestation of this related to matters of clothing and personal appearance. In this respect artists were now able to be as varied as any other group of individuals. Richard Wilson, when attending the St Martin’s Lane Academy was always superbly dressed and his waistcoat was of the richest green satin, ornamented with gold lace. Some, like George Henry Harlow appeared in the extreme of fashion so that he became the laughing stock of his brother artists.⁷⁹ The young George Morland (1763–1804)⁸⁰ was known for the very extreme of foppism in dress but even he was outdone by the effete appearance of Richard Cosway RA (1740–1830). Cosway was highly respected as a painter by his contemporaries although as a person Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830) referred to him as that little being we have been accustomed never to speak or think of but with contempt.⁸¹ W. H. Pyne was more forgiving in arguing that the quality of Cosway’s work shall stand recorded long after his harmless eccentricities have been forgotten and all his ghosts quietly laid in the Red Sea.⁸² For a slightly earlier generation it was said of the portrait painter Thomas King that he was … one of those men who suppose an eccentric line of conduct to be the mark or privilege of genius.⁸³

Eccentricity of dress, then as now, could be deployed for promotional effect. To some extent John Opie’s appearance was stage-managed. On being asked why the rustic Opie was not presented in a more polished guise Wolcot responded:

No! No! You may depend on it, in this wonder-gaping town [London], all curiosity would cease if his hair were dressed and he looked like any other man. I shall keep him in this state for the next five years at least.⁸⁴

Outside the inevitable grime of their studios sculptors were no less various in their dress. Flaxman, for example, never wore powder in his wig or hair nor did he ever attempt to exhibit ornaments of finery. In contrast Mr Wilton … always dressed in the height of fashion [but] his manners … were perfectly gentlemanlike⁸⁵ (Fig. 94).

From the standpoint of the twenty-first century, with its supposed egalitarianism, questions of social standing, if not appearance, may seem irrelevant. Nevertheless with the foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768, an officer class was established amongst painters, sculptors and architects. An Academician was now expected to be an artist and a gentleman (or lady, as the case may have been). As with a commission in the army or navy the diploma granted to every Academician, on his becoming a member, … has the king’s sign manual and gives him the rank of Esquire.⁸⁶ Despite their improved social standing artists now emerged from a great variety of backgrounds and foregrounds in terms of birth, training or education; differing circumstances which had the potential to place the Academy in something of a dilemma. For example, it was noted that its President’s pronunciation was tinctured with the accent of Devonshire, his features coarse and his outward appearance slovenly. In a courtly age these were seen as serious disadvantages. However, Sir Joshua Reynolds’ redeeming features included a mind that was certainly not inelegant.⁸⁷ A more significant predicament for the Academy occurred in 1797 when John Rossi (1762–1839) was proposed as an Associate RA. According to his fellow sculptor Sir Joseph Wilton RA (1722–1803), Rossi was a very ingenious Artist but not a cultivated man. To its credit the Academy elected him an Associate RA in 1798. Despite this, in 1800, just as Rossi was on the verge of being promoted to full RA, the question of his demeanour arose again. Wilton repeated his opinion that Rossi wanted gentlemanly and suitable manners although his claims as an artist were high.⁸⁸ Once again the Academy got its priorities right and the candidate was elected to full membership. On the other hand Rossi’s lack of urbanity may have inhibited his professional advancement. In the 1790s he was commissioned to model a small portrait of the Prince of Wales from life. On one of his visits for this work the Prince kept him waiting three hours while he first saw his shoemaker and tailor. Even worse, on a subsequent visit the sculptor waited in vain for five hours.⁸⁹

Perhaps the most obvious example of the unity of art and craft as manifest in the English language is the noun masterpiece. This word is defined in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (2 vols 2003) as: A work of outstanding artistry or skill; a masterly production; a consummate example of some skill or other kind of excellence … a person’s best piece of work. This rather schizophrenic interpretation is biased in favour of the historical definition rather than the modern understanding that a masterpiece is a supreme example of artistic endeavour. In the exact, the historic, the pre-industrial, sense of the word a masterpiece was a specimen of skill. This was the object that an apprentice submitted to the guild, to which he was registered, as a demonstration of his abilities in his chosen métier at the conclusion of his time. If the guild accepted this physical example of his abilities the youth could proceed to employment as a journeyman and, ultimately, gain his freedom to practice his chosen craft (but see pp. 66–67 below for exceptions).⁹⁰ Some of these apprentices went on to become master craftsmen of such exemplary quality that, in a well-worn eighteenth century phrase with still earlier origins, they were described as artists in their trades.⁹¹ Although this was generally a figure of speech it could also be, or become, a literal truth as was the case with the many highly skilled craftsmen who evolved into eminence as artists. This was certainly true of the one-time silver engraver William