August 9th, 1857 - Hawthorne's 5th visit

 

Chorlton Road, Manchester
August 9th 1857 —

Mr. Wilding having gone on a tour to Scotland, I had to be at the Consulate every day last week till yesterday; when I absented myself from duty, and went to the Exhibition. 

Dutch Housewife by Gerrit Dou (Gerard Dow)

Una and I spent an hour together, looking principally at the old Dutch masters, who seem to me the most wonderful set of men that ever handled a brush.

Such lifelike representations of cabbages, onions, brass kettles, and kitchen crockery; such blankets, with the woollen fuzz upon them; such everything I never thought that the skill of man could produce! Even the photograph cannot equal their miracles. The closer you look, the more minutely true the picture is found to be, and I doubt if even the microscope could see beyond the painter’s touch. 

Gerard Dow seems to be the master among these queer magicians. A straw mat, in one of his pictures, is the most miraculous thing that human art has yet accomplished; and there is a metal vase, with a dent in it, that is absolutely more real than reality. 

Girl chopping onions by Gerrit Dou

These painters accomplish all they aim at, — a praise, methinks, which can be given to no other men since the world began. They must have laid down their brushes with perfect satisfaction, knowing that each one of their million touches had been necessary to the effect, and that there was not one too few nor too many. 

The Milkmaid by Vermeer

And it is strange how spiritual and suggestive the commonest household article — an earthen pitcher, for example — becomes, when represented with entire accuracy. These Dutchmen got at the soul of common things, and so made them types and interpreters of the spiritual world. 

Afterwards I looked at many of the pictures of the old masters, and found myself gradually getting a taste for them; at least, they give me more and more pleasure the oftener I come to see them. 

Doubtless, I shall be able to pass for a man of taste by the time I return to America. It is an acquired taste, like that for wines; and I question whether a man is really any truer, wiser, or better for possessing it. 

There were 19 Turners at the Art Treasures exhibition 

Including this of Cologne at Sunset

From the old masters, I went among the English painters, and found myself more favorably inclined towards some of them than at my previous visits; seeing something wonderful even in Turner’s lights and mists and yeasty waves, although I should like him still better if his pictures looked in the least like what they typify. 

The Rape of Paris by Etty 

The most disagreeable of English painters is Etty, who had a diseased appetite for woman’s flesh, and spent his whole life, apparently, in painting them with enormously developed busts. I do not mind nudity in a modest and natural way; but Etty’s women really thrust their nudity upon you with malice aforethought, … . and the worst of it is they are not beautiful. 

The March to Finchley by Hogarth

Among the last pictures that I looked at was Hogarth’s March to Finchley; and surely nothing can be covered more thick and deep with English nature than that piece of canvas. 

Manchester Courier, August 1857

The face of the tall grenadier in the centre, between two women, both of whom have claims on him, wonderfully expresses trouble and perplexity; and every touch in the picture meant something and expresses what it meant. 

Manchester Courier, Saturday 8th August 1857

The price of admission, after two o’clock, being sixpence, the Exhibition was thronged with a class of people who do not usually come in such large numbers. 

It was both pleasant and touching to see how earnestly some of them sought to get instruction from what they beheld. The English are a good and simple people, and take life in earnest.

Nathaniel Hawthorne 

When the numbers were finally in, the sixpenny tickets were deemed to be a success.

The previous Saturday Charles Dickens had spent the day at the Exhibition. He “expressed his delight at the exhibition in very emphatic terms.” 

The same day there were special trains to the Exhibition from St Helens and Liverpool (“which was not very extensively patronised”).

On Monday 3rd the Queen of the Netherlands visited. This is of interest on two counts: firstly she was the guest of WR Sandbach of Aigburth, and secondly because the following day she had a trip on the Birkenhead ferry Woodside.

The Sandbach family were plantation owners and slave traders engaging in artwashing their reputation. 

William Robertson Sandbach by Gibson

Over to National Museums, Liverpool:

The Sandbach family were part of the Sandbach, Tinne & Co. dynasty. They were shipowners, merchants, bankers, politicians and plantation owners. They exported sugar, coffee, cotton, timber, molasses and rum from the Caribbean. The company were prominent in Demerara, Berbice, and Essequibo in British Guiana, now known as Guyana. The Sandbachs became extremely wealthy through the enslavement, trafficking and forced labour of many tens of thousands of people.

The Sandbachs were important patrons of Gibson and his artistic circle in Rome. They displayed their work in a purpose-built sculpture room at the family residence, Hafodunos Hall, near Abergele in North Wales. Traditionally, artists were patronised by royalty and aristocracy. Perhaps the Sandbachs believed they could establish the same social status by commissioning art and immortalising their legacy. It is important to consider that these significant works were funded through wealth gained from Britain’s colonial empire and the exploitation and enslavement of many thousands of people. William Robertson Sandbach’s estate was worth £320,257 in 1891, which would be about £45 million today.

 There was something for everybody at the Art Treasures Exhibition, from the Queen of The Netherlands to young factory operatives, which spawned an industry where you could buy a range of product - splendid prints on fine paper or 16 pages of comic cuts with jokes innumerable.