Exhibition Review: Provo
British Avant-Garde Looks to the Past
Victorian Art at BYU's Museum of Art
by Ehren Clark
The narrative is familiar to most. In the latter half of the nineteenth-century, many French artists reacted to what they saw as an academic system irrelevant to their tumultuous society by forging ahead into new directions and avenues, reinventing the Classical Model and giving birth to the Modern. Across the Channel, a less well-known narrative played out. The English avant-garde was equally disgusted with the Academy and the limits it placed on artists and its irrelevance to society. As the new exhibit of works from the collection of John H. Schaeffer currently on view at BYU's MOA demonstrates, while the French were looking to the future, the English avant-garde were looking to the past. It was not until the mid-twentieth century, however, when the Modernist frenzy was settling and there was no Utopia in sight, that the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and other English artists were given the recognition they deserve.
Today, the ubiquitous popularity of Monet's water lilies and van Gogh's starry nights has overshadowed an equally fecund period in English art history. The theory that charged early Modernism in Paris and influenced the work of Cezanne and Manet, the early Impressionist group, and the multi-faceted and broad group known as the Post-impressionists, is no more dense than the theory that grounded the Pre-Raphaelites. The French really have no equivalent to the critical influence of English writers like John Ruskin and Roger Fry. The Parisian avant-garde were reacting to their culture, the English, to theirs. But it might be said that while art was moving in new directions with experimentation and imagination in France, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood -- Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt -- and the countless others that they were to inspire, were moved by a more humanistic impulse than the purely experimental and cognitive movements of the French. One finds a spirit, a truth to the Pre-Raphaelites. The Industrial Revolution was encroaching upon the serenity of the small and peaceful Isle, and it is no wonder that artists, writers, poets, and critics would cry out for their ancestry, as we do today!
The tendency to look back on tradition, to hold on to it so as not to lose one's culture is prominent today in England: preserving the red phone booths that all tourists have their photos taken in, the red mail boxes, the on-and-off double decker, the Bobby. These are symbols, icons of the "English," touchstones to identity not unlike James Dean, Disneyland, and the Fourth of July here in the States. The English of the nineteenth-century had their own touchstones to look back to in architecture and literature. This is aptly evidenced by the painting that introduces the viewer to the exhibit at BYU: Daniel Maclise's "The Wrestling Scene in 'As You Like It,'" 1855, depicting a scene from one of Shakespeare's plays.|0|
The Pre-Raphaelites, the most notable group of artists to come from the Victorian period, sought a simpler and noble past. Medieval subjects were popular. Narratives, something taboo in the French avant-garde, were highly developed, more so than even the most evolved work of a Dutch genre artist. Tales of chivalry, like Sir Francis Bernard Dicksee's "Chivalry," 1885, depicting a typical scene of heraldry as one knight slays another to rescue a tree-bound fair maiden were highly esteemed.|1| Lofty subject matter was common, such as John William Waterhouse's "Mariamne," a compelling and moving narrative of the wife of Herod who stands in chains before her dishonorable husband who cannot look at her because he knows he has wronged her and is unjustly sending her to her death.|2| Such representations focus on a past where honor, heroicism, bravery nobility and justice actually meant something.
Subject and form are brilliantly conjoined in Pre-Raphaelite work. The Brotherhood, in looking to the past, named themselves the Pre-Raphaelites to approach painting in a manner which pre-dates Raphael, the High Renaissance master who brought Renaissance painting to an apex in its orientation towards a correct representation of nature. He perfected the narrative using exacting perspective, believable space, appropriate color and a balanced composition. Although the Pre-Raphaelite painters could render well, they rejected Raphael's accomplishment that set the course for four hundred years of academic theory in motion. They rejected the slavery to perspective, to exacting space, and a perfectly balanced composition. In this they and the French were in agreement.
As seen in Maclise's piece and others throughout the show, one might recognize the similarity between the figures' placement frontally on the picture plane and a medieval frieze. This is best seen in Sir Edward Coley's "The Pilgrim at the Garden of Idleness," 1874. Here the medieval frieze is replicated. Maclise's composition is crowded, as were many of the original Brotherhood's work, and reflects the subject in an animated and loose composition with no apparent concentration on perfect balance as prescribed by the academy. Colors are broad in range and haphazard. The result is a lively and provocative display, interesting in its uncanny reality and adherence to the humorous subject.
Color was a dominant factor in much of the Pre-Raphaelite work, as well as the painting that followed. As mentioned, Maclise does not hold back with his color palette and in William Holman Hunt's "The Sweetness of Doing Nothing," |3| the subject may be reclining lazily but the color is alive and unrestrained. Hunt's piece also introduces a curious aspect of the Brotherhood's work -- a penchant for red hair. This is evident in Hunt's piece as well as in others in the show. Why they, especially the original three, chose this motif is equivocal, but it has a pre-contemporaneous quality and a classical appeal.
As mentioned, Masterworks of Victorian Art not only refers to the original Brotherhood, but represents the many followers that were influenced by them through the end of the century. The impact of their ideas can readily be seen as one identifies Pre-Raphaelian elements and recognizes them in other works in the show. This aesthetic lends itself to mental as well as emotional and spiritual edification. The art of the Victorian era, referencing the life of the monarch-1837-1901, was no less than thriving. Annual exhibitions at the Royal Academy of London propelled a body of work as vast as any period, if not more so, save our own. The subject matter was across the board but tended towards genre painting and narrative work. The pieces in the MOA show that do not resonate with the Pre-Raphaelites have a charm of their own, overtly sentimental though they might be. Some are more profound such as Thomas Faed's "Worn Out," |4| depicting a tender relationship between an impoverished father and his son, but most lack a sublime element of true human emotion such as the transparent James Archer's "The Betrothal of Robert Burns and Highland Mary."|5|
However, these artists, like the Pre-Raphaelites, also seem to gravitate towards the past, embrace tradition, recapture old England while soot darkened the London skies and steam engines cut through the pristine countryside.
This exhibit may not have the best or most well-known works from the period like Millais' "Ophelia," or Rossetti's "Venus Verticordia." But one must enjoy this exhibit for what it is, an educational experience, the caliber of which is not usually to be found in Utah- appropriate to the institution which houses it. As today's viewer looks back, as traditional as we have become as a society and not loosing our heads in relativism and contemporary uncertainty, there is much to be gleaned by this exhibition and the mission of the Pre-Raphaelites. If we care for our origins, for the best we are as human beings, the Victorian Era did its best to do the same.
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Feature: Alder's Accounts
Around the Block with Gordon Cope
In Olpin/Seifrit/Swanson's Utah Art, nestled between LeConte Stewart's 1937 masterpiece, "Private Car," and Lee Greene Richards' well-known, "Dreaming of Zion," is a painting entitled "Utah Hills, East of Springville." This gem of a landscape was created by one of Utah's most revered landscape and portrait artists, Gordon Nicholson Cope [1906-1999]. Cope was raised in Salt Lake and, as a youth, studied with fellow Avenues art buddy, A. B. Wright. Cope also received instruction under the watchful eye of LeConte Stewart, whose influence is clearly apparent in "Utah Hills" and other typical Cope creations.
As was the custom with the majority of those first and second generation Utah artists, in 1924 Cope traveled to Europe where, after four years of study of the "old masters" in multiple European venues, he enrolled in the Academie Julian in Paris. Cope found himself back in Salt Lake in 1930, directing the art department at the McCune School of Music and Art, which was housed in the McCune Mansion and had emerged out of the dissolution of the LDS University in the 1920s.*
After just one year at the McCune School, Cope spent another year instructing at the short-lived Mountain School of Art, followed by service as the director of the Art Barn School. At the height of the great depression, when art sales were minimal, Cope was selected as one of the original ten artists to work under the auspices of the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project (PWAP). It has always been quite ironic to me that some of the very best art came out of the depression years of 1930 to 1937. Perhaps the depression provided a previously lacking degree of emotion that found its way onto the canvases of Maynard Dixon, LeConte Stewart, Carlos Anderson, and others. What were some of the first assignments of these talented artists who were charged with improving public and educational buildings? The most famous of the works was the 260 foot circular space inside the Capitol rotunda, recently restored and rededicated. Henri Moser painted a triptych depicting contemporary Utah life. Ranch Kimball, as was mentioned in a previous column, chronicled the activities of a number of CCC camps and their projects. Cope's contribution was "sculpture and sketches of early Indian life," but their whereabouts are unknown.
Cope's skills as a singer were equal to his artistic skills. While in Europe, he sang with Opera Companies including performances at the London Palladium with her Majesty Queen Mary of England in attendance. Musical talent apparently ran in the family. His brother, John Nicholson Cope, wrote and recorded sound for over a hundred films. His granddaughter, Shana Carlsen, is a professional opera singer and Warren Zevon, the late pop musician, was his grand-nephew.
I know of three entertaining stories associated with Gordon Cope. Dan Burke, former director of the Salt Lake Art Center and author of the thesis and book, Utah Art of the Depression, noted a story about Cope and his colleagues as they were completing the mural painting in the Capitol rotunda. "When the murals were mounted...and the scaffolding taken down, it was discovered that a paint-stained cloth had been left on a shelf at the base of the dome. Cope, armed with a long fishing rod, spent the greater part of a day at casting before the undecorative object was landed."
My friend, and distant relative, Adele Parkinson (Clayton Williams' sister) told me about her experience with Cope. She reported that her mother wanted to surprise her husband with a portrait of Adele, but since Mr. Williams evidently didn't think the family budget included such things as portraits, she saved a little money here and there so that she could commission Cope to paint Adele and present the finished product to him as a surprise. Adele walked to Cope's home and studio on I Street once or twice a week after school to sit for the portraitist. She was 17 or 18 at the time, and said that he was very nice, perhaps partially as a result of his "always having a glass of wine around when he painted." After a month or so, Cope completed the commission, and the large painting now hangs in Adele's son's home in southern California. One other tidbit that Adele offered was that she remembered that the old upscale Makoff Store on the corner of 2nd East and South Temple use to hang the paintings of some of the local artists in the tea room in their store. If you don't see the irony, please call me.
The last story was offered recently by Springville Museum of Art director, Vern Swanson, and gallery owner, Dave Ericson, at the ash-scattering of our departed friend, Bill Seifrit. Swanson posed the trivia question: "Who was it who drove A.B. Wright to the train station after he had been discovered by Mabel Frazer at the U with his model, Myrtle [for a more detailed explanation, see our January 2007 edition]. According to Ericson, it was Wright's friend and former student, Gordon Cope, who was in the driver's seat for the inauspicious occasion.
Cope spent many years living and painting in San Francisco. In addition to his many well-executed landscapes, Cope can be remembered as the artist who painted three memorable portraits (in addition to Adele's, of course): Governor Henry Blood (supporter of the arts, the PWAP and renown art collector), art colleague and friend Ranch Kimball, and Ranch's uncle, the crusty old Mormon iconoclast, J. Golden Kimball. The latter's portrait, which can be found at the Museum of Church History and Art, depicts Golden in a way that seems to fully meet his quirky character so expertly imitated by the late Jim Kimball.
Cope's prolific career is evident by the number of fine examples of his paintings and portraits found in government buildings, professional and business offices (Zions Bank has several well-executed works), and private collections throughout the west.
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