I was thrilled to have ‘re-discovered’ Andrew Robertson’s important portrait of Benjamin West earlier this year. The story was published in the West Sussex Gazette (above).
Benjamin West
Benjamin West PRA was an American artist, who painted famous historical scenes such as The Death of Nelson, The Death of General Wolfe, and Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky. Entirely self-taught, West soon gained valuable patronage, and he toured Europe, eventually settling in London. West became one of the most celebrated artist’s of the age, and was elected to the prestigious position of President of the Royal Academy of Art, an insitution he helped to establish. His work was greatly admired by the King, George III who appointed Benjamin West historical painter to the Court and Surveyor of the King’s Pictures.
Andrew Robertson
Andrew Robertson was born in Aberdeen in 1777. He was the brother of Alexander and Archibald Robertson, who were also painters.
Robertson created a new style of miniature portrait that became dominant by the middle of the nineteenth century; at least four examples are held in the Victoria and Albert Museum. He broke with previous styles, particularly the work of Richard Cosway, and was critical of these earlier painters, describing their works as ‘pretty things but not pictures’. Robertson’s style included larger and more detail paintings, usually rectangular, and with a use of paint trying to emulate large oils on canvas, adding more gum to the paint to give it a greater lustre and depth of colour. Andrew Robertson’s work as a miniaturist led him to portray a number of notable figures of his era, the most celebrated of which was his portrait of the President of the Royal Academy Benjamin West. Andrew Robertson’s own self-portrait hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
In 2013 I was fortunate to discover an architectural perspective watercolour by one of the giant figures of Victorian England, Alfred Waterhouse (1830-1905). Unearthed in a provincial saleroom with a collection of other watercolours, I was able to identify the work as a perspective drawing for St. Matthew’s church, Blackmoor.
St. Matthew’s, Blackmoor, Hampshire, 1870 – watercolour on paper by Alfred Waterhouse (1830-1905)
There is a good deal of recorded history and anecdote regarding both the church and the execution of the perspective watercolour. The church was built from the funds of Roundell Palmer, 1st Earl of Selborne who gives an account of how he came to employ Waterhouse as Architect in Memorials Part 2 Personal and Political:
One of my earliest resolutions, after taking possession of our new home, was to build a church in that lower part of Selborne in which Blackmoor was situated, and to have the district made into a new parish. In the prosecution of that object I was aided by Frederic Parsons, then Vicar of Selborne, who in the early days of my connection with Magdalen College, had been tutor there, and was a good scholar, and a man of many accomplishments. He had, indeed, the best reason to know that such a subdivision of his parish was wanted. There was in that part of it which would naturally form the new district, a population of about 700, scattered in small clusters of houses, with only one considerable hamlet. That work was taken in hand soon after my residence at Blackmoor began. Mr. Alfred Waterhouse was my architect. I had been brought into communication with him over the plans for the new Courts of Law, and both liked him personally, and thought highly of his professional work. The church, which now stands at a distance of ten minutes’ walk north of our house, was built from his plans, and under his superintendence, by local masons and my own carpenters. This, and the building of a vicarage and schools and some more cottages, took the best part of three years. All the lower part of Selborne, in extent the larger part, was made, for ecclesiastical purposes, the new parish of St. Matthew, Blackmoor ; and the Church was consecrated on the 18th of May 1869. Bishop Claughton preached the sermon; and many of our most attached friends were present. On the day before we gave a dinner to the workmen and to a large body of the tenant farmers and labourers. In addressing them, I said, speaking-then, if ever, from my heart “Most men, at some time of their lives, desire to do some work which shall last after them, and which shall help those among whom they live when they themselves shall have passed away. And from the bottom of my soul I hope and pray that this undertaking, to be inaugurated (we trust) to-morrow, may prove to my children and my children’s children, and to generation after generation of their neighbours, the inhabitants of this place, a real and ever-increasing blessing.” It was a happy day.
The biographer of Waterhouse, Colin Cunningham, gives further insight to the execution of the perspective view:
..at St Matthew’s Blackmoor, where Waterhouse charged 2.5 days of his own time on the perspective, it was not done until 1870 when the church was well under way. There are therefore good grounds for accepting that many of the fine perspectives were drawn more as aids to the appreciation of how an agreed design would appear than as part of the sales pitch. The great perspectives may have been attractive to clients, but as works of art. A number were hung in the boardrooms and committee rooms of the buildings themselves.
So how did the watercolour drawing end up in private hands? Waterhouse submitted one of the perspectives to The Royal Academy exhibition of 1870 – exhibited as number 792 ‘St. Matthew’s, Blackmoor’ and attracted the following critique from The Athenaeum:
Mr. A. Waterhouse’s St. Matthew’s, Blackmoor has much of the architect’s grace and spirit, yet it is slightly mannered.
It seems logical that the perspective was purchased from the exhibition at the Royal Academy and after a series of events eventually ended up in my possession. Regrettably the previous owner(s) have not cared for it very well, as it has suffered the from the effects of being hung close to a source of natural light, causing some fading of the colour pigments and discolouring of the paper, though some of this can be righted by a skilled conservator.
The perfect outcome for me was to reunite the watercolour with the family who commissioned both the church and architect, over one hundred years later.
