Louisa Waterford and John Ruskin

'For You Have Not Falsely Praised'

Caroline Ings-Chambers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351559683
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Louisa Waterford (1818-91), modest, retiring, of good family, renowned for her beauty, and with extraordinary grace, was the embodiment of a Victorian ideal of womanhood. But like the age itself, her life was filled with contrasts and paradoxes. She had been born with artistic gifts, and became a satellite of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, though she had no formal training. Then, at the height of John Ruskin's intellectual power and success as a critic, she asked him to accept her as an art student, and he accepted. Their correspondence- often harshly critical, never, as Waterford put it, falsely praising - lies at the heart of this book. These are letters which open a spectrum of discussion on the cultural, gender and social issues of the period. Both Waterford and Ruskin engaged in tireless philanthropic work for diverse causes, crossing social boundaries with subtle determination, and both responded to a sense of duty as well as an artistic vocation. But, as Ings-Chambers shows, their correspondence was more than a dialogue about society: it helped to make Waterford the artist she became.

CHAPTER 1
❖
Early Life and Artistic Development of the Artist

Louisa Waterford was born in Paris at the British Embassy during the politically precarious days for France of the Bourbon Restoration (1815–24), which followed the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo. The Embassy building, which was the first to combine the functions of British diplomatic mission and ambassadorial home, had been acquired in 1814 by the Duke of Wellington on behalf of George III. An early eighteenth-century town residence, it had been substantially altered and extended in the early nineteenth century by Pauline Leclerc, Napoleon Bonaparte’s sister, and was still furnished with Empire decoration when Wellington took possession.

Political tensions, diplomatic formalities, and her elegant surroundings do not appear to have impinged on Louisa Waterford’s early family life. Despite their ambassadorial duties in these charged times, both parents were strongly present in their two daughters’ lives. Protocol dictated that not only Charles Stuart as am bassador, but also Elizabeth Stuart, as ambassadress, attend the French court and host formal entertainments at the Embassy. Their active participation in their children’s lives was a reflection of their generally liberated attitudes for parents of the period towards their daughters’ upbringing.

As second child and second daughter, Louisa’s arrival in an aristocratic family in the first quarter of the nineteenth century might have been expected to cause disappointment within her family. This was by no means the case, according to the account of family reactions given by Elizabeth Hardwicke, Louisa’s grandmother:

Mama and grandmama were too happy to escape from suffering to mind anything beyond a living child. By Charles the poor little forlorn girl was exceedingly well received.… As our daughter is not a son, I intend she shall be a beauty.¹

From the first, she seems to have been healthy and happy by nature. At the age of four months her father reported: ‘Louisa is never ill. I see her daily, and, as far as my judgment goes, she is the healthiest and best-tempered child I ever saw in my life’. She also had the merit of ‘giving no one any trouble’.² The next mention of her is not until she was five years old, when her mother describes her as ‘in her usual state of jumping, and laughing, and talking’.³

Sir Charles Stuart was recalled from the embassy in 1824, and the family returned to England. Louisa and her sister Charlotte appear to have enjoyed the change of living in the country at Bure, Highcliffe. Four years later, when Louisa was ten years old, her father was reappointed French Ambassador and the family returned to Paris.

Up until this time, Louisa and her sister had been ‘admirably educated by their wise and excellent mother’.⁴ Now, a governess, Miss Hyriott, was appointed. The Stuart parents again showed that they were untypical of the period in their relationship with their children’s governess. Governesses were routinely exploited and isolated by the families in which they held their positions. Charles and Elizabeth Stuart held Miss Hyriott in high regard and enjoyed her company. She was even a companion to Sir Charles in his final illness, after both daughters had grown up.

As a governess, Miss Hyriott was also unusual for the era. Long before the foundation in 1848 of the Governesses’ Benevolent Association, set up to tackle the deplorable lack of education of most governesses by establishing a curriculum in elementary subjects, Miss Hyriott possessed capacity and calibre for her work.⁵ Contemporary accounts commend her as ‘an excellent governess, to whom both sisters were much attached’,⁶ and as ‘a clever and interesting woman’.⁷ Despite her superior qualities, her influence did not repress Louisa’s buoyant nature: ‘Louisa in the highest spirits, always getting into trouble by hearing or seeing what was not intended for her, to the great distress of Miss Hyriott’.⁸ Miss Hyriott remained with the family until Louisa married, and both sisters kept in touch with her until she died. Informal education was typical for girls at this period, and whilst Louisa Waterford’s experience was good, it was no substitute for a formal education. In the same way, the informal instruction she received in drawing could not approach the advantages of a professional training as an artist.

Contemporary accounts of Louisa Waterford as a child all give evidence of an avid interest in art and a talent for drawing. Augustus Hare claims that by six to eight years of age Louisa Waterford was ‘occupying every spare moment with the original compositions of figures’.⁹ This level of application and ability seems doubtful, especially when considered against drawings done by the artist approximately ten years later. Nonetheless, according to the recollections of Sophia, Lady Rose (née Thellusson), Louisa Waterford was ‘perfectly devoted to her paint-boxes at ten years old’.¹⁰ Moreover, Hare is not alone in his high estimation of Waterford’s juvenile endeavour. Her cousin, Charles Stuart, comments: ‘From a very early period in her life, her pen-and-ink sketches showed great genius, and her coloured drawings were also much admired’.¹¹ Whilst no date is specified, the comment is contained in a description of Waterford’s life from before the age of seventeen, when she was presented at court. Further confirmation of her early artistic talent is provided by the critic, Evelyn Woolward, in her review of a posthumous exhibition of Waterford’s life work at Carlton House Terrace. Commenting on a drawing by the artist of herself and her sister, made at the age of seven, she says, ‘though naturally somewhat uncertain in drawing and crude in colouring, it is a marvellous production for a child of that age’.¹² Woolward goes on to observe that ‘her early pen-and-ink sketches also showed great genius’.¹³ There is no indication of the date of these sketches, but it is notable that, amongst Louisa Waterford’s earliest known drawings, pen-and-ink sketches are the most developed area of her work.

There remains little trace of the identity of the art instructors Louisa Waterford had as a girl. Stuart simply says, ‘no doubt she had many drawing masters’, who included her mother, ‘herself no mean artist’.¹⁴ Ellen C. Clayton, who researched Waterford’s career for her book English Female Artists, published in 1874, gives a fuller account of Waterford’s art tuition:

Lady Waterford, as a child, was taught to copy large chalk heads after French pictures. These studies, with a few lessons in landscape from Mr. Page, formed an unsatisfactory groundwork. Later, copying a portrait in oils from Sir Joshua with an artist named Shepherdson completed all she ever learnt from masters.¹⁵

‘Mr. Page’ may have been William Page, R.A., 1794–1872,¹⁶ who specialised in archi tectural drawings, landscapes and figure subjects, and who was also a successful drawing master.¹⁷ The extent of Page’s influence on Waterford’s art cannot be gauged, since it is not known at what period or for how long he worked with her; nevertheless, certain observations are possible. His interest lay mainly in landscape and architectural subjects, whilst Louisa Waterford’s lifelong preference lay in figure drawing; from this perspective alone, his influence appears not to have been far-reaching. With regard to certain figures in eastern dress in Waterford’s early work, it is noteworthy that William Page is thought to have visited Turkey in about 1818. Figures dressed in eastern costumes feature in a number of his watercolours in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection. Disappointingly, in terms of his influence, Page’s figures and drapery are rather set and rigid. Louisa Waterford’s figure drawing was always flowing and graceful. Again Page is unlikely to have been of real practical influence on her drawing.

The Reynolds’ painting referred to by Clayton may have been Philip Yorke with a Dog, a portrait of Louisa Waterford’s maternal uncle, Philip, Lord Royston who tragically drowned as a young man:

The most precious object at Wimpole, to which Lord and Lady Hardwicke had returned as a residence in 1806, was the exquisite portrait of ‘Philip Yorke with a dog’, which had been painted in his infancy by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The sorrowing parents could scarcely bear to look at it, yet still less could bear to be long away from it, and one of the first motives which led their grand-daughter Louisa, afterwards Lady Waterford, to long to be able to paint herself, was that she might execute as good a copy as possible for her mother from the portrait of the brother to whom she had been devoted.¹⁸

Unfortunately, no copy by Waterford of this Reynolds portrait is known, but a copy by her of another Reynolds picture exists at Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire, Cupid as a Link Boy.¹⁹ Possibly this copy and the one of the portrait were made at around the same period. The likelihood is increased by the fact that Waterford’s other works in this collection date from the early part of her life, before her marriage in 1842. All aspects of her work with Shepherdson, including his identity, remain undetermined.

The earliest extant examples of Louisa Waterford’s work are held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in the Hole Bequest, which contains work by the artist between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one.²⁰ Owing to the paucity of available material by the artist up to the time of her widowhood, these two albums of sketches and watercolour drawings form a valuable contribution to the study of her development. In accordance with her age and the level of training she had received up to this period, the material in the Hole Bequest displays immaturity of style, composition and subject matter.

Study of the albums is complicated, because the contents of each album are not arranged in strict chronological order. This difficulty is augmented by the fact that very few entries are dated. In each case, however, there is a guide to when the albums were begun. The first page of the larger, though shorter and less densely filled album, which I shall label album A, is dated July 17th, 1832, beneath a pencil sketch of two hands. The smaller album B, which is packed with a wide variety of subject matter, has the date June 1833 within its first few pages.

Album A in particular is confusingly arranged in respect of time. Very few dates are given, the last one being 1834, 28 April. Nonetheless, work later than this sketch of two women and a child has definitely been included. Most notably this occurs with two Continental townscapes, which presumably can be dated to around 1835, when Louisa Waterford first travelled to continental Europe. Generally, it is more difficult to tell in this album which are the earlier and which the later sketches. This is because the range of subject material in Album A is rather less diverse than in album B, which introduces a whole new range of themes after the first twenty-one entries.²¹ The new themes in themselves help to give an idea of date. By contrast, themes are absent from album A that are otherwise frequent in the bequest, and characteristic of her early work. These include historical subjects, figu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Early Life and Artistic Development of the Artist
• 2 The Occupations of Marriage
• 3 A Nineteenth-Century Correspondence Course
• 4 The Letters
• 5 The Revival of Monumental Art and Fresco Painting in Great Britain and Ireland
• 6 The Murals at Ford
• 7 The ‘Companionship of Art’ and the Later Years
• Bibliography
• Index