l.matthews jones:lessons in seeing:art,religion and class in the east end of london,1881-1898

7/30/2019 l.matthews jones:lessons in seeing:art,religion and class in the east end of london,1881-1898

1/20

This article was downloaded by: [176.241.225.15]On: 30 December 2012, At: 01:50Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Journal of Victorian CulturePublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscript ion inf ormat ion:h t tp : / / w w w. tandfo nl ine . co m/ loi / r jvc20

Lessons in Seeing: Art , Religion andClass in the East End of London,18811898Lucinda Mat t hews-Jonesa

a Sw ansea Universit yVersion of record f irst publi shed: 14 Dec 2011.

To cite this article: Lucinda Mat t hew s-Jones (2011): Lessons in Seein g: Art , Reli gion and Class inthe East End of London, 18811898, Journal of Vict orian Cult ure, 16:3, 385-403

To link t o this art icle: ht t p: / / dx.doi .org/ 10.1080/ 13555502.2011.611697

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representationthat the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of anyinstructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primarysources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13555502.2011.611697http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjvc20


2/20

Lessons in Seeing: Art, Religion and Class in the East Endof London, 18811898

Lucinda Matthews-Jones

Anybody who passed through East Londons Commercial Street at Easter time after1881 would have been struck by the festive appearance of St Judes Parish School,where the Whitechapel Fine Art Exhibitions were held each year until 1898. 1 Visitorsto these exhibitions went down a narrow passageway decorated with colourful agsand bunting. On that walk, they transcended the darkness of the East End streets.They were led away from the world of brick and mortar, where uncultured streeturchins turned somersaults and jeered at the policeman guarding the gate, to an artgallery which was intended to radiate spiritual sweetness and light. 2 The ReverendSamuel Barnett, vicar of St Judes Church, Whitechapel, and his spouse, Henrietta,founded the exhibitions. They were horried by the spiritual poverty of East London,and set up the exhibitions, as well as the nearby settlement house Toynbee Hall, toact as lamps in a dark place.3 The Barnetts believed that art was uniquely able to

reawaken the religious impulses of man, impulses which had, they thought, beenburied by the modern onslaught of industry and urbanization.In the present article, I examine how the Barnetts invested the Whitechapel Fine

Art Exhibitions with religious meaning. My research draws on existing scholarly work concerned with the creation of Victorian museums and art galleries but argues, incontrast to these inquiries, that art galleries were more than staged environments for

1. A number of studies explore the Whitechapel Exhibition; see Frances Borzello, Civilizing Caliban: The Misuse of Art (London: Routledge, 1987); Seth Koven, The Whitechapel

Picture Exhibition and the Politics of Seeing, in Museum Culture: Histories, Discourse,Spectacles, ed. by Daniel J. Sherman and Irit Rogoff (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 2248;Diana Maltz, British Aestheticism and the Urban Working Class, 18701900 (Basingstoke:Palgrave, 2006); and Shelagh Wilson, The Highest Art for the Lowest People: TheWhitechapel and Other Philanthropic Art Galleries, 18771901, in Governing Cultures: Art Institutions in Victorian London, ed. by Paul Barlow and Colin Trodd (Aldershot:Ashgate, 2000), pp. 17286.

2. Art in Whitechapel A Light in Dark Places,Pall Mall Gazette (hereafter PMG), 15 April1882, pp. 34 (p. 4); Jane H. Simpson, An Art Exhibition in East London, The Sunday Review , October 1887, pp. 9899; Our Ladies Column, The Preston Guardian , 19 April1884, p. 3.

3. Walter Besant used these words to describe Toynbee Hall and other university settlementsin East London (London: Chatto and Windus, 1901), p. 348.

Journal of Victorian CultureVol. 16, No. 3, December 2011, 385403

ISSN 1355-5502 print/ISSN 1750-0133 online 2011 Leeds Trinity University Collegehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13555502.2011.611697http://www.tandfonline.com

Dw

D

m


3/20

the creation of a secular society. 4 Since the publication of Carol Duncan and AlanWallachs inuential essay, The Museum of Modern Art as Late Capitalist Ritual,scholars have been preoccupied with how museums and art galleries acted as secularcathedrals of the emerging nation-state. 5 By following Michael Foucault and Jean

Baudrillard, other critics have maintained that the museum can be understood as aform of discourse, a symbolic structure that enacted and represented the oppressivecultural forms of bourgeois capitalism. 6 Subsequently, scholars interested in art forthe people have tended to understand the Victorian art gallery as a site for thedissemination of rational and secular middle-class culture. 7

Yet, as Seth Koven has pointed out, the Barnetts Whitechapel Exhibitionsreected the confusion and overlap between the secular and sacred. 8 DonaldPreziosi has argued against the long-held belief that museums constituted a cleanbreak with pre-Enlightenment systems of knowledge, including, especially religion. 9

Here I demonstrate the important role of Christianity in the establishment of theWhitechapel Fine Art Exhibitions. My discussion shows that the Barnetts hoped thatart would re-Christianize society. The Barnetts understanding of art diverged froman aesthetic movement, spearheaded by Oscar Wilde, Algernon Charles Swinburneand James Whistler, which maintained that art should serve no religious, politicalor historical purposes. 10 The Barnetts, by contrast, adopted a theory of art that was

4. Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago, Introduction, in Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum, ed. by Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 110(p. 5).

5. Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach, The Museum of Modern Art as Late Capitalist Ritual:An Iconographical Analysis, in Grasping the World , ed. by Preziosi and Farago, pp. 48399 (rst published in Marxist Perspectives, 4 (1978), 2851). See also Jesus Pedro Lorente,Cathedrals of Urban Modernity: The First Museums of Contemporary Art, 18001930 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998).

6. Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces, trans. by Jay Miskowiec, Diacritics, 16 (1986), 2227;Beth Lord, Foucaults Museum: Difference, Representation, and Genealogy, Museum and Society , 4 (2006), 1114; Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, trans. by James Benedict(Paris: Denoe l-Gonthier, 1968; repr. London: Verso, 1996). The books to start this trendwere by Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Modern Museum: History, Theory, Politics(London:Routledge, 1995), and Eileen Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge(London: Routledge, 1992). See also the essays in Governing Cultures. In theirintroduction, Barlow and Todd explore these themes with reference to the WhitechapelFine Art Exhibitions.

7. For histories on Art for the People see Giles Watereld, Art for the People: Culture in theSlums of Late Victorian Britain (London: Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1994); MichaelHarrison, Art and Philanthropy: T. C. Horsfall and the Manchester Art Museum, in City,Class and Culture: Studies in Social Policy and Cultural Production in Victorian Manchester ,ed. by Alan J. Kidd and K.W. Roberts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985),pp. 12047; and Michael Harrison, Art and Social Regeneration: The Ancoats ArtMuseum, Manchester Regional History Review , 7 (1993), 6372.

8. Koven, Whitechapel Picture Exhibition, p. 34.9. Donald Preziosi, Brain of the Earths Body: Art, Museums and the Phantasms of Modernity

(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press, 2003), p. 29.10. Elizabeth Prettejohn, Beauty and Art, 17502000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2005).

386 Lucinda Matthews-Jones

Dw

D

m


4/20

intimately bound up with religious meaning. In turn, they sanctied the acts of givingand seeing art. The loaning of art by middle-class collectors, they argued, wouldreconnect the rich with their religious selves while at the same time providing thepoor with a chance to gain spiritual insight by seeing beyond the material squalor

surrounding them.For Koven class identity, and not religion, has been the primary category of analysis. Despite noting the uid boundary between the sacred and the secular at theWhitechapel Exhibitions, Koven nonetheless emphasizes cross-class contact as theirprimary motivation and outcome. 11 Diana Maltz is critical of his reading, arguingthat the Whitechapel Exhibitions, far from offering an arena for genuine exchangebetween working- and middle-class culture, acted only to afrm bourgeois self-expression and self-identication. 12 The Barnetts were certainly concerned withfostering cross-class contact at their exhibitions, but a greater concern still wassocietys spiritual poverty. The Barnetts intended to revive the spiritual lives not only of the urban poor, but also of their well-to-do West End counterparts, for they considered them to be no less spiritually impoverished by the modern age. Of course,they thought of these two classes in entirely different ways. Whereas the middleclasses simply had to give art in order to be spiritual, the working-class visitorrequired education and observation. This explains the practice of Voting for YourFavourite Pictures begun in 1889. Exhibition visitors might already have beenfamiliar with this practice. It was not unusual for Victorian periodicals to ask readersto vote for their favourite picture at other art institutions including the RoyalAcademy and Grosvenor Gallery, and publishing the outcome in their columns. 13 By

contrast, the Barnetts hoped that their results would reveal how working-class visitorshad learnt to interpret the spiritual content of paintings and vote for those whichcontained the purest divinity. Whitechapels material and spiritual poverty hadappalled Samuel Barnett when he became vicar of St Judes in 1873. First andforemost he supposed it necessary to correct the spiritual poverty of Whitechapelinhabitants. The processes of urbanization and industrialization, he believed, hadcaused the urban working classes to forget, or suppress, their religious selves. Therecovery of an interior spiritual selfhood a healthy ability to imagine beyond theearthly realm was central to his philanthropic agenda. Incorporation of visual artwas a cornerstone of his approach. He believed that learning to visualize the sacred inart would resurrect the buried spiritual lives of East Londoners. Samuel N. Stockham,a local man and St Judes parish worker, rst aired the idea for an exhibition.Stockham was a former soldier who lived in the East London Shoeblack Home andBrigade for Destitute Boys in Whitechapel, where he instructed boys in drill andworked as a clerk.14 According to Stockhams colleague, Pauline Townsend,

11. Koven, Whitechapel Picture Exhibition.12. Maltz, British Aestheticism, p. 72.13. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for pointing this out to me.14. Samuel Nicholas Stockham was born around 1819. The son of a musician, he was baptized

at St Marylebone Westminster on 19 December 1819. He died on 3 March 1889 inMiddlesex leaving a fortune of 217 7s 8d to the 18 year old daughter of his formeremployer. Information on Stockham can be found in the Board of Guardian Records,

Journal of Victorian Culture 387

Dw

D

m


5/20

Mr Barnett called together his little knots of workers and consulted with them onhow to make his people care for something, no matter what, how to rouse in themthe desire to be and to do something better than at present. 15

The success of the exhibitions, attended by over 73,000 people in 1892, was

achieved by bringing Britains best contemporary artworks to Whitechapel. Thesewere lent mainly by private sources, either collectors, or the artists themselves.Barnett sent letters to student magazines, collectors and artists, in the hope that hewould receive the gems of the contemporary art world. 16 Between 180 and 350pictures were lent for each exhibition; such generosity meant that exhibition wallswere lled from top to bottom with pictures of various styles and sizes. Works by W. Holman Hunt, George F. Watts, Dante Rossetti, Briton Rivie `re, Fredrick Leighton, John E. Millais, Hubert von Herkomer and Edward Burne-Jones wereincluded. Many of these artists were in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Leadingmembers of society were invited to open each exhibition, from actors, artists, artcritics and archbishops to minor members of the Royal Family. 17 This attracted theinterest of the press and commanded the attention of the nation. 18

The opening and administrative policies were designed to encourage attendance.Doors opened for twelve hours between 10am and 10pm, enabling visitors to comeafter work. Sunday opening from 2pm until 10pm enhanced access. Thus theWhitechapel Exhibitions were set apart from West End Art Treasures, includingthose of the South Kensington Museum and the National Gallery. Henrietta Barnettnoted in her 1883 article, Pictures for the People:

we knew that it was not only indifference which keeps people living in the Far East away from West End Art Treasures. The expense of transit; the ignorance of ways of getting

18341906 and Church of England Parish Registers, 17541906, at the LondonMetropolitan Archives; Census Returns of England and Wales, 1881 and England and Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 186119415 www.ancestry.com 4 [accessed 27 January 2011]. See also Henrietta Barnett, CanonBarnett: His Life, Work, and Friends by his Wife in Two Volumes with Thirty-NineIllustrations (London: J. Murray, 1918), II, 151. Shoeblacks homes were industrial homesfor homeless and destitute boys. The boys were famed for their distinctive red coats, whichthey wore while polishing the shoes of the wealthy.

15. P.D. Townsend, Our Easter Exhibitions, Past and Present, Saint Judes Parish Magazine(hereafter SJPM ), March (1891), p. 18.

16. See, for instance, Samuel A. Barnett, Whitechapel Picture Show: Letters to the Editor,Times, 30 January 1894, p. 7. Responses from artists can be found in the LondonMetropolitan Archives, LMA/4266/A/122-161.

17. These included the politicians Lord Rosenberry (1881), Leonard Courtney (1882),William S. Caine (1883), George Robertson (1886), Sir George Trevelyan (1887), A.J.Mundella (1895), Farrar Hershell (1896) and Robert Crewe-Milnes (1897). Others to openexhibitions were the Duchess of Albany (1890), E.N. Buxton, Chairman of the LondonSchool Board (1885), the actor Sir Henry Irving (1888), the Archbishop of Canterbury Edward Benson (1892), the Lord Mayor Stuart Knill (1893) and the artist HerbertHerkomer (1894).

18. The Whitechapel exhibitions were not only covered by local or London-based nationalpapers but also by provincial newspapers; for example, Our Ladies Column, p. 3; andLatest News, Liverpool Mercury , Friday 15 April 1881, p. 5.


Dw

D

m
http://www.ancestry.com/http://www.ancestry.com/


6/20

about; the shortness of daylight beyond working hours during the greater part of the year; the impression that the day when they could is sure to be the day when theMuseum closed to the public all of these little discouragements become difculties,especially to the large number who have yet had enough opportunities of knowingthe joy which art gives.19

The elimination of an entry fee from 1882 onwards further contributed to theexhibitions success. Attendance gures climbed from 9000 in 1881 to 26,492 in 1892.Substantial increases in attendance continued until 1892, when visitor numberspeaked at 73,271. Attendance dropped to 67,801 a year later yet the gures for 1893still represented an eight-fold increase from 1881. The Toynbee Reporter pointed outin 1895 that the decrease upon the corresponding gures of the last two or three years was down to the ne weather during the holiday, tempting East Londonersinto the country, adding that this was hardly to be regretted. 20

Although attendance gures suggest that working-class visitors were easily enticedto the Whitechapel Exhibitions, Barnett claimed in his parish magazine that he wouldhave liked to erect a bill-board outside the exhibitions stating, Lessons given here inseeing. He accepted that the working-class visitor might have laughed, thinking ita great joke that anyone should need to be taught to see. Thank-you, they wouldhave said, we can see well enough and when we cant see we shall go to a spectacleshop and not to a picture show. 21 By many people, he was explicitly describingthose East End visitors for whom the exhibition was intended to bring spiritualenlightenment. The comical narrative that Barnett constructed to accompany hisnotion of Lessons given here in seeing implied that he and West-End subscribers

to his parish magazine understood that literal seeing and imaginative seeing weretwo different matters. 22 Unlike those working men who thought that only betterspectacles were needed to see, Barnett believed that the visual information available tothe bespectacled-eye revealed only a partial truth about the world. To the trained eye,the divine work of God was ever-present.

19. Henrietta Barnett, Pictures for the People, Cornhill Magazine, 47 (1883), 34452(p. 344). This article has been discussed at length by Maltz in British Aestheticism,pp. 7276.

20. Easter Exhibitions, Toynbee Record , May (1895), VII: 8, p. 102. Attendance gures for theexhibitions were as follows: 1881 9000; 1882 26,492; 1883 unknown; 1884 35,000;1885, 1886 and 1887 unknown; 1888 46,000/55,300; 1889 50,000; 1890 55,000;1891 70,821; 1892 73,271; 1893 67,801; 1894 unknown; 1895 62,500; 1896 63,208; 1897, 1898 and 1899 unknown. These gures are taken from the Toynbee Record (hereafter TR) and SJPM .

21. Our Picture Shows, SJPM , January (1889), p. 44.22. SJPM was written for an exclusively West-End audience. It was not distributed among

Samuel Barnetts parishioners, but was sent to his followers. See Editorial Notes, SJPM ,January 1889, p. 1. It was disbanded in 1893 when Samuel Barnett became Canon of Bristol. According to Koven, comedy was central to the Barnetts description of theexhibitions. However, Maltz has suggested that Samuel Barnetts humour mocks andvalorizes the poor, as this quotation demonstrates. See Koven, Whitechapel PictureExhibition, p. 23, and Maltz, British Aestheticism, p. 76.


Dw

D

m


7/20

Since the mid nineteenth century it had become commonplace in middle-classdiscourse to argue that religion and visual art were powerfully interlinked. 23 The arttheories of John Ruskin had a signicant impact on this trajectory and were adirect inuence on how the Barnetts organized and thought about their

Whitechapel exhibitions.24

They contended that the beauty of art lay in its moralcertitude, while revealing the spiritual realm. According to the Barnetts, Ruskinreturned art to its original function as the handmaiden of religion. By drawingupon Ruskins religious understanding of art, they were able to distance themselvesfrom the aesthetic movement that held that art should be appreciated only for itsartistic merit, technique, colour and form. For the members of this movement, inthe words of Elizabeth Prettejohn, a work of art does not exist for the sake of preaching a moral lesson, of supporting a political cause, or making a fortune or of a hundred other aims and objectives. 25 Barnetts emphasis on spiritual seeing, incontrast, drew on Ruskins claim that the eye was more than an external opticalinstrument. It was a bodily member which acted as a window into anotherworld. 26 Art, for the Barnetts, had the power to reinforce fading belief inthe modern world. Paintings could collapse the heavenly and earthly divide by bringing the viewer into contact with the sacred world from which they had beenalienated.

The Barnetts understanding of art was also informed by the social commentatorMatthew Arnold who, like Ruskin, argued that culture should embody spiritual,moral, and social values, if it was to be true.27 Arnold extended culture so that itencompassed science, poetry, philosophy, and history, as well as art. Yet, in a similar

vein to Ruskin, he implied that religion and true culture must be thoroughly entwined with one another. Arnolds critique incorporated the supposed highculture of the propertied classes for bad culture was that which existed only for thepleasure of its individual consumer. For culture to be true, it needed to adhere to thelove of our neighbour, the impulses towards action, help, and benecence, the desirefor removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing humanmisery.28 It was not enough to have paintings on your walls. True culture should be

23. See Hilary Fraser, Beauty and Belief: Aesthetics and Religion in Victorian Literature(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). For a contemporary discussion of theseideas see Peter T. Forsyth, Religion in Recent Art: Expository Lectures on Rossetti, Burne- Jones, Watts, Holman Hunt and Wagner (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1901).

24. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism(London:Smith, Elder, 1869; repr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932). John Ruskin,The Stones of Venice, 3 vols (London: unknown, 185153, repr. London: Bellew, 1981),The Seven Lamps of Architecture(London: Smith, Elder, 1848) in The Works of John Ruskin39 vols, ed. by E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (London: G. Allen, 1903), ForsClavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain (Orpington: G. Allen,187184).

25. Elizabeth Prettejohn, Art for Arts Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting (New Haven,CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 2.

26. Ruskin, Modern Painters , in The Works of John Ruskin(1903), V, 69.27. Arnold, Culture and Anarchy , p. 44.28. Arnold, Culture and Anarchy , p. 44.


Dw

D

m


8/20

imbued with philanthropic motivations, encouraging a spiritual vision in those withand without culture. For the Barnetts, Arnold and Ruskin were responsible for thespiritualization of cultural philanthropy. They provided the theoretical underpinningof a moral aestheticism that appealed to the Barnetts and was increasingly prevalent

among the middle classes.29

Arnold and Ruskin thought that the high cultural forms associated with thepropertied class, including painting, were the truest forms of culture, so long as they were made to work for the collective rather than individual interest. It isunsurprising, then, that the Barnetts appear to have excluded work by working-class painters from their exhibitions. 30 Henrietta Barnett, for instance, recalled theextraordinary offers they received from local inhabitants for their rst exhibition. 31

One such offer came from Stockham, who offered a stuffed crocodile and aphotograph of himself in his yeomanry uniform. No catalogue for the rst exhibitionhas survived, so we cannot know for sure if Stockhams objects were accepted or whatthey looked like. Henrietta Barnett used the incident as a means of amusing andshocking her reader in much the same way as had Samuel Barnetts earlier articleLessons in Seeing.32 The effect was to divide herself from Stockham and his curiosity items; her action was somewhat unfair, given the important role Stockham hadplayed in establishing the Whitechapel Exhibitions. Her account serves to highlightthe differing norms of taste at work in the establishment of the exhibitions. 33 The rstexhibition was, in fact, different to those that followed, insofar as curiosities such asstuffed crocodiles, as well as pottery and pieces of needlework, were displayedalongside paintings. Although Samuel Barnett believed that he had never so enjoyed

intercourse with my fellows as in my talks with my neighbours over the pictures of Watts, the pottery of De Morgan and the stuffs of Morris, future exhibitions werededicated almost exclusively to paintings. 34 Henrietta Barnett explained that this waslargely because of the inconvenience and cost of displaying objects in cabinets, but itseems likely that the Barnetts spiritual theory of art, which privileged painting andthe ne arts, had a role to play.

Samuel Barnett wrote avidly about painting and was critical of the aestheticmovement for overlooking the moral and spiritual content of pictures. He believed,on the one hand, that concerns about technique limited a visitors sight only to the

29. Maltz, British Aestheticism, pp. 48.30. Barnett, Pictures for the People, p. 345. By the 1920s Toynbee Hall and other settlements

were actively encouraging the working classes to produce paintings. On Northern Englishsettlements see Natasha Vall, Cultural Improvers in North-East England, 19201960:Polishing the Pitman, Northern History , 31 (2004), 16380.

31. Barnett, Pictures for the People, p. 345.32. Maltz has noted how Henrietta Barnetts descriptions of working people appear to have

been designed to satisfy the bourgeois reader rather than being genuine descriptions of the working-class exhibition attendee. See Maltz, British Aestheticism, p. 73.

33. See Paul Johnson, Conspicuous Consumption and Working-Class Culture in late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , 38 (1988),2742.

34. Barnett, Canon Barnett , II, 151.


Dw

D

m


9/20

canvass surface.35 The careful study of a picture, on the other hand, often arousesnew thought and puts us in communion with the unseen. 36 Here Barnett reproducedthe Ruskinian idea that some pictures had the potential to act as Windows into theother World. 37 His criticism of the aesthetic movement had a personal element to it:

he was colour blind (as well as tone deaf). The aesthetic movement thereforeemphasized an aspect of art that was denied to him. It is interesting that Barnett didnot conne Ruskins window analogy to pictures alone. In the same article hesuggests that music and poetry had the potential to unite the spiritual and earthly realms. Extending Ruskins window imagery in this way demonstrates the importanceof the Arnoldian denition of culture in Barnetts thought. The WhitechapelExhibitions were indeed part of a larger programme that incorporated classical musicconcerts at St Judes Church and lectures in Toynbee Hall. 38

The Barnetts emphasis on the loaning of art was also derived from theirappropriation of Arnolds theory of culture. The Whitechapel exhibitions could notbe sacred unless the art objects displayed contained a spirit of religious philanthropy.They were highly critical of a scientic philanthropy that turned respectable men intobeggars. As Samuel Barnett argued: a poor man in the street wants not only warmthand food; he wants to think, to be good and to love. 39 For cultural philanthropy tobe truly spiritual, it needed to offer something more than gifts. It should develop thespiritual imagination of the urban poor through the lessons in seeing which theBarnetts hoped to offer at their exhibitions. Their brand of cultural philanthropy aimed at providing the working and the middle classes with the means by which torediscover their higher spiritual life. The working classes were able to discover their

best selves by learning to see, while their wealthy brothers and sisters discoveredtheirs by sharing cultural capital with the rest of society. Accordingly, they emphasized the importance of West Enders sharing their art and uniting the twonations. They were disappointed when collectors or artists refused to lend. HenriettaBarnett complained of the common response that, I dont fear for the pictures, butI dont like to have my walls bare.40 This characterization of the selsh bourgeoiswas part of Henriettas rhetorical device, which required middle-class participationin the re-spiritualization of society.

Making the connection between Christianity and art was all the more importantat a time when the Church was struggling to relate to the working classes. TheBarnetts were critical of the Churchs failure to recover the buried spiritual lives of itsurban parishioners. The decline in attendance was, according to Samuel Barnett,

35. Samuel Barnett to Frank Barnett, 9 April 1884, London Metropolitan Archives, LMA/F/BAR/8.

36. Samuel Barnett, New Pictures in the Church, SJPM , January (1889), p. 15.37. Samuel Barnett, Pictures and Pictures, SJPM , April (1892), p. 27.38. Their signicance can be seen by the fact they were advertized on the inside cover of the

catalogue. See Whitechapel Fine Art Loan Exhibition St. Judes School House, Commercial Street, E , 1885 (London: Penny and Hull, 1885), Whitechapel Art Gallery, WAG/PUB/1/2.

39. Samuel Barnett, The Failure of Philanthropy, Macmillans Magazine, 73 (189596),39096 (p. 395).

40. Barnett, Pictures for the People, p. 345.


Dw

D

m


10/20

symptomatic of an out-of-date Church that encouraged its clergy to speak a religiouslanguage that was a dead language to half the people. 41 The buried life, he suggested,could not be brought back through preaching alone. The Church could only recoverworking-class religiosity by connecting them once again to genuine religious feelings.

As Henrietta Barnett remarked, religionists have taught until the people know all andfeel nothing.42 The Barnetts never argued that art could take the place of the Church.Instead, they suggested that art could prepare the ground for religion. 43

There was nonetheless a tension in this project. According to the Barnetts theory of art, all that exhibition visitors had to do was stand in front of a picture toexperience its moral and spiritual presence. Yet both the aural and the written wordwere crucial, in practice, to conveying the spiritual meaning of art at the WhitechapelExhibitions. Catalogues and gallery talks were designed to reveal the hidden spiritualmeanings of pictures. These aimed to avoid the technical criticism that was felt to beinnite boredom in West End newspapers and journals. 44 They introduced thevisitor to the artworks, but also conveyed the Barnetts religious ideas about art,encouraging an interpretation beyond the colour, form and technique of an artobject. In a letter to his brother Frank in 1884, Samuel wrote:

It is interesting to watch the effect of Art as a teacher. I cant make up my mind whetherit needs the spoken word or not. Today people have been so taught to value the surfacethat unless a word suggests the underneath people are likely only to think of sound orcolour. On the other hand a word may mislead & destroy the relevant, far off working of the soul of the painter or musician. 45

Barnett therefore had reservations about the use of words to explain the spiritualmeaning of his exhibitions. Words, after all, had the potential to mislead & destroythe artists spiritual message. Nevertheless, he implied that there was a greater dangerthan the manipulation of a pictures meaning. He was directly attacking the aestheticmovement by suggesting that people were only taught to value the surface, or toonly think of sound or colour when hearing music or looking at a painting. Thewritten or spoken word might weaken a pictures meaning, but the alternative wasthat exhibition visitors, familiar with the aesthetic movements claims, wouldoverlook a pictures divine truth for its material facade.

Contemporary accounts noted the importance of catalogues and talks to theWhitechapel Exhibitions achievements. On more than one occasion, the Pall Mall Gazette (PMG) suggested that the National Gallery should look to the WhitechapelExhibitions for the successful inclusion of East Londoners. 46 Henrietta Barnettnoted in her husbands biography that groups, as shown in Figures 1 and 2, would

41. The Loan Exhibition in Whitechapel, Daily News, 15 April 1881, p. 3.42. Henrietta Barnett, Passionless Reformers, Fortnightly Review , 32 (1882), 226.43. The Loan Exhibition in Whitechapel, p. 3.44. At the East-End Academy,PMG, 2 April 1886, p. 2.45. Samuel Barnett to Frank Barnett, 9 April 1884, London Metropolitan Archives, LMA/F/

BAR/8.46. A Year at the National Gallery, PMG, 12 March 1891, p. 2; Occasional Notes, PMG, 1

April 1891, p. 6; Art Notes, PMG, 4 May 1892, p. 1.


Dw

D

m


11/20

congregate around Samuel at the exhibitions. The success of his talks meant that theHanging Committee had to consider the layout of the rooms more carefully so thateach room contained only one popular picture to allow the movement of people. 47

Barnett would speak for 20 minutes to a group, either about a specic picture orconducting a tour around the whole gallery (Figure 2). The PMG noted that hisaudience was made up of all sorts and conditions of men, from the West-ender whogoes down to see how the common people behave, to the factory girl who couldnttell you why they go, but for whom the pictures have a strange fascination, andwho wander in, evening after evening, when their days work is done. 48 Theprominence of both at caps and bowler hats in Figures 1 and 2 reinforces the PMGsclaim that the groups of listeners were socially mixed.

Despite the PMGs interest, little is known about the picture talks that Barnettdelivered. Because they were based in Whitechapel, national newspapers tended toconcentrate on the social prole of exhibition visitors rather than on the talks

Figure 1. The Gospel of Art reprinted from At the East-End Academy,Pall Mall Gazette,2 April 1886, p. 2. (c) British Library Board (LON MLD28 NPL).

47. Barnett, Canon Barnett , II, 163.48. At the East-End Academy, p. 2.


Dw

D

m


12/20

themselves. Henrietta Barnett, however, described her husbands gallery lectures as

suggestive sermons compared with the dogmatic discourses to which one has tolisten in churches. 50 From this evidence, Frances Bozello has argued that Samuelspicture talks were sugar coated sermons. 51 Yet Bozellos description seems unfairwhen the apparent popularity of the talks is taken into consideration. It is notable,however, that Henrietta should have contrasted her husbands art talks with hissermons. His suggestive sermons played a necessary role in connecting urbandwellers with their buried lives, while giving Samuel the opportunity to reach a farwider audience than he could have done at St Judes Church. He wrote to his brotherin 1885: If preaching is any good . . . this preaching has been of the best.52 A yearlater he noted: For myself, I felt, as I spoke in front of a picture, the power of speaking by parables, the people heard so much more than was in the words. 53Henriettas reference to the talks as sermons is all the more intriguing in the light of her description of Samuels church sermons as difcult to follow and outof touch. 54 His picture talks, by comparison, left one to arrive at ones own goal

Figure 2. Sunday Afternoon in the Whitechapel Picture Gallery with an insert of SamuelBarnett conducting a picture talk. Newspaper Illustration reproduced in Henrietta Barnett,Canon Barnett , II, 154. (Authors own copy.) 49

49. Henrietta Barnett lists this picture as coming from the Westminster Gazette in herhusbands biography Canon Barnett . I have been unable to locate this picture in thisnewspaper. Barnett, Canon Barnett , II, 154.

50. Barnett, Canon Barnett , II, 155.51. Borzello, Civilizing Caliban, p. 62.52. Barnett, Canon Barnett , II, 155.53. Barnett, Canon Barnett , II, 154.54. Barnett, Canon Barnett , I, 24.


Dw

D

m


13/20

of conclusion, he having shown the road and strengthened the traveller by hiscondence. 55 Samuel was able, therefore, to nd an alternative religious space in theexhibitions through which to exercise his spiritual authority.

If Samuel Barnett was away from Whitechapel his role could be lled by one of

the many watchers (gallery attendants), who worked at the exhibitions, or by thepenny exhibition guide. One of the duties of the watchers was to explain pictures tovisitors.56 Volunteer watchers were sought by means of letters sent to national andstudent newspapers. They were drawn from the wealthy classes of the West End,from the ranks of Toynbee Hall settlers, and from Cambridge and Oxford students. 57

Henrietta noted that their descriptions of the pictures and homely chats with visitorsserved to make the art trip into an intelligent visit not a listless ten minute stare. 58

The exhibition guide also pointed visitors to the spiritual content of the arton display. 59 Koven has shown that nearly one in three visitors purchased one. 60

The National Gallery equivalent, by comparison, was bought by only one insixty visitors.61 The numbers of visitors who actually came into contact with thecatalogue was, of course, higher than the one in three who bought it. 62 That they were considered crucial to the visitors experience is shown by the fact that they wereloaned for free on Sundays. Similar allowances were made during Passover whenJewish visitors were able to borrow exhibition guides free of charge. 63 The cataloguegave visitors the chance to interact with art without relying on Samuel Barnettstalks by providing the reader with an explanation of the pictures. The effectivenessof the catalogue was, however, dependent on which pictures the cataloguecommittee thought warranted a description in practice, the minority. Moreover,

the usefulness of the catalogue was conned only to the exhibition, as it containedno illustrations for the user to return to at a later date or remove to decorate theirown homes.

Figure 3 suggests how the catalogue was supposed to be used by fathers whowished to explain pictures to their wives and children. The PMG reported that theman in Figure 3 had carefully gone through his catalogue before greatly impressingthe members of his family with his knowledge of John William Waterhousespainting Consulting the Oracle (1884). 64 This painting depicts a high priestessgesturing to the ladies kneeling down in front of her to be quiet so that she could

55. Barnett, Canon Barnett , II, 154.56. H. Rackman, Toynbee Hall: To the Editor, Cambridge Review , 21 March 1891, p. 267. See

also John Bullock, Toynbee Picture Exhibition, Cambridge Review , 5 March 1896, pp.25051.

57. Letter to the Editor: Toynbee Hall, Oxford Magazine, 6 May 1896, p. 307.58. Barnett, Barnett , II, 154.59. Our Ladies Column, p. 3.60. Koven, Whitechapel Picture Exhibitions, p. 47.61. Whitechapel Fine Art Loan Exhibition, PMG, 9 April 1884, p. 5.62. Art Criticism at the East-End, PMG, 31 March 1891, p. 3.63. C.H.T, Art Criticism at the East-End, PMG, 2 May 1889, p. 3.64. At the East-End Academy, pp. 12. John William Waterhouse, Consulting the Oracle

(1884), Tate Collection 5 http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid 159824[accessed 21 February 2011].


Dw

D

m
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workidhttp://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid


14/20

hear the mutterings of the mummied head. The title of the PMG article,Consulting the Oracle, had a dual meaning. While obviously referring toWaterhouses painting, it also described how the family hung on the wise utterancesor divine communications of the exhibition catalogue. The catalogue was designedby Henrietta Barnett, Emily Cook and Pauline Townsend to reveal the hiddenmeanings of their favourite pictures. Figure 3 mimics Figures 1 and 2 to imitate thesuccess of the catalogue. Both Samuel Barnett and the father are pointing to the

picture while people attentively listen. Yet it remains difcult to ascertain whetherthese illustrations were proof of the catalogues success. The PMG largely supportedthe Barnetts claims about the Whitechapel Exhibitions, but with no personal

Figure 3. Consulting the Oracle reprinted from At the East-End Academy, Pall Mall Gazette, 2 April 1886, p. 2. (c) British Library Board (LON MLD28 NPL).


Dw

D

m


15/20

testimony or photographic sources, we do not know how visitors used or appreciatedtheir catalogues.

For Samuel Barnett, the very act of attending an art exhibition indicated that theworking classes had started to unearth their religious selves. By acting as windows to a

spiritual realm, art not only resurrected the buried lives of the urban-dweller but alsoinstilled in them true culture, according to Arnolds denition. The practice of Voting for Your Favourite Pictures, by contrast, highlights the divergence betweenthe Barnetts understanding of the exhibitions and the working-class reception of art.An examination of this practice, established by the Barnetts to encourageparticipation and to monitor taste, is crucial in revealing the attitudes of working-class visitors to the exhibitions. The Barnetts used the modern technique of voting tomeasure the working classs re-emerging spiritual identity. Visitors were asked torank their three favourite pictures at the end of their visit. Votes were counted at theend of the exhibition period and the result published in the St Judes Parish Magazine(SJPM ) and the Toynbee Record (TR). The PMG was a strong advocate of the practiceand recommended that the National Gallery should adopt it. 65

Voting at the Whitechapel Exhibitions has been largely overlooked by historiansand art historians alike, partly because much of the evidence relating to it comes fromthe point-of-view of the Barnetts and other organizers, all of whom quickly came todisregard the working-classs ability to see true beauty, as a consequence of theballots result. Henrietta Barnett suggested that the practice was continued only because of the favourable reception it received from visitors and the press. 66 Both theSJPM and the TR, edited under Samuel Barnetts supervision,were scathing of how

the working-class visitor voted. By describing and categorizing the results of Votingfor Your Favourite Pictures, the Barnetts revealed the differing art appreciation of the organizers and visitors. Of course, those voting were not necessarily drawn fromthe working class. Yet the debates that emerged illustrate the Barnetts spiritualizedunderstanding of working-class taste.

Initially, they believed that the voting patterns of the working classes woulddemonstrate the development of individual taste and their increased appreciationof art.67 Few visitors were actually thought to have voted, and, when they did, theBarnetts, in particular, thought that they chose inferior pictures. The number of thosewho voted is largely unknown. Parish and settlement magazines rarely gave gures,especially towards the end of the century. It is certain that 3960 people voted in 1889and that this increased to 8144 a year later; 6783 voted in 1894, falling to only 1544 in1898, the nal year of the exhibitions before the establishment of the permanentWhitechapel Art Gallery. When compared with the number of people attending theexhibitions, those voting were relatively few in number. That between 5% and 8% of visitors voted led the SJPM to declare in 1896 that the poll was not . . . a very brilliantsuccess.68

65. A Year at the National Gallery, PMG, 12 March 1891, p. 2.66. Barnett, Canon Barnett , II, 164.67. Barnett, Canon Barnett , II, 164.68. The Whitechapel Exhibition, TR, 8 (1896), 93.


Dw

D

m


16/20

The numbers of non-voters, however, should not be considered as ademonstration of working-class lack of interest. Those intending to vote were oftenrestricted by the location of the ballot table. The catalogue mapped out the exhibitionspace for visitors by numbering the art works and dividing them into rooms. Visitors

who wanted to vote had to retrace their footsteps, descending from the second oorto the bottom of the ground oor stairs where the polling table was located. It waspositioned there because of insufcient space either at the top of the stairs or in thenal room. Toynbee Hall settlers were aware of the difculty this placed on theelectors: those who thought it worthwhile to return from the exit stair case to placetheir votes at the table . . . deserve respect.69 The large numbers who attended theexhibitions further complicated the voting. On occasion, the police had to shutthe gate of St Judes School to prevent visitors from entering. People who wanted tovote, therefore, had to negotiate large crowds in order to head back to the groundoor. This would have put off a lot of potential voters.

There was also a gendered dimension to polling behaviour. Working men weremore likely to vote than their female counterparts. According to Henrietta, the lattergroup found the practice foreign. As she noted, somewhat scathingly, when taking agroup of women around the exhibition with their husbands in 1889:

The necessity of voting on various pictures called forth more decided opinions than weshould have otherwise elicited, and was the source of much fun and laughter. Thedifculty was that husbands and wives either insisted on voting alike, or else differed sovehemently as to make arbitration a delicate matter. Is this a foretaste of what willfollow the introduction of Womens Suffrage? 70

Henrietta is alluding here to the complex nature of voting in this period. Women didnot receive the parliamentary franchise until after World War I. At a local level,female ratepayers were able to vote for Poor Law guardians from 1834 and inmunicipal elections from 1869. 71 Yet it is unlikely that the working women inHenriettas anecdote would have voted in either case. Upon marriage their husbandswould have been recognized as the ratepayers. Yet it should not be assumed that they were entirely excluded from the political sphere. Skilled male artisans gained thefranchise in 1867 and in 1884 the franchise was expanded to almost two thirds of men. 72 Women were included in this process insofar as newly enfranchised men oftenconsidered voting to be a familial and communal process. It is thus unsurprising thatcouples should participate in a lively debate over which picture to vote for. Yeteven men familiar with voting would have found the Whitechapel Exhibitionsystem alien. After 1872 electoral voting only required ticking the name of a chosen

69. Whitechapel Exhibition: Vote for the Three Best Pictures, TR, 6 (1895), 103.70. Our Picture Shows, SJPM , January (1889), p. 48.71. Patricia Hollis, Ladies Elect: Women in Local Government, 18651918(Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1987).72. Keith McCelland, Englands Greatness, the Working Man in Catherine Hall, Keith

McCelland, and Jane Rendall, eds, Dening the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and theBritish Reform Act of 1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 71118.


Dw

D

m


17/20

candidate printed on the ballot, which was conducted in secret. 73 Voting for YourFavourite Pictures, by contrast, involved listing three favourite pictures in order,while the polling table encouraged voters to converse and elicit opinions from fellow visitors.

Exhibition organizers were pleased that Holman Hunts Triumph of the Innocents(187887) gained rst place in the inaugural ballot of 1889. 74 A picture that took Hunt nearly 10 years to paint, it depicts the Holy Family in ight to Egypt. Mary andthe baby Jesus sit on a donkey pulled by Joseph, while the Holy Innocents (thechildren slain by Herod) march in front and behind. Sacred light radiates from Jesusand the Holy Innocents, contrasting with the darkness of night on the right side of the picture. The catalogue noted that if rightly studied, [it] may bring peace to many mothers mourning for a lost child. The picture reminds them that though dead, theirchild lives, as these children live, in the stream of eternal life and are blest forever.It teaches that suffering is not in vain even when it is the Innocent who suffer. 75 TheSJPM noted that the picture would teach East Enders not as they are when they areangry and dirty in the streets, not as they are when they cry out in pain, but as they are when they do their Fathers will.76 Both of these stances suggested that pain andsuffering would be rewarded in the next world.

For the Barnetts, The Triumph of the Innocents was the leading picture of the1889 exhibition, with the TR contending that the committee may be heartily congratulated on obtaining the loan of this deeply interesting work and have rightly shown their appreciation both of the kindness of the artist and the merits of thepicture by placing it in a room by itself, with special light and suitable decoration, so

that nothing shall weaken its natural deep impressiveness.77

Due in no small part tothis special hanging, the painting received 869 votes, nearly a quarter of the totalballot. Visitors were also directed to this picture by the catalogue description. 78 Inaddition, Hunt allowed a personal description of his painting to be sold at theexhibition. All of these arrangements separated The Triumph of the Innocents fromthe rest of the collection in 1889. It ritualized the picture and provided visitors witha staged set and script by the arrangements of objects and lighting. 79

Yet if the Barnetts thought that visitors would vote with their leading pictureevery year, they were to be disappointed. Each year after 1889 the votes failed totally with what exhibition organizers thought were the most morally upliftingpictures. They explicitly noted that votes were never for their preferred pieces of art,

73. For a discussion of the Secret Ballot Act see Tom Crook and Malcolm Crook, The Adventof the Secret Ballot in Britain and France: From Public Assembly to PrivateCompartment, History , 92.308 (2007), 44971.

74. Holman Hunt, The Triumph of the Innocents (187687), Liverpool Museums 5 www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/online/pre-raphaelites/triumph/ 4 [accessed 21 February 2011].

75. Whitechapel Fine Art Loan Exhibition, Whitechapel Art Gallery, WAG/PUB/1/5, p. 11.76. Our Picture Shows, 44.77. The Whitechapel Exhibition, TR, 8 (1896), 90.78. Borzello, Civilizing Caliban, p. 120.79. Carol Duncan, Civilising Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums(London: Routledge, 1995),

p. 12.


Dw

D

m
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/online/pre-raphaelites/triumph/http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/online/pre-raphaelites/triumph/http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/online/pre-raphaelites/triumph/http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/online/pre-raphaelites/triumph/


18/20

but rather for sentimental or genre paintings. 80 Samuel Barnett suggested,disappointedly, that the reasons for votes were often based on personal taste, artisticstyle and technique:

Because I liked him, answered a big lad who voted for Gordons portrait against theremonstrance of his women friends who thought it a dull picture. Because theyrelovely, the elder sister said, who voted for The Two Sisters (a picture with less artisticmerit than almost any other) . . . Because its a comfort to mothers Because it speakslikeness, and his eyes are so kind and friendly Because the doves ying straight.81

These reasons emphasize the incompatibility of the Barnetts moral aestheticismwith the art appreciation of the voter. Yet this quote also highlights diverging tastebetween working-class viewers. The big lad and his women friends, for instance, donot agree on the merit of the picture of General Gordon, challenging the notion thatsocial class was the only basis for personal taste.

During the rst year of voting, not a single landscape picture was in the top ten orreceived over a hundred votes. 82 This was signicant because the exhibitions werepremised on a philanthropic discourse that sought to connect the East Londoner withnature. As one lady visitor from Preston remarked: Dwellers in the country who havenature always with them can form no idea of what it must be to live from year to yearwith only bricks and mortars to look at, a vitiated atmosphere to breathe, and nohigher or better inuence than their own to rene or purify them. 83 Picturesdepicting natural scenes were supposed to connect the alienated urban visitor to thedivine. Yet visitors often overlooked them. One watcher overheard a woman

discussing a country scene by John Watt: Its only a landscape, still its a pretty one.According to the artist G.F. Watts, this forced the gallery attendant to declare, only a landscape! . . . no one ought to be again able to look at the clouds, the owers, thesea, quite in the same way as he did before he saw this picture.84 This apparentoversight by visitors led the Barnetts to declare that, We are inclined to think afterseveral years experience that the voting is hardly the accurate test of the preferenceof East Londoners that it was intended to be, and we value far more the quietexpressions of liking for some beautiful landscape or noble subject picture which onecould not fail to overhear whenever one moved from room to room among thepeople.85

80. See Caroline Arscott, Sentimentality in Victorian Painting, in Art for the People, ed. by Watereld, pp. 6581. Nicola Bown has argued that scholars should move beyondmodernist critiques of sentimentality as emotive and something that is pleasing butworthless in order to consider its power not only for the Victorian viewer but also forourselves. New Agenda: Tender Beauty: Victorian Painting and the problem of Sentimentality, Journal of Victorian Culture, 16.2 (2011), pp. 21425.

81. Favourite Pictures, SJPM , January (1889), p. 50.82. C.H.T, Art Criticism at the East-End, Pall Mall Gazette, 2 May 1889, p. 3.83. Our Ladies Column, p. 3.84. G.F. Watts, What Should a Picture Say?, TR, 6 (1894), 94.85. The Whitechapel Exhibition, p. 93.


Dw

D

m


19/20

Nature was not the only point of contention for exhibition organizers. Because of the quantity and varying qualities of paintings on display, it was the duty of thevisitor to nd the true, that is, the most spiritually meaningful, pictures. In 1891,however, visitors voted Stanhope A. Forbess Health of the Bride (1889) the leading

picture.86

It depicts several generations of one family at a wedding, demonstrated by the grandfather playing with his young grandchildren. The party is shown toastingthe bride with her sailor brother. Rather than describe the picture, the cataloguecontained a simple two-line description that read: A Cornish wedding. Many quaintand simple customs remain in Cornwall that have grown out of date and disappearedin other parts of England. 87 Despite demonstrating the importance of marriage, theBarnetts were unimpressed with its selection. Samuel Barnett wrote in the parishmagazine:

No doubt The Health of the Bride is exceedingly clever, though it cannot be said to be

a ne picture. It does not inspire us with memory of noble acts, nor raise our thoughtsas Art should; it is as a little boy in the exhibition expressed it, an every-day picture,but it tells of love and hope, and we get from it a sense of home comfort, and of breezy,sea-coast life, grateful to Whitechapel eyes and hearts. 88

The everyday nature of the picture meant that it did not have the potential to awakenthe soul of the viewer. Accordingly, this picture was not true art in the Barnettsterms. It could not connect the viewer with the spiritual realm.

The Barnetts spiritual aestheticism led them to hope that visitors would vote forpictures that spoke to their spiritual selves. Their voting instead indicated that they

were neither passive recipients nor docile bodies onto which symbolic values couldbe imposed. 89 The working classes might not have shared the Barnetts language of art, but Voting for Your Favourite Pictures reveals that they were interested in art,albeit in different ways. By choosing Health of the Bride, working-class visitorsreminded the Barnetts that they neither shared nor were a part of their aestheticoutlook. Their different approach to art led Henrietta to conclude that the workingclasses had no moral ideal; spirituality to them is as little understood in idea as inwork.90 This should not, however, be taken as evidence that the late Victorianworking classes were not religious. As Sarah Williams has demonstrated, middle-classobservers did not readily understand many aspects of working-class popular belief. 91

This diverging understanding of religious practice and belief is evident at theWhitechapel Fine Art Exhibitions. Voting for Your Favourite Pictures conrms Kate

86. Stanhope A. Forbes, The Health of the Bride (1889), Tate Collection 5 www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid 45004 [accessed 21 February 2011].

87. Whitechapel Fine Art Loan, Whitechapel Art Gallery, WAG/PUB/1/6, p. 25.88. The Three Best Pictures, SJPM , 2 (1890), 32.89. Hooper-Greenhill, Museums, p. 90.90. Barnett, Passionless Reformers, p. 226.91. Sarah Williams, Religious Belief and Popular Culture in Southwark, 18801939 (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1999).


Dw

D

m
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workidhttp://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workidhttp://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workidhttp://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid


20/20

Hills argument that the working class rarely comprehended that art galleries werequasi-religious spaces. 92

Given the surviving evidence relating to Voting for Your Favourite Pictures,what emerges is an intriguing clash between middle-class understanding of art and

a clear appetite among the working class for looking at art. Although the Barnettshoped that the exhibitions would open a spiritual world to visitors, they insteadprovided a new space for the expression of working-class culture. Exactly whatspiritual meanings, if any, visitors ascribed to the paintings on show in St JudesSchool are unknown. Equally, it is difcult to know for sure why Whitechapel menand women were drawn in such large numbers. What can be concluded, though, isthat the working-class visitor featured as a crucial gure in the middle-class spiritualimagination of art expressed by Samuel and Henrietta Barnett. Far from being thenew secular cathedrals of modernity, art galleries such as that established inWhitechapel were intended to be arenas for the extension of spirituality beyond theconnes of the parish church. That they were apparently unsuccessful in imposingspirituality on the working classes should not lead us to overlook the role of religion,for this was fundamental to the impulses which brought art to the East End of London.

AcknowledgementsI am grateful to Julie-Marie Strange, James G. Mansell, Bertrand Taithe, Hannah Barker andDavid Vincent for their constructive comments. I would also like to thank Helen Rogersand the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Victorian Culture for all their observations.The British Library has kindly allowed me to reproduce Figures 1 and 3.

Lucinda Matthews-JonesSwansea University

[email protected]

92. Kate Hill, Roughs of both Sexes: The Working Class in Victorian Museums and ArtGalleries, in Identities in Space: Contested Terrains in the Western City since 1850 , ed. by Simon Gunn and Robert J. Morris (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 190203 (p. 190).


Dw

D

m

l.matthews jones:lessons in seeing:art,religion and class in the east end of london,1881-1898

Documents

Transcript of l.matthews jones:lessons in seeing:art,religion and class in the east end of london,1881-1898