Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves (7 page)

The National Gallery did have a commitment to free opening and its site on Trafalgar Square had been chosen, in principle at least, because it was accessible on foot from the poor streets of the East End. In 1822, Sir Robert Peel talked optimistically about the beneficial reward to society of bringing the rich and poor together in forming a national collection of art. But in general it remained the private preserve of connoisseurs until the 1860s and 1870s, operating on a modest scale, and functioning more or less as a sub-department of the British Museum – it was only after 1856 that the gallery became independent. Acute lack of space meant that many of the pictures were not displayed at all, or were shuttled around London: the bequest in 1856 of over 1,000 paintings by J. M. W. Turner, for example, had to be moved to South Kensington. Confusion and disagreement between the gallery's trustees also led to periods of almost complete paralysis in terms of developing the collection. Some advocated following the German model being developed in Berlin by Gustav Waagen, buying works to show the progression of art through history, while others, including members of the Royal Academy, argued that acquisitions should be confined to important works in styles derived from the classical and Renaissance periods. The result was that between 1847 and 1850 no acquisitions were made at all, even though London salerooms were awash with affordable
masterpieces. In the light of such confusion and missed opportunities, there was an ongoing, very public campaign for the complete reorganization of the collections. The press carried frequent letters about the issue and a public commission in 1857 further aired discontent: in his evidence, John Ruskin complained of the ‘continual change of temper and tone of thought' occasioned by the existing arrangements of the works.
²³

The British Museum was equally disordered and ill-managed. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, entrance was only permitted after applying to the chief officer of the museum for a signed ticket. It could take months for this to come through, after which the visitor was hurried around the galleries on a rushed guided tour. From 1810, matters improved, but the museum was still only open between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on three days a week, to those deemed to be ‘of decent appearance'. Daunted by conservative church opposition and suffering from lack of funds and staff, it was the last to offer Sunday opening, while concerns about the hazards of gas lighting meant that evening opening was also severely restricted. As a result, the collections were all but inaccessible to the working classes. In
Little Dorrit
(1855–7), Charles Dickens associates a ‘Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close, and stale' with the museum's dark, locked rooms:

Everything was bolted and barred that could by possibility furnish relief to an overworked people. No pictures, no unfamiliar animals, no rare plants or flowers, no natural or artificial wonders of the ancient worlds – all taboo. . . Nothing to see but streets, streets, streets.
²⁴

But it was not only the process of getting into the galleries that frustrated visitors. Once inside, the displays themselves retained an air of muddled academia that made it very difficult to understand or appreciate the collections. In 1860,
Chambers Journal
suggested that the British Museum was too ‘cribbed,
cabined and confined' to do any justice to the objects and that it was in danger of degenerating into ‘a gigantic curiosity shop'. Two years later,
The London Review
described the exhibits as ‘so crowded together as to be rendered almost useless'.
²⁵
Between 1850 and 1860, a number of parliamentary inquiries and Royal Commissions discussed everything from space in the galleries to conservation requirements, but popular support for the museum was low, and its galleries seemed to present a sad comparison to the lively display spaces of fashionable events like the Great Exhibition.

With public discontent in the national institutions running high, the relationship between the growing network of regional museums and their larger London counterparts was a complex one. Many of the new museums were fiercely provincial, and unwilling to associate themselves too closely with what they regarded as the failing examples in the capital. Cities and towns outside London were eager to prove they had their own vibrant identities, and events such as the Mechanics' Institutes exhibitions or, on a larger scale, the 1857 Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester had already provided an important means of doing this. The museums were a novel, potent means of displaying provincial progress and pride. They were an indication of how well the outlying towns and cities were doing, showing off the wealth of key benefactors while also displaying the cultural and educational credentials of the populace more widely. The collections were often local or regional in nature, and the displays were clearly regarded with a certain sense of ownership by visitors. The trades, materials and styles on display were familiar, and the names of local collectors were attached to most of the objects.

This powerful sense of provincialism was tempered, however, by the importance of loans from the national collections, especially from the South Kensington Museum. These loan exhibitions were seen by the government as complementary to the regional Schools
of Design, and as part of the crusade to raise manufacturing standards. They were also crucial in establishing many regional museums, enabling cities to develop audiences for displays and create support for a more permanent local collection. Between 1854 and 1870, loans from South Kensington were made fourteen times to Sheffield, ten times to Birmingham, eight times to Liverpool and Nottingham and seven times to Leeds. At the Mechanics' Institute in Manchester in 1845, the display included ‘textile fabrics, bronze, iron and other metal castings, porcelain, and earthenware' and drew visitors from across the city before everything was packed up and moved on to Glasgow.
²⁶

Victorian advances in transport made such peripatetic exhibitions increasingly possible. As the speed and efficiency of the rail system effectively shrank distance, moving objects around the country seemed as simple as it was desirable. There was no longer any reason for everything to be centred on the national institutions in London, or on London audiences. Displays, and the expertise behind them, could be shared because the railways ran quickly and efficiently, changing perceptions of what was achievable. The magnificence of Robinson's loan exhibition at South Kensington was possible because it had already been demonstrated that substantial collections could be brought together temporarily, and then dispersed, without much fuss. The travelling exhibitions proved just how many visitors could be reached and how popular collecting was becoming nationwide. They also emphasized how modern technologies were altering the very nature of collecting, opening up new possibilities and inextricably linking the collection to travel and discovery. Small local displays were giving way to ambitious exhibitions that drew crowds from a distance; museums aspired to become municipal models for the masses rather than elite palace playgrounds of the rich. And the collector was evolving from the gentleman amateur in his isolated study into
the scholar with links across regions and even nations. Times were changing, and the role of the collector was inevitably changing too.

J
OHN
C
HARLES
R
OBINSON

D
rawing was John Charles Robinson's escape. In the long days of childhood he would idle around the country lanes near his home in Nottingham, sketching and scribbling, dreaming of what might be. He was not close to his siblings; his father, a printer and auctioneer, was sternly preoccupied with business, and he was largely raised by his grandfather, who was a bookseller. Robinson spent hours by himself. Physically slight and unremarkable, with a sharp mouth and a high, pale forehead, he was little noticed as he sat practising his skills of composition, perspective and shading. But he did not mind this. He preferred his art to anything and was happy to be left alone. He rapidly developed a self-assurance bordering on arrogance and, as his drawing skills developed, so did his confidence. He compared his work to that of others around him, and he became convinced that he had talent. He began to imagine a future for himself as an artist or an architect, leading a life of creativity and inspiration. His ambition began to shine bright and hard.

Robinson knew he could expect little financial support from his family. Moreover, he had few contacts and sparse knowledge of the world of art. The small-scale auctions run by his father were the closest he had come to the international world of the artist. But his early confidence was unshakeable and, soon after leaving school, he began work in an architect's office. Life behind the drawing board was not quite as he had imagined, however. Studying the style of the nineteenth-century Gothic revival, he was, for a while, inspired by the ideals of craftsmanship and the elegance of Gothic decoration, but the day-to-day routine of a small-scale architect seemed largely mechanical and tedious. Robinson was convinced he could do better. And in 1843, at the age of nineteen, he was accepted into a major artists' teaching atelier in Paris. Taking a big step towards creative and personal independence, Robinson turned his back on his life in Nottingham to begin again.

There was no better place than Paris to learn an artist's trade – up in Montmartre, the crowded narrow streets were teeming with painters and sculptors and poets. Robinson worked with two of the city's leading ateliers. Under the guidance of Michel Martin Drolling, professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, he studied bright, theatrical scenes from the Bible or from history; with Henri Lehmann, a young German-born draughtsman only ten years older than himself, the emphasis was on graceful portraits and nude studies. Robinson studied hard. He drew from the classics or from copies of masterpieces, worked from plaster casts of sculptures, painted in parks and in the open country and made life drawings. He was robustly confident in his own talents. Every week there was a competition among Drolling's students, who were then arranged around the studio in order of merit. In 1845, Robinson wrote proudly to a friend: ‘I am now the “premier dessinateur” in the atelier. There are several who have drawn consistently for four or five years whilst I have
drawn little more than 8 or 9 months and have already got top of the list.'
¹
Robinson may have been exaggerating the speed of his achievements – he had been in Paris, although not at the same atelier, almost two years – but it was clear that he had an eye for perspective, form and colour, and was, as with all things he was to undertake, conscientious and determined. He may have looked boyish and angelic, lightweight even, but he fully believed in his own talent to succeed.

Robinson's practical Paris education was indeed a success. He would work as an artist for the rest of his life, exhibiting several times at the Royal Academy and regularly selling his work. Prints of two of his landscapes can still be seen in the collection at the Tate Gallery. But it was another aspect of his time in the French capital that was to have most influence on the rest of his life – and on the future of British collecting. Robinson's study at the ateliers finished every day at midday, leaving afternoons free. And not far from his lodgings were the high-ceilinged galleries and wide courtyards of the Palais du Louvre. It was there that Robinson discovered for the first time the bold, flourishing masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance, da Vinci's
Mona Lisa
; Raphael's angels and demons; Titian's elegiac nudes; bronzes, busts and sculptures by Michelangelo. For a young man from the Midlands, idealistic and lonely, slightly homesick and desperate to succeed, these works of art were both overwhelming and seductive. Robinson developed an interest in the Renaissance that would endure for the rest of his life. The history and beauty of the masterpieces of the past permeated deep into his understanding until he felt the physical tingle of them in the cool breath of the galleries, the magnificent colours and full forms imprinting themselves unforgettably on his mind's eye.

Robinson spent as many hours with the dead artists of the
Louvre as with the living ones of Montmartre, and it was there, rather than in his studio, that he metamorphosed from a gauche young man into an erudite connoisseur. With its history as a royal palace, the Louvre was spectacular and ornate. The building had dominated the centre of Paris since the twelfth century, developing from a fortress to a sumptuous expression of imperial power. In 1674, the French king, Louis XIV, moved the permanent court to Versailles, and by the end of the seventeenth century the Louvre buildings were starting a new life as home to a gallery of antique sculpture as well as the Académie Française, the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, the last of which launched a series of popular annual exhibitions, or salons. Visitors came from the French political and academic elite, and the activities within the Louvre were held up as a shining example of the nation's cultural pre-eminence and prestige. But the hierarchical structures of the Académies, as well as the yearly salons, clearly promoted the established interests of the ruling minority and the Louvre remained closed to all but a handful of visitors.