Room: 1840-1890

This room contains artworks ranging from 1840 through to 1890. So we’re really talking about works produced during the reign of Queen Victoria. The Victorian Era also witnessed a time of the great exhibitions and when images were disseminated through reproductive media. Initially engravings but by the end of the century photographs. In this exhibition space, we’ve have tried to recapture the feel of a Victorian exhibition gallery with works densely hung in two tiers. A number of artists working in the mid nineteenth century wanted to use their artworks to address topical, social and political issues. This is an excellent example of that. It is by a female artist called Emily Mary Osborn and it’s called ‘Nameless and Friendless’ and in this painting she wanted to address the situation of the single woman in modern metropolitan society. If you look at the way its painted, the paint is applied very evenly throughout there’s no obtrusive brush work so she wants the spectator to actually look at this as if they were in the theatre watching a scene enacted on the stage. The artist who painted this, Emily Mary Osborn is what we would now call a feminist she was a woman who along with other female artists of the time campaigned for women to have access to art education at the Royal Academy and also to sell and exhibit their works in public. This painting is by an American artist who settled in London in the late 1850’s. It’s called ‘Nocturne Blue and Silver Chelsea’ and it was shown at the Dudley Gallery in 1871. Now Nocturne of course relates to the time of day, its a twilight scene but it’s also a term used often by musicians to describe a piece of music and the artist wanted the painting to communicate like a piece of music so it communicates through its tones, through its colours, through its harmonies and its rhythms. The second part of the title ‘Chelsea’ relates to a particular location and it’s really a recollection of the Chelsea river bank form Battersea from the opposite side of the river and you can just work out the tower of Chelsea Old Church on the far right hand side of the composition. This work ‘Carnation Lily Lily Rose’ is by another American artist, John Singer Sargent and the artist on one level is drawing your attention to the young girls in the painting who are using tapers to light the Chinese lanterns. He is drawing your attention to their innocence, their youth and the lilies which are traditionally a sign of purity. Yet at the same time, the lantern aflame suggest ephemerality, that youth is an ephemeral life flames briefly and then it’s extinguished. These colours will have seemed very sort of bright and startling to London audiences in the mid 1880’s and as much as this painting was praised, it was also criticised for showing foreign influence.