1804 Pleading with Joseph Farington
At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the landscape painter Joseph Farington wielded enormous influence at the Royal Academy. This was not due to his artistic talent, which was modest, but to his skilful management of the institution’s bureaucratic structures and—most of all—to his unparalleled ability and assiduity as a networker. He seems to have known every painter, patron, and dealer in London, and to have been regarded by a great many of them as a crucial source of advice and support. We know this thanks to the remarkably detailed diaries he kept between 1793 and his death in 1821, which have long provided a treasure trove for historians of late Georgian visual culture. As one might expect, Farington’s diaries are at times unreliable and unduly self-serving; however, they also offer us a finely grained and often highly revelatory account of the metropolitan art world, and of such events as the annual Summer Exhibition.1
This is especially the case in 1804, when Farington was chosen to sit on the Hanging Committee for that year’s display, alongside his fellow Academicians Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg, Robert Smirke, and George Dance. This committee—then as now—was charged with arranging the display of works within the Academy’s exhibition spaces, which included not only the famous Great Room at Somerset House, but also the adjoining Ante-room, and a series of other spaces. This, of course, gave the members of the committee a great deal of power: for, as all exhibitors were painfully aware, the placement of their pieces was a crucial factor in determining their success or failure at the annual display. As the Hanging Committee went into action in early April, in the run-up to the show, every single contributor would have had the same kinds of question running through their minds: Which rooms will I be in? On which walls? Where on the walls—at the centre, or on the edges? Whose works will be placed next to mine? Or, to put the same questions in another way, and to take them in another direction: Where will the Committee of Arrangement (as the Hanging Committee was properly called) place my works? And how might I influence its decisions?
It is thus no surprise to find that Farington and his colleagues—whose pictorial arrangement could be inspected and commented upon by their fellow Academicians as it spread, day by day, across the various exhibition rooms—found themselves plagued by requests and complaints from participating artists and their supporters. Thanks to the fact that he was recognised as the key player on the Committee, Farington received the lion’s share of such petitions. A few excerpts from his diary entries for April will tell the story, and illuminate the anxieties and aspirations that surrounded this crucial event in the artistic year. They also alert us to a raft of more specific issues: the doubts and disagreements that crept into the discussions of the Hanging Committee itself; the continual changes that were made to the hang as it evolved; the competing claims of Academicians and non-Academicians to prominence within the exhibition space; the precarious status of female artists; the threat posed to an exhibited picture by the presence of a bright colour in an adjoining canvas; and the ways in which even the opinions of the Academy’s President, Benjamin West, could find themselves being overridden:
2nd April: I called on Shee, who expressed a desire to have His picture of Lord Moira hung in the Centre on the fire side.2
6th April: Loutherbourg was evidently very anxious abt. His own pictures—His evening required a strong light,—His avalanche should be on left side,—He objected to White being in a picture above.3
7th April: Between 3 & 4 o’clock West came & examined the pictures arranged … He found Ward’s Landscape [Fig. 1] placed in the Center on the door side & Freebairn’s painted for Mr Penn, on the same side.—He expressed his satisfaction at seeing Ward’s in that situation.4
After tea Smirke came and on seeing our arrangement He said the pictures of Ward & Freebairn should not remain in those situations ... it was agreed that they shd. both be removed to make room for pictures of Members [Academicians].5
8th April: Westall called & delivered to me a paper on which He had marked how & where He would wish to have his drawings placed.6
Mrs Noel & her daughter called on me to request that a picture which she had sent to the Exhibition might be placed in some situation.—She represented that it was of great consequence to Her to have a picture in the Exhibition as Her Scholars [pupils] judged of Her ability in the Art from that circumstance.7
9th April: Today we made many alterations.—Ward’s Landscape was taken down & removed to the Ante-Room as with Freebairn’s.8
… [Bourgeois] said he thought we had … hung the pictures of Academicians in very disadvantageous places, while we had hung the pictures of Owen [a non-Academician] in the best places … [but] he said we had undoubtedly hung the pictures as they wd. be done by those who wished to make the most beautiful arrangement.9
… Turner walked round the room.—He told Smirke that He did not much like the situation of His picture that was on the door side of the lower end of the room, but He did not seem to mind it much.10
11th April: … West then told us that Ward had been with him … [and requested that his Landscape] be withdrawn.—Ward sd. He also wished to withdraw His other pictures. Smirke as well as myself saw through this & told West that His motive was evident, arising from pique …11
18th April: Bourgeois at tea said He thought Northcote’s Tygers ill placed [Fig. 2], That He wd. have placed it in the Center on one side of the Anti-Room.12
… Northcote called to ask for me. I conversed with him and described the situation of all of his pictures. He expressed himself well satisfied.13
19th April: I returned to the Academy and found Miss Lawrence who paints botanical subjects waiting for me. She delivered me a note from Charles Greville, Brother to Lord Warwick, desiring that I & de Loutherbourg wd. endeavour to place Her paintings in the Exhibition … She sd. She lived with her Father & Mother in Queen Ann St. East, and gave Lessons in drawing Botany …14
20th April: Turner came, and was very anxious about His Sea Piece being under Copley’s White drapery. He tried to make it fit the opposite Side but it would not.15
And so it went on, until the Exhibition opened, on Monday 30 April. Farington could now bask in the praise of those of his fellow-artists whom he and the Committee had favoured. The previous week he had noted in his diary that a stream of Academicians, enjoying a preview of the Exhibition, had “appeared satisfied with the situation of their pictures”; and on the day of the opening itself, he mentions that William Owen—the artistic outsider to whom he had seemingly given many of the “best places” within the Exhibition—had “thanked me for His situations”.16 Farington clearly revelled in such expressions of gratitude, and in the quiet but inexorable control he had exerted over that year’s Academy display. In many ways, this must have given him a deeper sense of fulfilment than that provided by his own practice as a painter. Despite the fact that he carefully recorded the polite compliments he had received for his own landscape submissions that year, he would have known that he was not, and was never going to be, one of the Summer Exhibition’s star artists.17 However, he could take satisfaction from the fact that in 1804—in his own eyes at least—he was the Exhibition’s Chief Curator.
The standard scholarly edition is Joseph Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Kenneth Garlick and Angus MacIntyre (eds, Vols 1–7); Kathryn Cave (ed., Vols 8–16); index by Evelyn Newby, 16 vols, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1978–1998).↩︎
Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2288. Farington refers to the painter Martin Archer Shee, who was later to become President of the Academy.↩︎
Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2290. Here, de Loutherbourg, despite being on the Hanging Committee himself, is still anxious about the impact that the colour white, in an adjoining paining, was going to have on one of his own exhibited works.↩︎
Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2291. Farington refers to James Ward, and his picture, Landscape with Bulls Fighting, which was seen by many of his fellow-painters as overly derivative of the work of Rubens and, as is seen below, was ultimately withdrawn from the show by the artist; the other artist to whom Farington refers is the landscape painter Robert Freebairn.↩︎
Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2292.↩︎
Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2292. Farington refers to the artist Richard Westall.↩︎
Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2293. She was successful; the catalogue for that year’s Exhibition records that both Mrs A. Noel, of 32, Albermarle Street, and her daughter “Miss Noel”, had individual works in the display; see the index to The Exhibition of the Royal Academy (London, 1804), n.p.↩︎
Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2294.↩︎
Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2294. The artists to whom Farington refers here are Francis Bourgeois and William Owen; Owen became an Associate Academician later that same year.↩︎
Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2294. The “Turner” to whom Farington refers is J.M.W. Turner, who had become a full Academician in 1802, and who was already establishing himself as a star of the Summer Exhibition.↩︎
Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2296. Farington refers to Robert Smirke.↩︎
Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2300. The painter and painting being discussed here are James Northcote and his Tiger Hunting.↩︎
Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2300.↩︎
Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2301. Like the aforementioned Mrs Noel, she seems to have been successful. The index to that year’s catalogue notes that a “Mary Lawrence” (whose address, however, is given as 86, Queen Anne-street East’) exhibited two works, both of a botanical character, in that year’s show. See the index to The Exhibition of the Royal Academy (London, 1804), n.p.↩︎
Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2302. “Copley” is John Singleton Copley. The picture about which Turner was so anxious seems to have been Copley’s portrait of Mrs Richard Crownin-Shield Derby as St. Cecilia, listed in the catalogue as no. 184; the picture that Turner feared would be overshadowed was his Boats carrying out anchor and tables to Dutch Men of War, in 1665, which similarly contains great swathes of white paint, and was listed in the catalogue as no. 183. See The Exhibition of the Royal Academy (London, 1804), 11.↩︎
Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2307; 2312.↩︎
For the compliments that Farington received on his own exhibited work, see, for example, Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. 6, April 1803–December 1804, 2310.↩︎
Thematic categories: colour in paintings, curation of exhibition and displays, Curators, display and location of exhibits, hanging of exhibits, seascapes, Selection and Hanging Committee, withdrawals from exhibition, women artists