The current exhibition of comic prints and drawings by Thomas Rowlandson (1756 – 1827) at the Queen’s Gallery has travelled from the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh (where it was originally reviewed by Criticks in 2013) and the Holburne Museum in Bath. It now accompanies Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer, a sumptuous display of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings from the Royal Collection. The connection between the two exhibitions is established on a small wall panel in the Millar Room, reserved for visitors’ learning materials, which informs us that Rowlandson found much inspiration in Dutch art for his own work. It is perhaps only by the end of the visit that these inspirations become clearer: the ‘everyday’ tumultuous life, the featured objects and interiors, the absurd and comical details of human nature which populate these quite different genres. But the comparison has its limits in terms of medium, artistic motivation and cultural background. The juxtaposition is likely to place Rowlandson as a second choice for visitors who might by then feel that a cup of coffee has a more urgent claim on their attention. This would be a shame, not least because a rare folding screen from 1806-7, covered with cut-outs of satirical scenes and figures, is on view. It has been expertly conserved for the exhibition, the painstaking process of which is documented on the Royal Collection website.
The screen is described in the richly illustrated and comprehensive catalogue (Cat.93) as unlikely to have been a royal commission since it incorporates many images from prints which were critical of the Royal family, though it is first recorded at Sandringham House. A foreword in the catalogue by HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, expresses pointed misgivings about caricature. He suggests that subjects of satire like himself need a ‘robust’ sense of humour to enjoy them, and that one would have to be a ‘masochist’ to collect cartoons about oneself. Many of the prints were in the Prince Regent’s collection, indicating that his appreciation of Rowlandson’s genius overcame wounded hauteur. A number of the political and celebrity targets of the Spitting Image ITV television satire of the 1980s and 1990s subsequently wanted to own the puppets which had caricatured them, so perhaps acknowledgement of both fame and infamy can give similar egoistic satisfaction. The catalogue nevertheless discusses the evidence suggesting that the Prince Regent tried to suppress the more virulent attacks on him in print (p.44). It seems that his pornographic prints were disposed of later by Queen Victoria, another attempt to clean up the past and a more successful one than that made by John Ruskin who wanted to protect J.M.W. Turner’s reputation by destroying many of his erotic drawings.
The screen includes figures by Rowlandson and others, mostly from prints published by Samuel William Fores. It is likely that it was assembled for a client. Fores advertised prints which were specifically marketed for scrap designs, one of the intriguing varieties of services which printers provided in the commercially competitive Georgian period. The screen brings together the visual and material cultures of Rowlandson’s time, and its particular assemblage of figures highlights the provocative and misogynistic humour which prevailed and which is probably more remarked upon now than by his contemporaries. Its ostensibly chaotic groupings reveal their own narratives of young women surrounded by men of all ages and classes, diners and drinkers, the observed and the observing, the outraged and the outrageous. The precise significance of the original individual caricatures is lost and subverted by a vision of an even more anarchic and disorderly society. We are further reminded of the importance of context in reading satirical prints, most of which were tied to specific cultural moments, and were seen by the majority of the population as a series of commentaries on current affairs in print shop windows. The exhibition references this by displaying a wall of closely hung images which interact in different ways, and which are only described on an adjacent panel. Their original audience would have needed no reminder about their subjects, unless provided perhaps by other viewers jostling alongside. The communal experience has now generally become a solitary one.
The screen is at the centre of the exhibition, but by this point we have been introduced to the artist and his importance as a satirist of many aspects of Georgian life, the flair of his drawing skills and examples of the many facial types which populate later prints on display. Sketches at – an Oratorio!, 1800? (Cat.55) is a long print of separate portraits showing different social types and classes, reacting with boredom, annoyance, horror and incomprehension as they listen to a concert. It is almost a caricature version of Charles LeBrun’s codification of portraying the passions (Conférence sur l’expression générale et particulière, Paris,1698). Rowlandson studied in Paris from 1774-5 with the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714-85), and may have been aware of the psycho-physiological theories of Descartes which were the basis for LeBrun’s lecture and illustrations. Johann Kaspar Lavater’s work on physiognomy was even more influential in the eighteenth century and Rowlandson was not of course the first to develop subtle facial expressions to convey his message. His great debt to Hogarth’s prints is evident throughout his career. His early drawing A Midnight Conversation, c.1780 (Cat.2) has an obvious allusion to Midnight Modern Conversation (c.1730), and twenty years later his The Chamber of Genius drawing, c.1805 (Cat.63) closely follows Hogarth’s The Distrest Poet (c.1736) in its composition and details. There are numerous other borrowings, as he consciously placed himself within the satirical tradition. Likewise, later artists used such compositional techniques for their own purposes. His An English Review, 1786 (Cat.16) and A French Review, 1786 (Cat.17) drawings foreshadow William Powell Frith’s The Derby Day (1858) with its foreground human narratives set against a background formal occasion.
The catalogue notes that ‘the appreciation of beauty was one of Rowlandson’s favourite themes’ (p.152). In addition to borrowing from other artists, he played with styles and subjects. One of the most interesting drawings is Buck’s Beauty and Rowlandson’s Connoisseur (Cat.49). One of the classical statuesque females popularised by artist Adam Buck (1759-1833) is drawn on the left, while Rowlandson’s signature lecherous old roué takes centre stage, contemplating her charms. It is a confrontation of different drawing techniques, purposes and artistic practices. The date c.1799 points back to eighteenth-century caricature and forward to nineteenth-century Neoclassicism. The young woman is coolly indifferent to the rake, as perhaps she would have been to Rowlandson in his forties although he was only three years older than Buck. There seems less criticism of his contemporary, and more gentle parody of them both, an acknowledgement that all artists are destined to acquiesce to public taste. Interestingly, Rowlandson had studied the Classical antique during his formal training though little is known of Buck’s early academic studies.
The exhibition is able to highlight Rowlandson’s drawings before turning to his well-known satirical prints, largely because there are a large number of both in the Royal Collection. This means that we can see as much of the artist as of the printmaker and gain a more rounded view of his work. His highly finished drawings and watercolours of scenes and buildings were worked up and mounted for sale, though they are peopled by the humorous characters which he obviously enjoyed. The satirical prints however were his main source of income, some shockingly critical of the Royal family and politicians, which can be seen as a history of the scandals and controversies of the Regency period. His reputation for a more muted approach to satire is apparent if we compare his political work to the acerbic and ferocious prints of his contemporary James Gillray, whose lurid images remain the most vivid commentaries on the revolutionary period. Rowlandson’s The Contrast of 1792 (Cat.38) however, after a design by Lord George Murray and circulated widely as anti-revolutionary propaganda, is one of the key images of the time. It is ubiquitous in current scholarly texts, and appears regularly in related exhibitions (Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy, at the British Library, March-September, 2015 for example). His political images are simpler, less exaggerated and energetic than Gillray’s. They are also less memorable perhaps for this reason.
The exhibition subtitle ‘The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson’, is predictable but perhaps restrictive if we wish to find the more subtle contributions made by satirical printmakers to public debate. It does not point the modern viewer towards understanding the undercurrents of the images. Examples of Rowlandson’s output which were included in Rude Britannia: British Comic Art (Tate Britain, 9th June-5th September 2010) placed him within both his contemporary context and a longer historic context of comic art. As the catalogue for that exhibition points out, ‘at the heart of the intersection of art and humour lies the potential for profound misapprehension, the possibility that grappling with the one means that the other is misunderstood or distorted’ (Martin Myrone, ‘What’s so Funny about British Art?’, in Rude Britannia: British Comic Art, Catalogue, 2010, p.8.).
Just as the original viewing of prints differed from ours, alternative settings for viewing the same print have their impact. The Rowlandson exhibition concludes with the print of Rachel Pringle of Barbadoes, 1796, made after a drawing by ‘E.D.’ and published five years after the subject’s death (Cat.44). Coincidentally, a copy of this print is also currently on show in the Tate Britain exhibition Artist and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past (25th November 2015 – 10th April 2016). The colouring of the Royal Collection copy is bolder and emphasises Rachel’s skin colouring. Her story is briefly described on the labels in both exhibitions, though not the possibility that her violent Scottish father/owner raped her. She was a slave who later gained her freedom and ran a successful business in Barbados. The Tate label relates the story that Prince William, later William IV, was stationed there and led a drunken party which destroyed her hotel. She presented him with a bill for £700 to cover the damage, which he paid. This is not mentioned in the Queen’s Gallery catalogue. Whether this incident is the reason for her inclusion in the Royal Collection, or whether it is due to the popular fame that she achieved by unusually making a financial success of her life, can only be guessed. The print was commissioned and published by William Holland in anticipation of its success as one of a series of West Indian subjects.
Its inclusion in both exhibitions highlights the importance of context. The Tate places it among different colonial representations of the ‘other’. As the Queen’s Gallery catalogue notes, ‘it is clear that Rowlandson did not intend it to be humorous’ and that it is ‘a portrait print, produced for a British market interested in Pringle-Polgreen’s appearance’ (p.142). It does not then conform to ‘the comic art’ theme of the exhibition. It is indeed a dignified, confident image of Rachel, presenting her viewer with the evidence of her success. The young woman, portly client and leering English military man in the background however disrupt the message and suggest alternative interpretations of the original artist’s intentions which are not part of the Queen’s Gallery agenda.
We leave the exhibition with a good understanding of the wide variety of Rowlandson’s work. The element of biographical progression in the display necessitates the inclusion of work which strains against the simple ‘comic’ subtitle. Rowlandson had to earn his living, not least to offset his tendency to extravagant profligacy. Sensitivity to market requirements and political and cultural changes was essential for survival. This exhibition alerts us to the variety and breadth of his skills which perhaps deserve many more adjectives to supplement the word ‘comic’.
High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson is at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace until 14th February 2016.