Byron at the Victoria and Albert

Byron at the Victoria and AlbertAuthor(s): Leonèe OrmondSource: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 116, No. 856 (Jul., 1974), pp. 424+426Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/877748 .

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CURRENT AND FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS

The problems of painting in enamel, and in particular of obtaining colours that would remain true after firing, must have appealed to the experimental, scientific side of Stubbs's nature. And the interest in the enamel painting actually predates the association with Josiah Wedgwood. What appears to be his first work in enamel, the Tate's own Lion devouring a Horse, is signed and dated 1769. At first, copper plates were used as a base; but they were unsatisfactory because it was apparently impossible to get sheets larger than about fifteen by eighteen inches. It was after the association with Wedgwood, which started in I1775, that Stubbs was really able to explore the possibilities of the medium more fully.

The finest of the enamel paintings are more than just interesting experiments. Stubbs must have sensed that the technique, as well as offering a scientific challenge, could also give him the kind of artistic results that he had come to expect from oil paints on canvas or panel. 'The Farmer's Wife and the Raven' and the superb oval Labourers of I78I (adapted as a print in 1789) retain all his qualities unim- paired. The probing clarity of form and the delicacy of texture and colouring are preserved. The exhibition also includes a number of conventional oils, such as The Wedgwood Family in the grounds of Etruria Hall (for which the fee was ?440 is 6d) and the Tate's Mares and Foals, as a useful reminder that the enamel technique on ceramic tablets had its own distinct limitations. Although larger than copper sheets, the tablets could still not be pro- duced on a scale commensurate with Stubbs's more ambitious intentions.

KEITH ROBERTS

Byron at the Victoria and Albert The Byron exhibition at the Victoria

and Albert Museum (until 25th August) poses a familiar question. How much can a largely visual experience tell us about a writer? In the case of Byron the question is perhaps less pressing than with many other poets, because he played so many roles which lend themselves to visual presentation: dandy, traveller, great lover and freedom fighter. Nevertheless, for all the scholarly display of first editions and manuscripts, something of Byron is ab- sent. While one can capture a little of his quality as a love-poet through the portraits of his mistresses, the great satirist, the author of The Vision of Judgement and of Don Juan, cannot be evoked simply through portraits of his victims. While there is music to accompany various parts of the exhibition, there is no recitation of the poetry.

The exhibition celebrates the 150th anniversary of the poet's death at Misso- longhi, where he went to support the fight for the liberation of Greece. Ar- ranged chronologically, in a series of sections and rooms, it leads up to his heroic death, which provided the neces- sary coping-stone to his posthumous

reputation. He may not have the quality of Wordsworth as a poet, but, because he died in the struggle for liberty, he does have a popular appeal which Wordsworth, who lived into a respectable old age, certainly cannot match.

Byron had a touch of romance from the start. Born poor, he inherited a peerage at ten, and the exhibition opens with sections devoted to his boyhood in Scotland, his education at Harrow and Cambridge, and his extensive travels in Portugal, Spain, the Mediterranean and Greece. This period is by far the most difficult to evoke because there is so little striking material concerned directly with the poet himself. A series of paintings and en- gravings show how Byron's contemporaries viewed the scenes through which he passed, but the evidence of Childe Harold suggests that Byron's own vision was not of this kind. As well as the later Venetian and Swiss sections, this might have been a case for a series of photographs of places which have not significantly changed, like those of Chillon and Missolonghi in the reading-room at the end of the exhibition. Immediacy and freshness are so essentially a part of Byron's eye for landscape that the softened image of the English artists is not always appropriate.

Once Byron returned to London in 1811 , the exhibition has a far greater wealth of material to draw upon. There is a re- markable display of manuscripts, which are often, like Byron's correspondence with Lady Caroline Lamb, of a remarkably intimate nature. The unusual legibility of his hand means that these can make an immediate effect on a reader not familiar with all the details of the poet's life.

The exhibition has a number of set- pieces, rooms based upon actual settings, and the first of these is a copy of a room at Byron's publisher, John Murray's. The choice of a restrained Regency setting for the rooms which follow it, sections concerned with Byron's London period, gives exactly the right feeling for what was essentially a pre-Byronic world. Yet it is not always easy to relate him to the back- ground which has been so lovingly and accurately evoked. The portraits of the people he knew, of the women he loved, are all there, but the central figure is curiously elusive, only coming to the fore with a section devoted to his short-lived and disastrous marriage. However well the story is known, the sight of the bride's dresss, the groom's gloves, and the correspondence between the couple after their separation, suddenly brings us face to face with a human catastrophe. A similar, if more limited effect, is created by the sight of one of Byron's shirts. The ruffles and the delicate monogram bring him alive far more effectively than all the portraits of significant contemporaries like William Godwin can ever hope to do.

Byron had a very strong sense of his own image, and, were it not for Don Juan and some of the lyrics, one might be tempted to think that his persona was his

most enduring creation. He was obsessed with his appearance, taking purgatives to enhance the whiteness of his complexion, and dressing with the studied casualness that will always be associated with him. The elaborate reconstruction of his salone in the Palazzo Mocenigo in Venice is effective because it is possible to imagine Byron posing against this picturesque disarray.

Not surprisingly, in view of Byron's concern with his own appearance, the chief triumph of the exhibition lies in the presentation of so many portraits of the poet. Thomas Phillips wins hands down, with the two quintessential studies of Byron, one in Albanian dress, and the other in a dark jacket and white shirt (Fig.96), both dating from the poet's middle twenties. Phillips scores again with the stunning portrait of Lady Caroline Lamb, dressed as a page. As a portraitist of By- ron, Phillips does not pass quite unchal- lenged, however, for there are telling images from G. H. Harlow, Lorenzo Bartolini and Count D'Orsay. This last shows Byron in Genoa in 1823, shortly before his departure for Greece, his looks evidently fading. It is an image which shocks us by giving us a visual truth to set against a series of carefully studied icons. The icon to end all icons comes near the end of the exhibition, with the magnificent modello for Thorwaldsen's statue, now at Trinity College, Cambridge (Fig.97). A comparison with the first study, which is also on show, reveals how Thorwaldsen rose to the challenge of portraying a poet who was, above all others, conscious of the necessity of suiting his outward image to his vocation.

The final rooms, devoted to the posthumous cult of Byron, give some idea of how that image was embalmed for pos- terity. Yet, the questions are still there, and this exhibition is fascinating because it raises the central one over and over again. We can see the reasons why Byron captured and continues to capture the imagination, but we still come away asking: 'What was Byron like?'.

LEONEE ORMOND

Medieval Ivory Carvings at the Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum, under the auspices of the Arts Council, and we are told by the catalogue, at the suggestion of Lord Clark, has put on a really superb exhibition of early medieval ivory carvings - undoubtedly a feast for the eyes. Sixty-one pieces (two are carved on both sides, separately catalogued) of very high quality have been assembled by John Beckwith from private and public collections throughout Europe and the United States, as well as one fine fragment recently excavated at Winchester by Martin Biddle (not in the catalogue). Very unfortunately an additional five very important pieces for the theme of the exhibition and a sixth, the 'missing' side panel of the Franks Casket in the British

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94. Patio de la Alberca, Alhambra, Granada, by Harriet Ford. 1832. Pencil and brown wash, 28-5 by 21-6 cm. (Collection Brinsley Ford; exh. Messrs. Wildenstein, London.)

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96. Portrait of Lord Byron, by Thomas Phillips. (Private Collection; exh. Victoria and Albert Museum.)

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97. Second Model of Byron Memorial Statue, Trinity College, Cambridge, by Albert Thorwaldsen. (Thorwaldsens Museum, Copenhagen; exh. Victoria and Albert Museum.)



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Byron at the Victoria and Albert