The Exhibition Age 1760–1815

John Hoppner, Miss Harriet Cholmondeley  exhibited 1804

Sir Henry Raeburn, Pringle Fraser  c.1804

Pringle Fraser was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, in 1787. Here, he is around 17 years old. The dramatic lighting focusses attention on his face, illuminated against the dark, restrained background. This striking light effect and the fluid handling of paint suggests Henry Raeburn’s growing artistic confidence. By this time, Raeburn was celebrated as one of Scotland’s greatest portraitists. As an adult, Fraser travelled to India and joined the East India Company’s army, eventually becoming a Captain in the 7th Regiment in the Madras Native Infantry.

Gallery label, October 2023

Henry Fuseli, Percival Delivering Belisane from the Enchantment of Urma  exhibited 1783

Waking from an enchanted sleep, Percival is shown raising his sword to strike the wizard Urma. Meanwhile, his lover, Belisane, clings to his side. Although Henry Fuseli claimed this story was from the ‘Provencal Tales of Kyot’, it was actually his own invention. At first glance, this painting seems to depict the kind of heroic scene associated with grand manner painting. However, it disregards the noble themes and moral lessons such painting usually demanded. Instead, Fuseli’s strange and supernatural imagery emphasises emotional drama and spectacle. This played into Fuseli’s persona as a wild eccentric, equally admired and reviled by contemporaries.

Gallery label, February 2024

Philip James De Loutherbourg, A Distant Hail-Storm Coming On, and the March of Soldiers with their Baggage  1799

As the war against France continued during the 1790s, Philip James de Loutherbourg increasingly turned his attention to military and naval subjects. Rather than depicting a grand battle, here he emphasises the domestic impact of war. British soldiers march through the countryside, leaving tearful families behind. The dark clouds and stormy weather only increase the sombre, foreboding mood. When this painting was exhibited in 1799, one reviewer commented on its appeal to the viewer’s emotions, praising the ‘variety of beauties which cannot be easily described, but are felt by the connoisseur on the first view.’

Gallery label, February 2024

George Morland, Outside an Inn, Winter  c.1795

George Morland was known for painting rustic country life. Here, he depicts a man departing from an inn, watched by a child from the open doorway. The traveller’s thick coat and shiny top hat suggests his affluence, in contrast with the humble inn keeper, who keeps a pig for food. The scene’s stark surroundings underscore the hardship of rural life. However, Morland may have been appealing to the popular market for simple, picturesque country scenes. At this time Morland began working on a smaller scale and often recycled compositions in order to increase his output. This painting is similar to an earlier print, and doorway exchanges regularly feature in Morland’s work.

Gallery label, February 2024

Sir Joshua Reynolds, Colonel Acland and Lord Sydney: The Archers  1769

This portrait depicts two young aristocrats. Dressed in quasi-historical clothing invented by the artist, they are mimicking a medieval or Renaissance hunt; the dead game they leave in their trail underlining their noble blood and aristocratic right to hunt. This painting celebrates their friendship by linking it to an imaginary chivalric past, when young lords pursued ‘manly’ activities together against a backdrop of ancient forest. The subjects are shown in perfect harmony – at one with each other and joint masters over nature.

Gallery label, February 2016

Richard Westall, The Reconciliation of Helen and Paris after his Defeat by Menelaus  exhibited 1805

This painting is inspired by Greek legend: Helen was married to Menelaus, king of Sparta. Her affair with the Trojan prince, Paris, led to the Trojan War. Richard Westall painted this scene for Thomas Hope, a wealthy collector. His London home had rooms designed and furnished in the different styles of the ancient world – Egypt, India, Greece and Rome. Westall modelled the figure of Helen on a Greek statue in Hope’s collection. In the 1790s Westall’s Royal Academy exhibits were the talk of the town. His flashy paint effects divided opinion, however, and many thought his work was too stylised and unnatural.

Gallery label, February 2024

George Stubbs, Mares and Foals in a River Landscape  c.1763–8

This painting seems to have been used as an ‘overdoor’, hung with two other pictures by Stubbs above the doors in the dining room of George Brodrick, 3rd Viscount Midleton, MP (1730–65). Reflecting the ornamental use to which this painting was to be put, it seems that Stubbs, the premier animal painter of his day, did not set out to be especially original. The figures of the horses are the same as those appearing in another painting, a commission for Lord Rockingham representing specific horses owned by him, although the colour of one has been changed from brown to grey.

Gallery label, February 2016

John Opie, A School  1784

This painting caused a sensation when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1784. It was remarkable for its frank and touching representation of ordinary life. John Opie modelled the school mistress on his mother. Contemporary viewers particularly admired its realism and dramatic light effects. John Opie launched into the London art world as the ‘Cornish wonder’, a self-taught prodigy. This picture only added to his celebrity. The popularity of A School – and condescension towards Opie because of his working-class background – is apparent in one critic’s quip that ‘Could people in vulgar life afford to pay for pictures, Opie would be their man’.

Gallery label, February 2024

Edward Penny, The Gossiping Blacksmith  exhibited 1769

Edward Penny was the first Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy (founded in 1768). This painting was displayed in the Academy’s first exhibition the following year. It illustrates lines from Shakespeare’s King John, which were also printed in the exhibition catalogue: ‘I saw a smith stand with his hammer thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open mouth swallow a taylor’s news.’ Paintings with Shakesperian themes were increasingly popular in the 18th Century. They appealed to a sense of national pride for many of the people who flocked to attend art exhibitions.

Gallery label, October 2023

Sir Joshua Reynolds, The Age of Innocence  ?1788

The identity of Joshua Reynolds’s young model is uncertain. It is perhaps Reynold’s great-niece Theophila Gwatkin, a Miss Anne Fletcher, or a Lady Anne Spencer (the youngest daughter of the 4th Duke of Marlborough). This painting is an example of a ‘fancy’ picture, a type of 18th century painting showing figures, particularly children, playing out various roles. It was painted over one of Reynolds’s existing paintings, titled A Strawberry Girl. He altered all elements of the girl’s figure except for her hands. The Age of Innocence was one of Reynolds’s most popular images – more than 323 full-scale copies were made of it between 1856 and 1893.

Gallery label, October 2023

Thomas Stothard, Nymphs Discover the Narcissus  exhibited 1793

Thomas Stothard depicts a scene here from the Roman poet Ovid’s mythological narrative, Metamorphoses. The boy Narcissus, obsessed with his own reflection in the water, wastes away and turns into a flower. Here a group of nymphs discover the flower growing on the riverbank. The painting was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1793. Stothard’s steadiest form of income was book illustration, but his reputation as a history painter was beginning to grow in the 1790s. It was on this basis that he was elected a full member of the Royal Academy in 1794.

Gallery label, October 2023

Henry Robert Morland, A Laundry Maid Ironing  c.1765–82

This painting of a maid ironing is typical for Morland, who specialised in such ‘fancy pictures’ - subjects drawn from everyday life but with imaginative elements. He repeatedly painted and exhibited idealised pictures of young women in working-class roles, as ballad singers, oyster sellers and laundry maids. Here, the woman is shown passively gazing down, serene as she works, her tools and appearance pristine. There is little indication of her individuality, or of the real hardship of such domestic labour. Instead, she represents a contrived ‘type’, made attractive for contemporary middle and upper-class viewers and saleable for the print market.

Gallery label, June 2022

Thomas Whitcombe, The Battle of Camperdown  1798

This painting shows the naval battle that took place on 11 October 1797 near Camperduin, off the coast of North-Holland in the Netherlands. Whitcombe depicts the dramatic moments shortly after the British ship Venerable fired at its Dutch opponent Vrijheid. Just behind Venerable, to the right, is the Dutch ship Alkmaar in flames. The battle resulted in a resounding victory for the British fleet midway through the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802). Thomas Whitcombe specialised in maritime pictures, including of naval battles. Images like this, celebrating Britain’s naval power and victories, helped create a sense of national identity.

Gallery label, October 2023

Francis Holman, A Dockyard at Wapping  c.1780–4

Little is known about the artist Francis Holman. He was a painter of seascapes, ship's portraits and dockyard scenes, such as this small private dockyard on the Thames at Wapping. It is recorded that at one time Holman lived at Wapping, so he would have been intimate with the area and well able to execute this topographically accurate scene. He depicts with care the busy action of the dock, with ships in dry dock, and men unloading cargo. Even the sailmaker's firm of Morley, which is inscribed on the sign on the building to the extreme left, is known to have existed, directories listing it in Wapping until 1784.

Gallery label, August 2004

Henry Walton, Plucking the Turkey  exhibited 1776

This painting was exhibited in London in 1776, during the early stages of the war with revolutionary America. Walton’s image of a cookmaid plucking a turkey is an example of the kind of lowly subject-matter denigrated by Sir Joshua Reynolds and the new Royal Academy.

But it may also make a coded political reference. The turkey was very closely associated with America: Benjamin Franklin even proposed that it should become the symbol of independent America, instead of the eagle. The painting may, therefore, be a pro-British comment on the anticipated fate of the rebellious colonists.

Gallery label, September 2004

Julius Caesar Ibbetson, Sand Quarry at Alum Bay  ?exhibited 1792

Julius Caesar Ibbetson visited the Isle of Wight in 1791, which inspired him to paint many views of the coves and cliffs. This picture shows the local scenery at Alum Bay, with a group of men quarrying sand in the foreground. The famous Needles – a row of chalk stacks in the sea – are visible in the distance. This is probably one of the several coastal scenes of the Isle of Wight that Ibbetson exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1792 and 1796. Throughout his career, Ibbetson travelled widely, including to China and the island of Java in Indonesia (then a Dutch colony). Many of his landscape paintings were inspired by the places he visited.

Gallery label, October 2023

Sir Thomas Lawrence, Homer Reciting his Poems  1790

For most of his career, Lawrence featured in the Royal Academy exhibitions as a portrait painter. He became President of the Academy and, like his predecessor Joshua Reynolds, aspired to be a history painter. This early work was exhibited in 1791. It was painted for the connoisseur, Richard Payne Knight, and its subject and style were calculated to suit his classical taste. In a woodland glade, the Greek poet Homer is shown reciting his Iliad to an admiring audience. The nude youth in the foreground was drawn from a famous pugilist (professional boxer) named Jackson.

Gallery label, February 2016

John Hamilton Mortimer, Sir Arthegal, the Knight of Justice, with Talus, the Iron Man (from Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queene’)  exhibited 1778

This painting refers to the courtly fantasy of British origins prevalent in the Elizabethan age and the seventeenth century. It illustrates Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene 1590/6, a poem that claims Elizabeth I as heir to King Arthur’s British kingdom.

Arthegal was one of the Queene’s knights, trained by the immortal Astraea to be the champion of True Justice. She gave him the invincible sword, Chrysaor, which he holds here. Behind him is Talus, his squire. Talus was a man ‘made of iron mould, immoveable, resistlesse’. He carries an iron flail with which he threshes out falsehood.

Gallery label, September 2004

James Northcote, A Young Lady Playing the Harp  ?exhibited 1814

A Young Lady Playing the Harp ?exhibited 1814 is an oil painting by the English artist and author James Northcote. It depicts a young harpist wearing a white dress tied with a long green sash, with a string of red beads around her neck. The harpist gazes forward, both hands raised to pluck the strings. She is seated against a rural backdrop dominated by a large, dark tree on the right, which frames her compositionally. The backdrop on the left, seen through the strings of the harp, features a twilit sky over hills and a lake.

Richard Wilson, On Hounslow Heath  ?exhibited 1770

The view shows the watermeadows beside the River Crane. This area of Hounslow Heath was not known for its beauty or cultural significance. Instead, the attraction of this picture lies in the beauty of the sky and the reflections in the water. In this it is an example of a new type of landscape view, designed to bring a vision of a rural idyll into the city dweller's home. The picture was commissioned by Tom Davies, who was a Bloomsbury bookseller, and one of a growing number of middle-class urban patrons of English landscape subjects.

Gallery label, September 2004

Francis Cotes, Portrait of a Lady  1768

This elegant and ornamental portrait

is a fine example of Cotes's style, which emphasises fashion rather than character. The sitter, whose identity is uncertain, sits on a garden bench in an artificial yet striking pose. Her gown and its lace are arranged decoratively about her, the pink and white colouring echoed by the foxgloves behind her, and the roses on the left. The portrait was painted in 1768, the same year as the foundation of the Royal Academy. Cotes was one of its founder members, which his prominent signature on the tree trunk, 'F Cotes RA px', proudly announces.

Gallery label, February 2010

Maria Spilsbury, The Schoolmistress  c.1803

A young woman in white is shown teaching the children gathered around her. One boy sits absorbed in reading A Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan. The Christian message of this book is reinforced by the church seen in the distance. Maria Spilsbury often portrayed women in such nurturing roles, reflecting the importance of women educators at this time. Women were especially active in the growing Sunday School movement, which aimed to educate working-class children on Sundays, their one day off. Spilsbury also painted a larger version of this picture (with more overt Christian symbolism) and probably exhibited one of these at the Royal Academy in 1804. At that time, her work was reputedly so popular that carriages would queue outside her London studio.

Gallery label, October 2023

John Hoppner, Mrs Williams  c.1790

Little is known about the woman in this painting. She is thought to have been the wife of a Captain Williams. John Hoppner portrays her in her youth, possibly before her marriage. Hoppner was a skilled colourist, demonstrated in Mrs William’s rosy cheeks and the blue trimmings of her bonnet and blouse. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1780. While he was initially interested in landscape painting, Hoppner soon turned to portraiture which provided a steadier source of income. He achieved considerable success, receiving commissions from numerous aristocrats and members of the royal family.

Gallery label, October 2023

Richard Wilson, Llyn-y-Cau, Cader Idris  ?exhibited 1774

Richard Wilson paints Llyn Cau, a lake near the summit of Cadair Idris in North Wales. He heightened the precipice and included imagined landscape features to create a balanced, more ordered composition. The tiny people underscore the monumental scale of the scenery. Wilson suggests we are looking at an untouched paradise, ideal for contemplating nature. The figure with a telescope may reflect the fashionable enthusiasm for such remote scenery. The Welsh countryside particularly appealed to Wilson’s contemporaries because of the new taste for sublime awe-inspiring landscapes and the growing interest in Welsh history and culture.

Gallery label, February 2024

Gilbert Stuart, Portrait of a Man (Self-portrait?)  c.1782–9

The American artist Gilbert Stuart probably painted this work in the 1780s, either in London or Dublin (where he moved in 1787). Stuart emerged as an independent artist in these years, becoming a rising star in the art world. This painting seems to reflect his growing confidence. It is painted with bold, emphatic brushstrokes and Stuart uses characteristically distinct, vibrant colours. The sitter himself, looks directly out at the viewer, his arms crossed. We don’t know the young man’s identity, although in the past it was thought to be a self-portrait.

Gallery label, February 2024

Sawrey Gilpin, George Barret Senior, Broodmares and Colts in a Landscape  ?exhibited 1783

This painting was a collaboration between the artists Sawrey Gilpin and George Barret, who painted the horses and landscape respectively. Gilpin was a skilled painter of horses but lacked confidence in painting landscapes. He often invited other artists to add landscape backgrounds to his pictures. This was not an unusual practice for artists as it made the most of their specialisms. Barret and Gilpin collaborated on several occasions. This raised the ambition and quality of Gilpin’s artworks, increasing their status at exhibitions or sales. This painting is thought to have been exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1783.

Gallery label, October 2023

John Hill, Interior of the Carpenter’s Shop at Forty Hill, Enfield  ?exhibited 1813

John Hill shows the interior of a small joinery shop that likely belonged to him and his father Thomas. Various tools and stages of production are visible: an axe and saw for cutting the wood in the foreground, and a planer for shaping it in the background. The unglazed window in the far corner of the workshop is large enough for big pieces of wood to pass through. It also provides ventilation and light for the ‘master’ carpenter. He is distinguished from his assistants by his moleskin hat and dark jacket. John likely included himself in the picture, possibly as this master carpenter (although this figure might also be his father). John later described himself as an ‘entirely self-taught' painter. He exhibited this painting at the Royal Academy in 1813. Such representations of craftsmen at work are rare in British art of this period.

Gallery label, October 2023

Charles Reuben Ryley, Oscar Bringing Back Annir’s Daughter  1785

Scotland’s legendary past, as told by the ancient Gaelic bard, Ossian, inspired this painting. It shows the famed warrior Oscar (in red), returning triumphant from battle to Annir, the elderly King of Inis-Thona. Oscar's victory reunites the king with his daughter. Ossian’s epic poem was published in 1765 and inspired many artists and writers. Nearly 60 Ossian subjects were exhibited in London between 1771-1830, including five pictures by Charles Reuben Ryley. However, the authenticity of the poem was soon questioned. The publisher, James Macpherson, had, in fact, invented the saga by blending Gaelic mythology with other sources and his own writing.

Gallery label, February 2024

John Hoppner, A Gale of Wind  c.1794

John Hoppner was one of the leading portraitists of his day. When he exhibited this painting at the Royal Academy in 1794, it would have stood out to exhibition-goers as a highly unusual subject for the artist. Indeed, this is the only work Hoppner is known to have exhibited that wasn’t a portrait. We think the stormy seascape is set just off St Catherine’s Point in the Isle of Wight, an area known for its dangerous waters. The painting gave Hoppner an opportunity to show off his expressive brushwork and his ability to convey drama and narrative. Capturing a sense of the artistic competition of the time, one critic remarked: ‘The present aggression is incontestably bold, and well executed, and should be rewarded with a booty of reputation.’

Gallery label, February 2024