Heading to Bristol The story behind the masterpiece
A classic Victorian painting, the definitive image of tragic young artist Thomas Chatterton , is coming to Bristol. Eugene Byrne is excited – even if the picture has a back story which does not reflect well on either the artist or his model.
THE iconic painting of the death of Bristol-born poet Thomas Chatterton is to go on display at the Royal West of England Academy ( RWA) tomorrow, October 7.
The picture will form the centrepiece of an exhibition titled Furious, Wild and Young: The Death of Chatterton and runs until October 18. Because of Covid safety measures, visitor numbers are limited and visits have to be pre-booked – see details below.
This year is the 250th anniversary of Chatterton’s death in an attic room in Holborn, London (see Bristol Times, August 18 for more), but the world-famous image of the tragedy was not created until many years after his death in 1770.
The painting by Victorian PreRaphaelite artist Henry Wallis (1813-1916) was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856.
The art critic John Ruskin described it as “faultless and wonderful – a most noble example of the great school.”
He continued: “Examine it well inch by inch: it is one of the pictures which intend, and accomplish, the entire placing before your eyes of an actual fact – and that a solemn one.”
Thomas Chatterton had died at the age of 17 in his London garret, and it’s usually believed that he had taken his own life in frustration that the success that he had left his Bristol home to seek had eluded him.
There has long, however, been an opposing school of thought that says he died of an accidental overdose of medication he was taking for venereal disease.
Either way, Wallis’s painting cemented Chatterton’s image once and for all as the struggling young artist whose efforts had ended in tragedy.
Chatterton’s story, and the narrative of the painting, had great appeal not just to the public, but to Wallis and his fellow artists, who knew all about starving in garrets while hoping for fame and recognition.
Not that Wallis knew anything personally about starving in garrets. He came from a well-to-do family, had studied in Paris and had an independent income.
His model, on the other hand, knew plenty about the frustrations of the struggling artist. Wallis made
his preliminary sketches for the picture in the actual room in which Chatterton had died, and it fills almost the whole canvas. It was so small that he only just had space to put up his easel.
His model was George Meredith (1828-1909). He would later become a celebrated poet and novelist, but at the time was a struggling 27-year-old writer whose works were earning him less than the cookery book his wife Mary Ellen had written with her father.
Not long after Wallis’s success with the painting, he ran off with Mary Ellen to the continent, but then dumped her not long after. This being Victorian times, her reputation was ruined and she died three years later.
Neither Meredith attended the funeral.
Wallis would go on to a couple of other successes, but in later life nor
Wallis
largely gave up on painting. Art historians suspect that he probably knocked out a few other copies of the Death of Chatterton to make some fast money. Not that he needed it.
And now you can see for yourself what all the fuss was about, right here in Bristol, which comes as part of 2020’s Covid-truncated ‘Poetic City’ programme based around the 250th anniversary of Chatterton’s death.
A Poetic City is co-ordinated by the Bristol Cultural Development Partnership, whose Director, Andrew Kelly, says: “We’re delighted to have such an iconic and important painting as Wallis’ Chatterton come to Bristol … This is a great opportunity to celebrate a fine poet and Bristol as a city of poetry.”
Former Bath Young Poet Laureate Polly Denny has been appointed Writer in Residence at RWA during the Wallis exhibition and will be running workshops around the painting and writing a poem to mark the new phase in the gallery’s history.
RWA will be exhibiting artworks made by young people of a similar age to Chatterton alongside the Wallis painting.
The exhibition opening will also see the distribution around Bristol of Bristol: A Poetic City a free 28-page comic about the life and death of Chatterton and about other poets with local connections.
Copies of the comic should be available from the RWA and other venues including Bristol City Council’s libraries and museums; Bristol Cathedral; Glenside Hospital Museum; St Mary Redcliffe; the Tourist Information Centre at the Galleries. If you are unable to obtain a paper copy, you can download a PDF of it at https://tinyurl. com/yx9q2aeb
‘ Furious, Wild and Young: The Death of Chatterton’ is at the Royal West of England Academy, Queens Road, Bristol, from October 7-18. Tickets need to be prebooked, and Covid safety measures will be in place. Admission is free, but the RWA invites a donation of £3 per person. For details and booking, see www.rwa.org. uk
For more on Poetic City, see www. ideasfestival. co. uk/ blog and the Poetic City Facebook page at www.facebook.com/bristolpoeticcity