A Pet (The Pet). 1853. Oil on canvas, 351/8 x 221/2 inches (83.8 x 57.1 cm). Collection of Tate Britain, accession no. NO2854.
The painting portrays a young woman in a brightly coloured pale orange dress in profile to the left checking on her caged pet bird. The background for A Pet was painted at the Deverell family home when they lived in Richmond Road in Kew, which had an extensive garden. This picture displays a much broader painterly and naturalistic approach, particularly in the landscape background, as compared to his early works, such as Twelfth Night, that feature the angularity and meticulous detail favoured by the P.R.B. Some detailed handling is still evident in the foreground and in the woman’s dress. Overall, however, the handling suggests that Deverell was moving more towards the mainstream of British art at this time.
When this modern life picture was first exhibited at the Liverpool Academy in 1853 it was accompanied by a quotation from Leaves from the Note-Book of a Naturalist by W. J. Broderip: “But after all, it is very questionable kindness to make a pet of a creature so essentially volatile.” Shefer has commented extensively on this painting, taking these lines into account, when interpreting the painting: “The Pet depicts a young woman, neatly attired in her afternoon dress, standing on the threshold between her home and her garden surrounded by an array of pet birds. One bird, perhaps a canary, is in a cage; one is on her right shoulder, directly under her chignon, and a pigeon at the left is perched on top of his cage while a small garden bird, possibly a sparrow hops across the path in the background.
Within this seemingly innocent portrait of a woman feeding her birds, Deverell makes a more complicated statement, fraught with ambiguities, by adding the following ‘motto’ to the painting: ‘But after all, it is questionable kindness to make a pet of a creature so essentially volatile.” This attached emblematic line stimulates a re-examination of the painting. The composition contains a series of contrasts, which aim at visualizing the ambiguity suggested by the accompanying motto. The imprisoned or caged birds are contrasted with the free birds who are at liberty to wander where they will. The woman herself stands between two alternatives, the inner world of her home and the outer world represented by the garden. The intermediate position is emphasized by Deverell’s use of chiaroscuro: half of her body is lighted by the sun while half remains in shadow. Both the positioning of the birds and their relationship to the woman make it clear that all of them have chosen the confinement of a ‘cage.’ The caged bird is unmistakably within the additional confines of the interior, as the vertical axis of the doorway is clearly behind the cage. Although both the pigeon sitting on top of the cage and the bird perched on the woman’s shoulder are free, they do not fly away. Either out of contentment and/or submission, they select the home ground. Moreover, although the woman’s body is half lighted by the ‘outside’ world, that world is but a garden, another ‘enclosure’ of the woman. She is thus like the garden bird in the background, who is free to explore only a limited area. That this interpretation agrees with Deverell’s intention is supported by the dog lying near her feet, a traditional symbol of the home.
The intimate relationship between the two [woman and canary] represents the idea that a bird will love its owner, submit to its cage and accept its food if it is treated well, that is, if it is petted and kissed. The caged bird, happily receiving the attention of its owner, is thus symbolic of the woman’s acceptance of her position, a pet that is nourished and adored. In this light, Deverell makes the bird’s willing acceptance of its cage synonymous with the woman’s acceptance of her role. The parallelism is underlined both by the inclusion of the pigeon or doves to the woman’s right, a bird often associated with docility, and by the attached line in which the words ‘volatile creature’ refer to the woman as well as the bird” (437). If the interpretation that both the caged bird and the woman are “the pet” is the correct one Leslie Parris finds it somewhat surprising, however, that Deverell did not include more symbolic details to support this hypothesis (cat. 54, 114). Symbolic details may very well have been included, however, if one knows how to read them. In Shefer’s opinion the model for the woman was Elizabeth Siddal while Lutyens felt the woman was modelled from Eustatia Davy [Davie]. The fact that the young woman’s hair is black and not red, and that she wears it in plaits similar to the model in The Grey Parrot, supports Davie being the model.
The first owners of the painting were two of Deverell’s Pre-Raphaelite friends who came to his financial assistance at a time of his great need and bought the painting for £80, a major expenditure for them at the time. As W. M. Rossetti reported: “We hear good reports of a picture, not yet known to the London galleries, from the graceful and promising hand of Mr. Deverell, - representing a young lady with a caged bird, and christened ‘The Pet.’ This work has been bought by Mr. Hunt and Mr. Millais jointly; and we know no guarantee of its excellence which ought to be more gratifying to the author” (1070). This was the only work Deverell ever sold during his lifetime and he must surely have realized that it was bought as an act of charity by his friends. Edward Burne-Jones and his wife later bought A Pet for £6. It had sold at the James Leathart sale at the Goupil Gallery in 1896. As Lady Burne-Jones explained: “An incident of this summer was that a picture by Walter Deverell came into our possession. He is said only to have painted two or three pictures, and when Edward heard that one of these had been sold at a sale, he was so disappointed to have missed it that the purchaser very kindly yielded it to him for the same modest price that he himself had paid…It was a link with a time of which we had often thought, and we were glad to have the picture.” (II, 315).
Bibliography
Burne-Jones, Georgiana. Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones. 2 vols. London: Macmillan Company, 1904.
The Pre-Raphaelites. London: Tate Gallery, 1984.
Rossetti, William Michael. “Fine Arts. The Provincial Exhibitions,” Spectator 26 (1853).
Shefer, Elaine. “Deverell, Rossetti, Siddal, and ‘The Bird in the Cage’.” The Art Bulletin, 67 (September 1985): 437-448.
Last modified 9 March 2022