Titian's First Essay in Colour

Titian Preparing to Make His First Essay in Colouring, by William Dyce, RA. 1856-57. Oil on canvas, 36 x 27 3/4 inches (100.5 x 79 cm). Collection: Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums, accession no. ABDAG003211. Originally downloaded by George P. Landow. Image courtesy of Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums, via Art UK under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Dyce and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Dyce exhibited this painting at the Royal Academy in 1857, no.107 accompanied by these lines in the exhibition catalogue: "Ridolfi states that Titian when a little boy gave the earliest indications of his future eminence as a colorist, by drawing a Madonna, which he coloured with the juices of flowers." The source of this quotation is supposedly from the seventeenth-century Venetian writer Carlo Ridolfi's "Life of Titian," included in his Le Meraviglie dell' Arte [The Marvels of Art] published in 1648, although in fact there is no mention of such an incident in the book. Dyce later exhibited this picture at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1858, no. 260, the triennial exhibition of the fine arts held at the Palace of the Academies in Brussels, Belgium, in the fall of 1860, and the International Exhibition held at South Kensington in London in 1862. This painting is one of the masterpieces of the first phase of Pre-Raphaelitism and surely the quintessential example of an older artist being influenced by the work of the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, particularly William Henry Hunt and John Everett Millais. Dyce was one of only a few of the older Royal Academicians who admired the works of the youthful members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It was Dyce who forcibly dragged John Ruskin to see Millais' Christ in the House of His Parents at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1850, when Ruskin had previously passed the painting disdainfully, and he forced Ruskin to look for the painting's merits. This, in turn, eventually led to Ruskin's famous two letters in May of 1851 to The Times in support of the Pre-Raphaelites. (Ruskin, XII, 320-21 & 327). The influence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood on Dyce's picture of Titian Preparing to Make his First Essay in Colouring can be seen, not only in its meticulous detail, but in Dyce's use of rich jewel-like colour.

The Ongoing Influence of Titian on Dyce's Work

Titian was a major influence on Dyce's work from early in his career so it is little wonder he has chosen this particular artist as the subject of his painting. As early as 1840 Dyce had exhibited Titian and Irene de Spilembergo at the Royal Academy, a painting depicting Titian giving the gifted young noblewoman instructions in the art of painting. In Dyce's Omnia Vanitas of 1848 Titian appears to have been the principal influence on this work. With Dyce's The Meeting of Jacob and Rachel of 1850 James Dafforne felt "the work throughout, in treatment and execution, may not unappropriately be termed Titianesque" (296).

In Titian Preparing to Make his First Essay in Colouring Dyce portrays the Titian as a young boy of around six years old seated in a garden with his left hand resting on his chin and gazing intently up at a marble sculpture of the Madonna and child seated on a tree stump. The model for the boy was likely Dyce's son William, who had previously posed for the boy in the foreground of Pegwell Bay. Titian's right hand holds various flowers and rests on his open drawing book. Other artists materials, such as a glass water bottle, a rag and a sponge, lie on the grass close to his left foot. A walking stick is propped up against the tree stump next to Titian's black velvet cap. Additional flowers that have strewn from a basket lie in the left foreground.

Anne Steed has identified the flowers growing in the grass to include primroses, buttercups, dandelions, daisies and the cut specimens in the basket include crocus, tulip, anemone, pelargonium, iris, cornflower, carnation, and rose (162). Despite the flowers being from all seasons the landscape portrayed is midsummer and it is painted with meticulous detail, including not just the plants and flowers but the trees in the background. Steed felt it was crucial that Dyce portrayed Titian working en plein air because "Dyce had expressed the view that the failings of contemporary painting were due to looking only at past art, rather than combining this with a study of nature" (160). Tim Berringer has pointed out: "The analytical precision of the early Pre-Raphaelite paintings was in turn a formative influence on Dyce. Perhaps as a consequence of the disappointment with the fresco technique, a new spirit animates the easel paintings executed by the Scottish painter in the last years of his life" (496). Steed has suggested, considering the details of the boy's costume, and particularly the trees which are rendered with photographic attention to detail, that Dyce may have been aided by photography: "The young boy's studied pose looks as if it has been transported from a photographic studio portrait" (162). One wonders if the pose of the young Titian might possibly have been influenced by that of Thomas Lawrence's famous The Red Boy (Portrait of Master Charles William Lambton).

Contemporary Reviews of the Picture

The critic of The Art Journal felt this work was an improvement over what generally passed for a Pre-Raphaelite painting:

"No. 107 Titian preparing to make his first Essay in Coloring, W. Dyce, R.A. "Ridolfi states that Titian gave the earliest indication of his future eminence as a colourist by drawing a Madonna, which he coloured with the juices of flowers" – such is the legend which follows the title in explanation of the picture. This picture is what would have been called Pre-Raffaelite before the inconsistencies and extravagances presented in the works so called. But it differs from such productions in two very important particulars, which are – the accurate drawing of the figure, and that it represents what might have been a living creature. The boy is seated on a chair, looking over the back of it in contemplation of the marble figure of a Madonna, which resembles one of the beautiful Nuremberg Madonnas than anything we have seen in Italy. His hand rests upon the paper on which he has been drawing, and he is surrounded by flowers strewed upon the ground. Everything in the picture is worked out with the utmost refinement of labour; the leaves are individually represented, and every crack in the bark of the tree is made out in the spirit of the most perfect imitation. The expression of the boy is intense; he looks as if he had not succeeded. [167]

A reviewer for The Athenaeum also felt this work was an improvement over some paintings by the younger followers of Pre-Raphaelitism and praised the change in Dyce's style, calling the work: "A praiseworthy, conscientious picture..., painted in a way that sets the more careless of the P.R.B.'s an excellent example. A new manner is a healthy sign in Mr. Dyce, who has indulged us with quite enough saints and virgins for the present. Story he tells none; but the sentiment of the scene is suggestive, for we know that the frank-faced, thoughtful boy is one and the same with old Tiziano, with the yard of white beard, who will die eighty years hence, and then by a mere accident of the plague, and will be carried like a king, the Doge weeping, through the water streets of Venice. Now, unconscious of colourmen, he tries to squeeze coloured juices from flowers to paint a Madonna, the statue which stands on the tree-trunk before him in the orchard. This is a small text for a year's work at leaves and bark and flowers; but Mr. Dyce is quite right, it was worth the trouble, and why should we complain! One cannot be always painting struggling, dramatic situations: and there being a time for all things, as Solomon said, why, there is a time for painting quiet bits of nature that makes us think of all the trees we ever saw and what happened about the time we saw them. The quaint trim dress, purple and yellow, the pointed shoes, are of a pleasantly far back age, and yet match so well with the fresh nature, just the same, of our own day. Nature's fashions do not change, and she sticks with obstinate old maidishness to her four liveries a year – light green, deep green, golden, and white. [602]

The reviewer for The Critic, likely F. G. Stephens, decried the amount of labourious detail put into the painting while apparently losing sight of its effect upon the painting as a whole. To Stephens, the result was

well conceived and executed, with labour, alas! only too apparent. The boy Titian's face is fine and thoughtful, indicative of a noble future. But to what end, let us ask, is all that bewildering finish of trees, leaves, bark, &c. These things are imitated apparently with unwearying exactness, and yet the general effect is unpleasing and heavy. It is impossible not to feel that, if we are adequately to do justice to these details, we must leave the main subject of the picture, which is precisely the opposite effect to that which has been invariably produced upon us by the best work of Millais and Hunt, where the vividness of the detail seems the natural result of the painter's strong and clear conception of the whole scene. In the painting before us, the pleasantness of the effect is actually interfered with by the flowers scattered upon the grass, although they are a necessary feature of the anecdote to be illustrated. Such is the impression produced upon us by this very carefully painted and thoughtful work. Its exquisite finish will probably attract many admirers. [233]

The Illustrated London News admired the painting's detailed draughtsmanship but found the tone of its colouring a little leaden. Having noted that it was inspired by Ridolfi's Le Maraviglie delle Arte (while rather doubting the truth of the story), the reviewer describes the incident as> "very naturally rendered. The incipient colourist is absorbed in the problem of how he shall extract the colours from the basket of flowers he has collected, and his enthusiasm is nicely expressed in his dilated nostril, set lips, full fixed eye, and unconscious boyish attitude. The drawing of the picture is extremely accurate; but its elaborate details – the boys dress, the statue, the partly-barked stump on which it stands, the flowers, every leaf of the trees, and, we may almost add, every blade of grass – are more marvellous in the closeness of their imitation that anything we have been of late accustomed to see, even on the walls of the Academy. The result may well be a little hard, and we find the tone somewhat leaden in hue. [444]

John Ruskin in his Academy Notes praised Dyce's picture as the best Pre-Raphaelite work in the Academy exhibition but, surprisingly, did not feel Dyce was a colourist:

Well done! Mr. Dyce, and many times well done! though it is of little use for any of us to say so to you; for when a man has gone through such a piece of work as this he knows he is right, and knows it so calmly that it does not matter much to him whether people see it or not. This is a notable picture in several ways, being, in the first place, the only one quite up to the high-water mark of Pre-Raphaelitism in the exhibition this year… while Mr. Dyce has encountered all discoverable difficulties at once, and chosen a subject involving an amount of toil only endurable by the boundless love and patience which are the first among the Pre-Raphaelite characteristics. In the second place, this is the first picture yet produced by the school in which the work has been at all affected by a sculpturesque sense of grace in form. Hitherto, every master who has ranked himself on this side, has been a colourist, and his subject has been chosen and treated with chief reference to colour, not intentionally, but because a colourist can do no otherwise; seeing, in all that he has to show, effects of light and hue first, and form secondarily. I cannot tell how far Mr. Dyce is capable of becoming a colourist, but he is not one yet … we may proceed to enjoy the picture heartily in all other respects—the expression of the boy being excellent, and the flowers, grass, leafage, and dress, down to the minutest fold of the purple lining of the cap, painted so that no one need ever hope to do much better. [XIV, 98-100]

James Dafforne, in The Art Journal in 1860 was high in his praise for this work: "Titian preparing to make his first Essay in Colour, a production we coveted far beyond any other in the gallery, beautiful in conception, admirable in expression, and exquisite in the refinement of its execution; it manifests all the merits of modern Pre-Raffaellism without the slightest approach to his defects" (296).

Bibliography

Barringer, Tim. Preraffaelliti Rinascimento Moderno [Pre-Raphaelites Modern Renaissance]. Milan: Dario Cimorelli Editore, 2024, cat. II.3, 496.

Dafforne, James. "British Artists: Their Style and Character. No. LI. - William Dyce." The Art Journal New Series VI (1860): 293-96.

"The Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Art JournalNew Series III (1 June 1857): 165-76.

"Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Illustrated London News XXX (9 May 1857): 444.

"Fine Arts. Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 1541 (9 May 1857): 601-02.

Hewison, Robert. Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites. London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 2000, cat. 201, 217.

"Royal Academy." The Critic XVI (May 15, 1857): 232-33.

Ruskin, John. "Academy Notes." The Complete Works of John Ruskin. Eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. London: George Allen, 1904, Vol. XIV, 98-100.

_____. The Works of John Ruskin. Eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. London: George Allen, 1904, Vol. XII, 320-21 & 327.

Staley, Allen. The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973., 164 & 168-69.

Steed, Anne. A Scottish Collection – Treasures from Aberdeen Art Gallery. Tokyo, Japan: The Japan Association of Art Museums, 2000, cat. 18, 70-73.

_____. William Dyce and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision. Ed. Jennifer Melville. Aberdeen: Aberdeen City Council, 2006, cat. 43, 160-62.

Titian Preparing to Make His First Essay in Painting. Art UK. Web. 20 December 2024.


Created 19 December 2024

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