At the Sick Man's Door, watercolour and bodycolour, with gum arabic 7½ x 5¼ in. (9.1 x 13.3 cm.), signed with initials "F. W." in the lower right-hand corner. Post February 1862. [Click on left image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL.]
Commentary
As was the case with Philip in Church, Walker developed the painting from an illustration that he had provided for the serialisation of William Makepeace Thackeray's The Adventures of Philip in The Cornhill Magazine (1862). Thackeray, then the editor of journal, himself illustrated the first few installments, but, having met Walker in January 1861, he made the young artist his protegé, giving him the commissions for the periodical illustrations from the May 1861 number. Walker produced a full series of woodcuts, ranging from initial-letter vignettes to full-page compositions, several of which, including the celebrated composite woodblock illustrations Philip in Church and At the Sick Man's Door, served as the basis for Walker's designs for the finished watercolours.
In Walker's illustration entitled At the Sick Man's Door, the protagonist, Philip, and his companion, Charlotte, are about to enter the sickroom of her father, General Baynes. Beyond the door, "with hot tearless eyes and livid face, a wretched sentinel outside the sick chamber," Mrs. Baynes waits to learn of her husband's condition from the young couple, here about to enter. With pensive expression, Philip waits in anxiety as 'little Char' gently turns the door-handle, like Philip turning her eyes away from the interrogative glance of Mrs. Baynes, seated at the door.
In the next moment there will be blessings and happiness, for once beyond that door which seems such an ominous barrier in Walker's illustration, the couple are welcomed by the General: 'the poor man laid the hands of the young people together, and his own upon them. The suffering to which he had put his daughter seemed to be the crime which specially affected him. He thanked Heaven to be able to see that he was wrong.' These paternal blessings are conferred in timely fashion as General Baynes dies soon after. ["British Paintings since about Victorian times"]
In The Adventures of Philip, Thackeray's last completed novel, many of the principal characters have already appeared in his earlier novels. Pendennis, Thackeray's hero of the previous decade, narrates the story of his young friend Philip, a struggling journalist whose fortunes are overshadowed by his father's hidden past. At this point in the story, Philip has fallen in love with Charlotte Baynes, daughter of the dying military officer whose bedroom the couple visit in this illustration. General Baynes is a trustee of Philip's inheritance, but he and his wife strenuously oppose Philip's marrying Charlotte.
In the painting Walker uses colour to transform the mood of the scene, which the presence of the General's wife at the door renders sombre in the original wood-engraving. He achieves this lightness while developing the figure of Mrs. Baynes, whose position he has changed as he had lightened her hair, perhaps merely to suggest her age and thereby generalize the intergenerational situation.She looks up from the reading of the family Bible as the young couple arrives. To emphasize his importance, Walker reiterates the rusty red of Philip's hair with the large door, behind which the General, the father of Charlotte (centre) lies ill (as one may judge from the title), and perhaps dying. As in the magazine serial illustration, we find it difficult to read the protagonist's expression because Walker has position his hat over the lower part of the face, leaving readers to construct Philip's undoubtedly ambivalent response to the situation since, although the dying General is his guardian, he opposes Philip's marrying Charlotte.
As Claude Phillips remarks of this and several other illustrations in the Cornhill series, here Walker was able to provide pictorial accompaniments "illustrating the vein of true sentiment without sentimentality which gives distinction to the whole series" (15).
Bibliography
Marks, John George. Life and Letters of Frederick Walker, A. R. A.. London and New York: Macmillan, 1896.
Phillips, Claude. At the Sick Man's Door by Walker. Frederick Walker and His Works. London: Seeley & Co., 1905 [re-issue of the 1894 edition], facing page 17.
Reid, Forrest. Illustrators of the Eighteen Sixties: An Illustrated Survey of the Work of 58 British Artists. New York: Dover, 1975. Originally published by Faber and Gwyer in London, 1928, as Illustrators of the Sixties.
Thackeray, W. M. The Adventures of Philip, serialized in The Cornhill Magazine. London: Smith Elder, January 1861-August 1862.
Walker, Fred. "At the Sick Man's Door." "Frederick Walker — At the Sick Man's Door; an illustration to Thackeray's 'Adventures of Philip'," in British Paintings since about Victorian times (roughly 1837 on), 29 August 2010. Online version available from http://goldenagepaintings.blogspot.com. Web. 13 July 2018.
Last modified 27 July 2018