Palissy the Potter by Henrietta Ward (1832-1924). 1866. Oil on canvas. H 108 x W 133.4 cm. Collection: Leicester Museums and Galleries. Accession number L.F2.1887.0.0; purchased from Messrs Foster, 1887. Kindly made available via Art UK on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Image download, text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee, with an additional note by Pamela Gerrish Nunn. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
The gallery note reads: "Palissy, the French potter of the 16th century, possessed by a desire to rival the fine Italian ware known as Maiolica, beggared himself and family in the attempt. The picture represents the episode where, at the last gasp and when success seemed certain, the flints composing the furnace had fused and, forming a flux with the pottery, ruined all his labours." But Ward gives a much fuller account of it herself, and includes in it much of the favourable review it received at the time, along with the history of what happened to the painting once it left her hands:
Excerpt from Ward's Reminiscences
Palissy the Potter, exhibited 1866.... is, perhaps, one of the best and certainly one of the most popular of my efforts. An exhaustive account of it appeared in the Art Journal of 1868, but as some of my readers may be unacquainted with the history of Bernard Palissy, a brief description of him (taken from the Art Journal) will, probably, be welcome.
Palissy was a French potter who, in the middle of the sixteenth century, lived at Saintes. Having possessed himself of some specimens of the old Italian Pottery called Majolica, he passed a long and weary time in his endeavour to imitate it, entailing on himself and family great distress. At length he thought that success was about to crown his efforts, and now comes the incident, as described in Mr. Morley's "Life of Palissy," which Mrs. Ward has made the subject of her picture.
The potter had looked forward to a day, when the [160/61] result of many months' labour would enable him to meet impatient creditors and relieve the pressing wants of his hungry and scantily clad children; his hopes were high, and with reason; fame would recompense him for all his trials, and fortune would be within his grasp. The furnace had been fired and the potter bided the time to bring forth the works that were to be his glories.
The moment had arrived; the wife had gone out to summon the creditors to witness his triumph; they stand at the entrance appalled, whilst she exhausts her wrath in imprecations.
The children gather round or stare in wonderment at the broken-down and miserable father; for strewed on the ground at his feet, are all the produce of his toil and genius — deformed pieces, utterly valueless.
The flues that formed the walls of the furnace had been detached by the heat, and had ruined the whole of the great works that were baking in it.
Thus the afflicted artist writes: "I lay down in melancholy, not without cause, for I had no longer any means to feed my family." The neighbours gave him maledictions in place of consolation, their bitter talk was mingled with his grief.
Mrs. Ward has not literally followed in her picture the text of Palissy's biographer; and in so doing has produced a far more agreeable and lovable composition than if she represented the wife in the character of a scold. It is a scene of misery and distress, not of domestic vituperation, etc., etc.
The arrangement and grouping are all Mrs. Ward's own; they are obviously the result of long and careful study. The miserable potter gazes at the debris on the floor, his daughter leaning on his bosom and alone trying to comfort him. His wrathful wife glares furiously in the entrance at her apparently hopeless [161/62] husband, whilst a sick youth cowers close to the yet heated furnace, a small boy and girl look on more in wonder than terror, whilst two sorrow-stricken maidens see and comprehend all the evil, and they do despair.
I had some bother with regard to this picture and the Leicester Art Gallery. It was sold during the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1866, and remained in the possession of its purchaser until his death, when the Leicester Art Gallery bought it. The latter sent me a photograph of it, and on my complaining it was too dark, the Secretary of the Committee said he was very sorry but as there were so many cracks in the picture, he had been obliged to hang it in a subdued light. I was horrified and wrote and asked if this were true. He then replied, "Yes, certainly, you must have used some pigment that produced the cracks."
Much perplexed (as I knew my paints had been of the very best, namely Robertson's, and that " Palissy the Potter" had gone from my hands straight into those of its original purchaser), I suggested that my picture should be sent to me for examination.
It came, and I wws greatly upset when I saw that the Secretary's statement was only too true, the paint was terribly cracked, though the colour was as brilliant as ever. I could only conclude that after it had left me it had been varnished with a bad varnish that had cracked the paint almost to the canvas.
The Secretary wrote again, suggesting that as the fault was mine, I should get it repaired at my own expense. This proposal was, of course, preposterous, as, the picture being no longer in my possession, I could not reasonably be held responsible for it. However, I got Haines to estimate the cost of reparation, which was twenty-five guineas, and wrote back to the Committee saying that if they would pay the one half, I would pay the other. [162/63]
They refused, and so we came to a deadlock. Then the unexpected happened. The dispute came to the ears of Sir Edwin Duming-Lawrence, Bart., M.P., who, besides being a patron of the arts was truly philanthropic and did much towards supporting the Waterloo Hospital. To my intense surprise I now received a letter from him, in which he said that as, in his opinion, it was a shame that such a truly representative work of mine should be allowed to go to rack and ruin, he would, by my leave, be only too delighted to pay for its reparation.
I thanked him heartily, and forwarding his letter to the Leicester Art Committee anxiously awaited their answer. Needless to say, they jumped at his offer. Haines repaired my picture beautifully, and for aught I know to the contrary, it is hanging to-day in Leicester looking every whit as fresh as when I painted it. [160-64]
Note by Pamela Gerrish Nunn
Bernard Palissy was a ground-breaking French ceramicist of the sixteenth century who attracted royal favour (despite being a Huguenot), establishing a workshop in the Tuileries to serve the court. When Minton’s showed a new line of majolica-ware at the Great Exhibition of 1851 under the name of Palissyware, his name was brought to the attention of the Victorian public, and a biography by Henry Morley published in 1852 cemented his fame as a significant craftsman.
Ward used a quotation from Morley to gloss the painting when it was shown at the Academy of 1866, where it was greeted warmly as her best work yet. Her composition mobilises favourite mid-Victorian tropes: she expresses the Carlylean idea of a good man trying heroically to succeed in his chosen task, with his wife playing the faithful companion to this noble mission – and, tellingly, when W.J. Grant showed a painting on this same theme in 1858, the Illustrated London News declared it “eminently congenial to the spirit of the industrial age we live in” ("Glasgow Art Union Prize Pictures"). Note that another work on the theme was shown by Ambrosini Jerome at the Manchester exhibition of 1861.
Purchased directly from the Academy exhibition, this painting was bought for the public collection of Leicester on the collector’s death in 1887.
Link to related material
Bibliography
Anon. “Selected Pictures,” Art Journal 1 April 1868: 120.
Gerrish Nunn, Pamela. Victorian Women Artists. London: The Women’s Press, 1987.
“Glasgow Art Union Prize Pictures”, The Illustrated London News 30 October 1858: 411-2.
Palissy the Potter. Art UK. Web. 11 March 2022.
Ward, Henrietta. Mrs E.M. Ward’s Reminiscences. Ed. E, O’Donnell.London: Pitman 1911. Internet Archive. Contributed by Cornell University Library. Web. 11 March 2022.
Created 11 March 2022