The Wife of Hassan Aga, 1862. Watercolour and gouache on paper, 18 x 12 ½ inches (45 x 31 cm). Private collection. Click on image to enlarge it.
The source for The Wife of Hassan Aga was a seventeenth-century ballad Hasanaginica (The Mourning Song of the Noble Wife of the Hasan Aga). Goethe translated the poem into German in 1775 and then from German into English by Walter Scott in 1798. The ballad tells of a Muslim family living in Dalmatia, then part of the Ottoman Empire, where Lord Hasan Arapović had large estates. While lying wounded following a battle Hasan-aga summoned his wife, Fatima, who had been unwilling to accompany him to the battle camp. Deeply angered and in pain, Hasan-aga sent his wife a message ordering her to leave his castle without their children. Her brother brought her the message and the divorce papers and, despite pleading with the brother, she was ousted from her home. Her brother arranged for her to be remarried to a wealthy official. As a final wish prior to the marriage, she asked her brother for a long veil so that she did not see her children as the wedding procession passed by her old castle. Despite this her children did see her and called out for her. As she stopped to bid them farewell one last time, she died of sorrow.
F. G. Stephens writing in The Athenaeum complimented “The Wife of Hassan Aga (280) seated at a window with a face full of sorrow and fear; a work admirable for intensity of expression, brilliant colour and force of tone. In this picture Mr. Burton has equalled oil in vigour of execution; the picture will surprise even those who remember his previous works” (566). The art critic of The Illustrated London News on visiting the O.W.S. exhibition in 1862 commented: “Of the few figure subjects, none leaves a larger impression than two large Oriental studies by Mr. Burton...These are entitled ‘Yelitza’ (320) and ‘the Wife of Hassan Aga’ (280), the latter looking out a window with an expression of anxiety. These heads have a force scarcely inferior to paintings in oil” (456). Tom Taylor, the art critic for The Times, was also enthusiastic: “We have to congratulate Mr. Burton on two drawings...in which he has gone beyond anything yet seen in watercolour art for force and brilliancy of colour…The beauty of the drawing is consummate, but what arrests most attention is the extraordinary brilliancy and force of the colour, for which no head we have ever seen in watercolour, and very few in oil, can stand beside these most remarkable drawings” (5). The Saturday Review claimed that Burton’s contributions were the most important of the exhibition:
It is in the two female heads by Frederic W. Burton – ‘The Wife of Hassan Aga’ (280). And ‘Yelitza’ (320) – that we find the gems of the exhibition. He revels in fulness of colour and the power of accurately modelling the human form. Mr. Burton in these pictures attains the strength of oil-colour, and proves himself a complete master of all the arts by which differences of texture can be represented. His success is greatest when depicting a decided expression; this we perceive in the morose but voluptuous lady clutching her hands in sullen discontent, as we may imagine, at her fate. The wooden verandah against which she leans is simple and characteristic, and we rejoice to find the artist on his guard against the very common sin of over-ornamentation” [623]
This is another example of Burton’s work being affected by the second phase of Pre-Raphaelitism. This watercolour was highly regarded in its day and, in fact, in 1862 Burton was awarded the silver medal for watercolour painting for this work by the Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts.
Bibliography
“Fine Arts. Exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water Colours.” The Illustrated London News 40 (May 3, 1862): 456.
Stephens, Frederic George. “Society of Painters in Water Colour.” The Athenaeum No. 1800 (April 26, 1862): 566-567.
Taylor, Tom. The Times (April 28, 1862): 5.
“Pall-Mall Picture Galleries.” The Saturday Review 13 (May 31, 1862): 721-723.
Last modified 13 April 2022