The First Shot to Freedom, Switzerland [William Tell's Son], by William Shakespeare Burton (1824-1916). Oil on canvas. 24 ½ x 13 ½ inches (62 x 34 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy of Sotheby's.
Burton exhibited this picture at the Royal Academy in 1854, no. 501, where it was poorly hung having been "skied." It portrays the well-known story of William Tell who supposedly on November 18, 1307 shot an apple off his son's head with a cross-bow. According to legend a baliff named Gessler, who was the agent of the Hapsburg duke of Austria, placed a Hapsburg hat on a pole in the market square of Altdorf and decreed that all who passed by must uncover their heads before it. A local farmer and hunter William Tell of Uri refused to do so and was dragged before the baliff. Gessler ordered an apple placed on the head of Tell's son and told the farmer that if he failed to shoot it off at a distance of 120 paces with a single arrow then both he and his son would be executed. Tell successfully split the apple and the aftermath supposedly started Switzerland's fight for independence.
A critic for The Art Journal reviewed this work but unfortunately reported the artist's name incorrectly: "No. 501. The First Shot for Freedom, W. Long. Simply Tell's son standing against the tree, with the apple on his head. The little figure seems, at the height at which it hangs, to be firmly painted" (169). Cowling felt "the painting owed an evident debt to Pre-Raphaelitism with its vivid colour, meticulous texturing and naturalistic symbolism" (78). The symbolism had been pointed out previously when the work was shown in the exhibition British Art Fifty Years Ago held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1905: "naturalistic symbolism, such as the bee drawing honey from the thistle, 'a most undesirable weed,' signifying that from a 'time of trial and trouble... industrious Switzerland gain [ed] the sweets of Freedom and Independence'" (British Art Fifty Years Ago, 60).
The first version of this painting was purchased by Terence Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, the 2nd Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, one of Burton's principal patrons. The painting proved popular and long afterwards, in Florence, Burton was commissioned to paint two replicas.
Bibliography
British Art Fifty Years Ago. London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, Spring Exhibition, 1905, 60.
Cowling, Mary. "William Shakespeare Burton (1824–1916)". British Art Journal XV No. 2 (Winter 2014/15) 77–86.
Fine Victorian Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours including Important Pre-Raphaelites. London: Sotheby's Belgravia (July 10, 1973): cat. 38, 38-39.
"The Royal Academy." The Art Journal New Series VI (June 1,1854): 157-72.
Created 16 June 2024