The Talking Oak. Oil on canvas. 29 ¾ x 24 ¾ inches (75.6 x 62.9 cm). Collection of the Detroit Institute of Fine Arts. Image courtesy of Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund, 78.11.
Egley exhibited this painting at the British Institution in 1857, no. 499, where it was purchased for £40 by the Glasgow Art Union. The painting was accompanied in the catalogue by these lines from Alfred Tennyson's poem "The Talking Oak":
"But tell me, did she read the name
I carved with many vows?"
Egley greatly admired Tennyson, and this work is the most important of his paintings to have been influenced by the first phase of Pre-Raphaelitism. Susan Casteras has noted: "In the 1850s and 1860s, Egley painted in a detailed style and on a wet ground in a manner similar to early Pre-Raphaelite endeavours, but current research has not yet directly linked him as part of the circle around the famous brotherhood and to its key members" (27). The painting features the heroine of the poem, Olivia, with her head and hands pressed against a giant oak. In his Catalogue of Pictures now in the Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Egley describes the costume she wears: "Green satin jacket with wide sleeves & lilac silk scarf. White open-work silk stockings, and glittering, patent leather shoes and sandals. The needlework border of her long white trousers, which reach the feet, shows faintly through the semi-transparent dress" (264). The dress appears to be white muslin. The hat lying on the grass in the right foreground is likely one that Egley bought for his wife that he described as "a sweet pretty lacy straw hat with a long floating feather & streamg [sic] ribbons" (Egley 264). The red feather was that of an ostrich.
Sarah Wooten has commented on how Egley has incorporated Ruskinian principles of the "sense of human labour and care evident in minutely realised landscapes" into The Talking Oak:
Ostensibly an illustration of Tennyson's poem of that name, the painting shows a girl pressed up against a large tree. Most appealing, however, is not the symbolic significance of the work or the relationship between the artist's interpretation and its source, but the rendering of the folds in her silk attire, the cracks and the gnarled trunk of the tree and the ferns at its base in complement with the colours which structure the composition: the blues of her skirt, shawl, and hat ribbon reflected in the sky, and the emerald green and auburn of her hair mirrored in the bark, autumnal leaves and grasses. Like The Lady of Shalott, therefore, The Talking Oak partakes of Pre-Raphaelite principles, yet similarly disregards the spiritual or sexual energy which galvanizes the early work of Hunt, Millais and Rossetti. Of primary concern to Egley was not the astonishment of his audience or its moral instruction, but the marketability of his painting; the naturalistic representation of an object in conjunction with the allusion to a popular literary narrative provided all the incitement that most nineteenth century buyers required. [134]
Surprisingly, considering the esteem in which this painting is now held, it was largely overlooked by the critics who that same year reviewed works by Egley now considered of lesser merit, such as Tartuffe at Supper. The Art Journal and The Athenaeum ignored The Talking Oak completely while The Builder mentions it only in passing and doesn't single it out for any special praise (94). The Talking Oak was, however, reproduced as a wood engraving for The National Magazine in 1858 on page 17. The critic for this periodical was one of the few to recognize the quality of this work:
The subject of this picture is taken from Tennyson's popular and beautiful poem with the same title; a work full of delineate fancy and felicitous epithet, – of the former even more so than is usual with the poet, remarkable as he is for that quality. A lover approaching a giant oak in the park of his mistress's family, apostrophises it to obtain news of the fair one; whereupon the tree, "tall oak of summer chase," in murmurous tones replies that she had but lately come to the very spot upon which he stands, and playfully embracing its giant bole in her slender clasping arms, kissed the letters of her name which he had carved upon its bark. The period of the poem chosen by the artist is the moment when the lady finds the carven letters of her name, and delightfully recognises the hand of him she loves. The picture was exhibited at the British Institution in the early part of this year. [18]
Tennyson's poem relates a series of conversations between the male lover named Walter and the ancient oak tree, as well as conversations between Olivia, the object of Walter's affection, and the tree which also harbours a love for the young woman. Despite the paucity of reviews by critics in periodicals, the picture proved popular with contemporary viewers. The painting, for instance, was lavishly praised by fellow artist and respected art instructor William Henry Fisk, who wrote to Egley on January 11, 1857 that he thought it would be a triumph at the Royal Academy exhibition and that it was moreover imperative for "Tennyson to see your picture. I think he would feel it to be a true realization of his poem" (qtd. in Casteras 36).
Casteras in her article on the painting has described its nature in detail:
Egley's painting functions as a quasi-courtship image both as a reflection of the Tennysonian verse, and in its own right. Olivia is shown as having dropped her gloves and hat, thus shedding her ladylike respectability (in itself perhaps a subliminally sexual act) in her hurry to be reunited with the tree. According to the artist's own notes, the specific stanza illustrated by the painting is "Oh yes, she wonder'd round and round / Those knotted knees of mine, / And found, and kiss'd the name she found, / And sweetly murmured thine." She gently touches, seemingly strokes, the letters of her name carved into the bark of the towering tree, her body pressed close to it in a kind of one-sided embrace. She appears almost mesmerized, presumably overcome by emotions of love and possibly even desire. The intensity of her expression is matched by the concentration of detail on the left-hand side of the composition; the bark is meticulously rendered, and all is compressed and tightly pushed together. This is offset by the open, more fluid landscape and verdant foreground on the right. Only the hat and gloves inhabit this corner, while above a few branches of the tree futilely bend towards the earth and the pile of feminine accessories. In the far distance is a glimpse of the house from which Olivia departed, abjuring books and music to "please herself" by coming to the tree. Much as Olivia clings to the broad trunk like a lover in an embrace, ferns and woodbine similarly adhere to the base of the tree. These had respective connotations in the nineteenth century as flowers of "fascination" and "affection (or fraternal love)," a meaning possibly reinforced by other flowers strewn amid the grasses. This is a fertile and luxuriously green corner of nature, yet the tree – true to its promise in the poem – has cast some shadow over the maiden to protect her from the harsh sun. This effect helps to mark off a small and private "territory" inhabited only by the giant oak and the woman. [28]
Two pencil-on-paper studies for the painting, courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Left: Inventory no. E.19-1940. Right: Inventory no. E.20-1940. Both are reproduced here under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC).
There are three preliminary drawings for this subject in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. One drawing dated June 15, 1856 (on the left above, accession no. E.19-1940) is of quite a different composition and shows Olivia with both arms spread clasping the oak tree in an expansive embrace and wishing it was a smaller tree so she could get her arms totally around it. It illustrates the line where the tree laments "Alas, I was so broad of girth / I could not be embraced." The other two drawings are far closer to the final composition chosen, that show Olivia standing next to the tree. Drawing accession no. E.20-1940 is dated June 9, 1856 while E.19-1940 is dated June 15, 1856. These two sketches show Olivia looking at her name carved into the tree and demonstrate that Egley ultimately chose to return to his earlier conception in the final composition. The drawing dated June 9 shows Olivia in a different dress, holding her hat in her left hand, and with her face and right breast pressed against the tree. The drawing dated June 15 is closest to the ultimate painting but her costume is again different and she lacks the shawl draped around her waist. Her hat is lying on the ground in the left foreground rather than on the right as in the painting. Details in the foreground and midground also differ, with more trees being visible to the right behind Olivia in the drawing. An oil sketch of the composition was begun on July 19, 1856 while the final oil painting was started on August 27. The oak tree was painted from specimens located in Hampstead while "other aspects of the landscape were similarly studied or executed on the spot" (Casteras 29). Egley went to Ealing to paint the sky and distance. His wife Polly and another model, Louise Wright, posed for the figure of Olivia. In Egley's diary he recorded that he spent a total of fifty-six days working on the painting from its beginning to its completion. As late as December 1866 he was still working on finishing the oak tree.
This work appears to have been inspired by contemporary paintings by John Everett Millais in particular, the same artist who illustrated the poem "The Talking Oak" for the Moxon Tennyson, which was published that same year of 1857. Both Millais' first and second illustrations for the poem are quite different from Egley's painting, however. The most obvious painting that could have influenced Egley is Millais's The Proscribed Royalist, 1651, of 1853, which Egley would have known from when it was shown at the Royal Academy. Arthur Hughes's Amy of 1853-54, where a beautiful young woman stands before a tree on which an admirer has carved her name, is another possibility as an influence. It is unknown, however, whether Egley could possibly have seen this painting because it was never exhibited at the Royal Academy. Casteras points out there are numerous instances of Victorian paintings where "the female positioned near a tree was a common iconological symbol of pending courtship" (35). Examples of such paintings would include James Archer's A Trysting Tree and George Adolphus Storey's Music Hath Charms of 1857.
Bibliography
"British Institution." The Builder XV (February 14, 1857): 93-94.
Casteras, Susan. "William Maw Egley's The Talking Oak." Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts LXV, No. 4 (1990): 26-39.
Egley, William Maw. Catalogue of Pictures, Drawings, and Designs by W. Maw Egley from 1840 to 1867. London: Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Study for The Talking Oak. E.20-1940 and E.19-1940. Victoria and Albert Museum. Web. 15 July 2024.
"The Talking Oak." The National Magazine III (1858): 17-18.
Talking Oak. Detroit Institute of Arts. Web. 15 July 2024.
Wood, Christopher. The Pre-Raphaelites. New York: Crescent Books, 1981. 65-67.
Wooten, Sarah. "William Maw Egley's 'The Lady of Shalott.'" Tennyson Research Bulletin VII, no. 3 (November 1999): 132-140.
Created 15 July 2024