The Long Engagement, 1853-55, reworked c.1858-59. Oil on canvas. 42 1/8 x 21 inches (107 x 53.3 cm). Collection of Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, accession no. 1902P13. Image released by Birmingham Museums Trust under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero licence (CCO). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
This picture was begun at Burnham in April 1853 with Orlando in the Forest of Arden initially intended as the subject. In 1855 Hughes submitted this picture to the Royal Academy, likely in an unfinished state, where it was rejected. The canvas was then enlarged at some point, possibly in 1858, and the two Shakespearian figures of Orlando and Rosalind were replaced by the contemporary figures of the aging curate with his fiancé attempting to console him. Years later on September 16, 1911 Hughes wrote to his friend Helen Allingham: "I painted with much care a background for an Orlando and Rosalind, but wiped out the figures before they were completed and substituted modern lovers, and called the picture The Long Engagement" (Allingham and Williams, 299).
In 1859 the revised painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy, no. 524, with no title in the catalogue but accompanied by two lines from Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde:
For how myght ever sweetnesse hav be known
To hym that never tastyd bitternesse?
This is one of Hughes's masterpieces from his Pre-Raphaelite period in its meticulous detail and brilliant colour. It features some of the new pigments that became available to artists in the 1850s, most notably seen in the bright purple colour of the woman's shawl. Like April Love, it was highly influenced by the works of John Everett Millais. Allen Staley has pointed this out and how Hughes's handling of the foliate and floral surroundings support the meaning of the painting's title:
The painting represents a complete change in Hughes's style from that of his own Ophelia to that of Millais. The drawing and colouring of every leaf and blossom are clear, separate, and precise. There's no spatial depth; the background is entirely filled with foliage pressing upon the figures, and the bright colours bring each detail forward to the surface. The figures do not stand out from their settings; everything is of equal value, and the couple only emerges as part of an overall surface pattern. When compared to Millais, Hughes seems even more rigid in avoiding any suggestion of depth and more consistent in the treatment of the picture's surface. We feel the forms taken in pictures such as Millais's Ophelia were the result of the artist's peculiar approach to recording natural phenomena, but in Hughes's picture the stylization is a product of consciously controlled denial of traditional pictorial space. Nevertheless, the foliate and floral surroundings give the picture its meaning. The subject is the long engagement, and our awareness of nature growing, blossoming, and reproducing itself heightens the poignancy of the enforced sterility of the two protagonists. [85]
Stephen Wildman has pointed out, based on the couplet from Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, the meaning that Hughes intended to convey:
The sentiments which Hughes intended to express through this couplet (which puzzled some commentators) were doubtless those of consolation and steadfastness in the face of adversity. The man is recognizable from his clothes as a curate, and is presumably without sufficient financial means to marry – perhaps not even to become formally betrothed, as the young woman's left hand displays no engagement ring. The length of their courtship is indicated by the ivy having grown over her name (Amy), cut long ago into the tree; her unravelling knitting is perhaps also symbolic of plans unfulfilled. [175]
Wildman praised the advances Hughes had made in this work: "In any event, Hughes surpassed his previous good work with a bravura demonstration of his ability to capture the complimentary textures of foliage, cloth and fur" (177). Why Hughes chose the name "Amy" is unknown, but it was the title of a poem by Tennyson and was also the name of the artist's mother and of his second child.
Tim Barringer has further elaborated on the scene portrayed in this painting:
This painting represents a common occurrence in Victorian middle-class life: after becoming engaged, a couple would be forced to wait to marry until the bridegroom's financial prospects were strong enough to support a family. Here, a curate, the poorly paid assistant clergyman in an Anglican Church, meets his betrothed in the woods. The artist provided a graphic representation of the time that has elapsed since their engagement: the young man had once carved his beloved's name – Amy – in the bark of the tree, but ivy has already grown over the inscription. Ivy was understood as a symbol of feminine loyalty and faithfulness, but also of submissiveness; the ivy grows around the oak, as here, suggesting (in accordance with Victorian domestic ideology) that the role of a woman is to cling to a stronger male. Perhaps Arthur Hughes felt some personal identification with his subject, as his own marriage, in November 1855, had followed a courtship of five years. The anguished sinister face of the curate suggests that he resents nature being in full flower while the couple are kept apart by social restrictions. The pair of red squirrels at the upper right, untroubled by social niceties, can reproduce at will. [Victorian Radicals, 150]
The towering oak to the left of the couple is a symbol of strength and power associated with stoic manly virtues (Barringer, The Pre-Raphaelites, 93). Barringer goes on to state: "Here a curate, the junior and notoriously poorly paid rank of cleric in the Church of England, stares despairingly into the heavens, waiting for an appropriate living to come vacant. Meanwhile, his fiancée waits patiently, unable to assume the 'natural' role of wife and mother, while nature indulges in a spectacular display of fecundity all around" (The Pre-Raphaelites, 94).
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1859 the painting had no title and the critic of The Art Journal was uncertain how the lines from Chaucer included in the catalogue could be interpreted as he saw them:
There are two figures – lovers without question; he is partially hidden by the bole of a massive tree, as about to pluck a flower which hangs over his head, while the lady is also looking up. The costume they wear is modern, and they stand amidst the summer luxuriance of flowers and foliage. The face of the man is so creditably painted that that it can scarcely be believed to be by the same hand as the head of the woman, that seems wanting in proper attachment to the body, the features being disqualified by an inane sentimentality. This is a professedly 'Pre-Raffaelite' work, with everything in it rushing out of the frame, and introducing as much of the crudity of the manner as can be shown on a limited field. [170]
The reviewer for The Athenaeum felt Hughes's picture was admirable but that his work would improve once he was no longer under the influence of Pre-Raphaelitism:
Mr. Hughes's other picture has the scene, not in Fairy Land, but in real life. Like his April Love, the story is not quite clear, but we presume that (524) – and the Chaucerian motto (the P.R.B.'s all read Chaucer or at least quote him) means that the gentleman looking up to heaven is accepted of the pleasant smiling girl who clasps his hand; and that
For how myght ever sweetnesse hav be known
To hym that never tastyd bitternesse —
means that the pains and perils of courtship, and other vexations of his life render by contrast his present happiness greater; – so thinks the slate-coloured dog that fondles him as he stands by the grey tree, triangled with whitish ivy leaves. Though rather thin and flat, this is an admirable picture, full of the tender poetry of love, and crowded with thought and prettiness. Mr. Hughes will paint better and touch the universal heart oftener when he gets out of the enervating green-house air of clique, and thinks boldly for himself without sham archaism or affectation. [617]
Bibliography
Allingham, Helen, and E. Baumer Williams. Letters to William Allingham. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911.
Barringer, Tim. The Pre-Raphaelites. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998, 92-94.
Barringer, Tim. Victorian Radicals. From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement. New York: American Federation of Arts, 2016, cat. 42. 150.
"Fine Arts. Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 1645 (7 May 1859): 617-18.
The Long Engagement. Art UK. Web. 6 March 2025.
Parris, Leslie. The Pre-Raphaelites. London: Tate Gallery Publications/Penguin Books, 1984, cat. 95. 170-71.
Roberts, Len. Arthur Hughes His Life and Works. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club, 1997, cat. 15. 126-27.
"The Royal Academy Exhibition." The Art Journal New Series V (1 June 1859): 161-72.
Staley, Allen. The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.
Wildman, Stephen. Visions of Love and Life. Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Collection, England. Alexandria, Virginia: Art Services International, 1995, cat. 48. 175-77.
Created 6 March 2025