William Houghton Clabburn, by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (1829-1904). 1870. Oil on canvas. 44 x 25 3/4 inches (118.8 x 65.8 cm). Collection of Sheffield Museums, object no. SHEFM: VIS.5. Image courtesy of Sheffield Museums reproduced for purposes of non-commercial academic research. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Sandys exhibited this portrait of his good friend and patron W. H. Clabburn (1830-1889) at the Royal Academy in 1871, no. 468. A finished preliminary drawing is in the collection of the Norwich Castle Museum (inventory no. 21.938). Betty Elzea describes the portrait as giving a:
Frontal view of a three-quarter length figure of a bearded man in frock coat and waistcoat, with his hands crossed in front of him. The cuffs of his frock coat are folded back, showing his bare hands; his right hand is holding a pair of gloves…. The coat and waistcoat are black, and the folded back cuff of the frock coat is of dark blue silk. A scarlet handkerchief protrudes from his top pocket; the gloves are tan-coloured. His beard is grizzled. He stands in front of an evergreen shrub which reaches just above his shoulders. On the left is a tree in the middle distance, and behind the head is a distant landscape of sand, blue sea, and sky. [235-36]
Elzea felt this work might have been influenced by similar portraits by G. F. Watts such as his Portrait of Alfred Tennyson of c.1863-64. As Elzea points out, Watts was much influenced by sixteenth-century Venetian portraiture, which was not the case with Sandys, unless it perhaps came second hand via Watts (236).
After the portrait of Clabburn was finished Sandys wrote to William Michael Rossetti asking his opinion of it as he valued his judgment. Sandys told Rossetti he felt the portrait was "better in style, broader in treatment, yet with as much finish, better in colour, and…nobler in purpose than anything I have yet done" (qtd. in Elzea 236). Rossetti later wrote in a memoir that "Mr. Sandys painted a fine portrait of his very stately head and figure" (Family-Letters, 187).
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
When the portrait was shown at the Royal Academy in 1871 it was, in general, not favourably reviewed. F.G. Stephens, writing in the Athenaeum, failed to be impressed, finding its style to be affected: "Mr. F. Sandys's portrait of W.H. Clabburn, Esq. (468), while removed by a world of shortcomings from the possibility of comparison with several of the artist's portraits, to say nothing of his poetical pictures, has much in it that is masculine; but its affectations of style and sentiment are really unworthy, and as absurd as they are unprofitable" (691). The critic for the Art Journal also failed to be impressed: "The portrait by Mr. F. Sandys, of W. H. Clabburn, Esq. (468), cannot be commended for reading of character, for treatment of colour, or for rendering of flesh-tint. Mr. Sandys is usually more successful in studies in simple chiar-oscuro" (177). A reviewer for the Architect was one of the few to admire Sandys's submissions to the Royal Academy that year: "In the two portraits by Mr. Sandys we have vigorous colour and fine drawing; Mr. Clabburn, sen. , is like some of the finer ancient Dutch portraits, and the chalk portrait of this gentleman's son is very solid in drawing" (248).
The critic of the Illustrated London News also praised Sandys's "two chalk heads, which are the best of their kind" (578), but was less taken with this work: "In the standing half-length of Mr. W. H. Clabburn (468), Mr. Sandys has evidently taken Holbein as his model; but the faults likely to arise in an attempt to rival that master are more apparent than his merits; the execution is hard, the attitude rigid, and the colouring rank. Perhaps the strangest review came from the Builder where a reviewer commented on "the curiously Mediaeval portrait of Mr. Clabburn, looking more like a saint than either of the three theological difficulties" (422).
Bibliography
Elzea, Betty. Frederick Sandys 1829-1904. A Catalogue Raisonné. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Antique Collectors' Club Ltd., 200, cat. nos. 3.6 and 3.7, 235-36.
"Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Illustrated London News LVIII (10 June 1871): 578.
Rossetti, William Michael. Dante Gabriel Rossetti His Family-Letters with a Memoir. Boston: Robert Brothers, 1895.
"The Royal Academy." The Architect V (May 13, 1871): 245-48.
"The Royal Academy." The Art Journal New Series X (July 1, 1871): 173-80.
"The Royal Academy Exhibition." The Builder XXIX (June 3, 1871): 421-22.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 2275 (June 3, 1871): 691-93.
William Houghton Clabburn. Art UK. Web. 20 July 2025.
Created 20 July 2025