Timon and Flavius, 1876. Oil on panel, 237/8 x 193/8 inches (60.6 x 49.2 cm). Collection of the Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, object no. 2013-46.
This work was never shown at the Royal Academy but was instead painted expressly for James Sprent Virtue, the publisher of The Art Journal, in 1876. The picture was engraved by Charles Cousen and published as a steel engraving in The Art Journa in 1876 on page 172. Wallis was strongly attracted to the Elizabethan period and to its playwrights and poets like William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson, and Edmund Spenser. This painting illustrates one of Shakespeare’s more obscure plays Timon of Athens (Act IV, Scene 3).
Timon, Lord of Athens, was profligate of his bounty, giving lavishly to all, even flatterers and sycophants, despite the protestations of his steward, Flavius. The time came when his wealth was at an end, and he turned confidently to his friends for help; but he soon found that those who had courted him when he had riches to bestow shunned him in adversity. Bitterly disillusioned, he took to the woods, abjuring the cursed city and declaring himself a hater of mankind. There he was sought out by the faithful Flavius, who begged to be allowed to serve him and offered him money from his hard-earned savings, as seen in the picture. Timon at first took this for a bribe, but he was at last convinced of the steward’s fidelity and admitted that the world contained at least one honest man. Nonetheless the human form and voice of his servant filled him with disgust, and Flavius was forced to depart.”
The Art Journal discussed the painting thusly:
Timon, the misanthrope of the Athenian Colyttus, would never perhaps of been heard of beyond the limits of the readers of classical literature, had not Shakespeare immortalized him in one of his unrivalled dramas, spoken up by Johnson as ‘a domestic tragedy which strongly fastens on the attention of the reader. In the plan there is not much art; but the incidents are natural, and the characters various and exact. The catastrophe affords a very powerful warning against the ostentatious liberality which scatters bounty but confers no benefits, and buys flattery but not friendship.’ The ‘noble Athenian,’ disgusted with the ingratitude of those he has befriended, and out of heart with the whole world, deserts the city and takes up his abode in a secluded cave in the country; leaving to all anything but a blessing –
‘Timon will to the woods, where he shall find
The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.
The gods confound (hear me, ye good gods all,)
The Athenians both within and out that wall!
And Grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow
To the whole race of mankind, high and low!
Amen.’ Timon of Athens, act iv., sc I.>/p>
After a time his place of concealment is discovered, and he is visited by some of his old friends and acquaintances; but he only insults them, yet offers them gold, which he has found in the woods while digging for roots, his only means of sustenance. Among those is his faithful steward, Flavius, who, on the flight of Timon and the break-up of his establishment in Athens, pays the servants out of his own pocket the wages due to them: he now seeks out his fallen master, with the hope of being able to render him assistance. Seeing Timon in his cave from a distance, Flavius breaks out into the following speech:
‘Oh you gods!
Is yon despised and ruinous man my lord,
Full of decay and failing? Or monument
And wonder of good deeds evilly bestow’d!
What an alteration of honour has
Desperate want made!
What viler things upon the earth than friends,
Who can bring noblest minds to basest ends!’ &c. &c.
Act iv. Sc.3.
Timon pretends not to recognize him, though Flavius tells him who he is: -
‘I beg of you to know me, my good lord,
To accept my grief, and while this poor wealth lasts,
To entertain me as your stewards still? – Idem.
This is the point of Mr. Wallis’s picture; the old steward, ignorant of the gold Timon himself has found, offers his former master the ‘poor wealth’ he had saved up, which the latter affects to regard as a bribe: -
‘Is not thy kindness subtle, covenous,
If not a usuring kindness; and as rich men deal gifts,
Expecting in return twenty for one?’ - Idem
The painter, in order to give effect to the locality and circumstances in which Timon has placed himself, has departed a little from the text of the play by representing him with a spade in his hands and digging: in the earlier part of the same scene he is thus employed, when he is visited by Apemantus, a churlish philosopher, who asks: -
‘Why this spade? this place?
This slave – like habit? and these looks of care?’
Mr. Wallis had not in this subject one that demanded much in the way of design, but the picture shows care and study, and some very pleasing composition in the landscape portion. It was painted expressly for the proprietors of this Journal. [172]
Bibliography
“Timon and Flavius.” The Art Journal, New Series XV (1876): 172.
Lessens, Ronald and Dennis T. Lanigan. Henry Wallis. From Pre-Raphaelite Painter to Collector/Connoisseur. Woodbridge: ACC Art Books, 2019, cat. 101, 135-36.
Last modified 16 October 2022