The Departure - an episode of the Childs' Crusade, 12th century. 1857-1861. Oil on canvas. Signed and dated, lower left, Joanna M. Wells /57-61. 31 x 231/4 inches (78.5 x 59 cm) – sight. Private collection. Image courtesy of the author.
This is the largest and one of the most important of Joanna Boyce Well's surviving paintings. Sue Bradbury has called it one of her only two religious works (Bradbury 2012, 268). Boyce exhibited it at the Royal Academy in 1860, no. 466. Following her death it was shown at the International Exhibition held at South Kensington in 1862, no. 431, lent by her husband Henry Tanworth Wells. The painting shows a young mother clad in red kneeling with a grief-stricken expression and embracing the younger of her two boys before their departure. Her older boy has already donned the white tunic with a red cross worn by the crusaders. An older monk, possibly a Benedictine in view of his black habit, oversees the family group. The street scene that can be oberved from the doorway of the house is typical of the narrow passageways to be found in medieval Italian towns like Todi.
During the so-called "Childs' Crusade," bands of boys left Germany and France in pilgrimage to the Holy Land with the intention of claiming it for Christianity. Jan Marsh has noted that "the painting depicts an imagined incident from the apocryphal 'children's crusade' of 1212, as a mother bids farewell to boys leaving on a doomed enterprise. Conveying both emotional tension and Pre-Raphaelite piety – the composition echoes that of the traditional Holy Family – it belongs conceptually to the early phase of the movement. The choice of subject may have been prompted by the European location, as well as by Millais's plan to paint a family witnessing British crusader's departure" (Marsh 2019, 93).
Pamela Gerrish Nunn has described the content of the painting in more detail:
Once again, it is a scene which uses a boy as its emotional centre, as the artist's way of defining its subject as her correspondence indicates. Though he is joined in dramatic urgency with his kneeling mother, whose vermilion robe and anguished fortitude draw the eye; with his presumed sister, a second, smaller child clutched by their mother; and with an elderly monk, whose watchful protection the young hero reaches out for, it is in the boy that the future lies and the moral dilemma is his. His mother may emanate the drama of the moment, but he is the locus of the drama of the future - and Rome, resonant with history's richness, is the theatre of European fulfillment: according to some reports, some of the "crusaders" reached Rome, where the Pope urged them to return home, rather than exhorting them on. [Nunn 2003, 131]
The painting was begun in 1857 while Joanna was in Todi during her tour of Italy. The progress of the painting is well documented in contemporary correspondence and diaries. She arrived in Todi in early July with her art-student friend Margaret Piotti and stayed there well into September. She made numerous sketches for the painting in Todi and used several of the local children as well as a female servant as models. In a letter from Todi of 25 July 1857 to her then fiancé, the artist Henry Wells, she tells him that she and Margaret have found a room in a large public building called the Commune to use as a studio, and, she continues, "this is how we have been passing the days. Up at 6 – breakfast at 8 or ½ past – to our studio at ¼ past 9 – painting until ½ past 1 – dinner, nap, sometimes a short Italian lesson – back to the studio at ½ past 4 – at dusk (at 8) for a little walk – supper at 10 and then to bed, but rarely to sleep. Today I have actually commenced my picture, and I think I have been very fortunate in getting a good model for the tallest boy" (Bradbury 2012, I: 201).
Close-up of the other child's uniform waiting to be worn.
The larger of the two children was likely modelled by a ten-year-old boy named Peppino Lalli. In a letter of August 5 to Henry she writes:
I have nearly finished the boy's head in my picture. It is bad in colour, I am afraid, but the character and expression are somewhat near what I wanted. I have found someone to sit for the mother, whose head comes very well in the view I want; but her complexion is too dark, being something between brown pink and olive green. Yesterday morning Margaret and I made an excursion in the town to find an interior that would suit me. After going into two or three houses the people found out what we wanted, and their curiosity changed into a desire to find for us what we were searching. Men and women came out at the doors and begged us to go in and see all their rooms, while a crowd of little ragamuffins closed round each entrance, that we went in at, to make sure of getting a sight of us as we came out. I found several that would do in default of better, but of course none exactly such as I wanted. Discovering that we were amateurs of babies and pretty children, at every other door nearly appeared a mother with her picaninny [sic]. [Bradbury 2019, I: 604]
Then, in a letter from August 10 to Henry, Joanna tells Henry:
I certainly have not been idle here and yet I have done very little … I have nearly finished the boy's head in my picture, but I am afraid it is dreadfully morbid in colour. My sitter is very dark and I am afraid I have exaggerated the olive alias green in his face. The mother's head is commenced, but she is darker and greener than the boy. Though I want her to have black hair, I wished a bright complexion, and I daresay when I get to Rome I shall paint another head – the boy's feet are partly done. I want to paint a street view to be seen through the open door, but I dread the ordeal of sitting for hours together in a place where I shall get devoured by fleas, and surrounded by women and children. We have not attempted to paint in the street yet. [Bradbury 2019, I: 608].
Progress was slow. On August 18-20 she again writes to Henry:
I am afraid you will expect me to have done much more in the painting way than I have accomplished. My picture has been at a stand still now more than a fortnight. Next week I mean to paint the doorway and street view, and when they are finished complete the woman's head, if I can. My sitter, one of the gonfaloniere's servants, has been unable to come these last ten days, and her complexion is so very dark that I doubt whether I shall be forced to paint the head again from some one else, The size of the canvas is 29-23 or thereabouts. The boy's head is the only thing that is at all finished, and I am afraid you will say that is very bad. [Bradbury 2019, I: 611]
A week later, on August 28, in another letter to Henry, she says she will take his advice "and only work on those parts [of my picture], that must be done before I leave Todi. I have not and shall not touch either the monk or little boy. The doorway I have nearly finished from a room on the ground floor in the house of a dressmaker here. I have made tiny pencil sketches of two street views for the piece to be seen through the door. I hope to paint the one, on which I am determined, next week. We have painted one small out of door sketch and begun another." As for painting outdoors, she adds, "The men, women and children mob us and we get lots of fleas (Bradbury 2019, I: 616).
Once more, on September 5, Joanna writes to Henry: "I have begun the view seen through the doorway in my picture, but it is in a comparatively out of the way spot and we are very little annoyed. I have found, I think, a very good piece for the purpose, but unfortunately it is so surrounded by high walls, that I never get a direct sunlight effect, which I much wanted and must have in fact" (Bradbury 2019, I: 620). Then, on September 16, just before leaving Todi for Florence to meet Henry, she was still concerned about the progress she had made on the painting, writing to him:
You ask me to bring some one thing I have painted to Florence. Out of the number of bad little studies I have made, there is not one I should not be ashamed to bring, they are all so bad. As for my picture, I think when you see it, you will agree with me, that there is not a thing painted in it, but I ought to have done a great deal better, and that it would be wiser to recommence it entirely. I have been trying this last week to paint the bit of street to be seen through the open door, but obstacles have multiplied: the sun, most provoking of all, absenting himself entirely where I want him so much. We have tried two other littler street views, but I have failed in both. I am sure my painting lately has been as much disturbed as yours by painful thoughts. I shall have no time to make another attempt at fresco, or to paint the woman's head in my picture, or to do many things I intended. I ought now, at this minute, to be painting the street scene in my picture, but – I'm far better employed. [Bradbury 2019, I: 625-26]
After they met in Florence, Joanna and Henry went on to Rome. On November 1, 1857 Joanna wrote to her brother George:
I and Mrs Piotti were undoubtedly very industrious at Todi, meritoriously so, I may say considering the height of the thermometer, but the results in my case are by no means satisfactory. Besides a few small sketches, I painted a quick life-sized study of the wife of the Gonfaloniere and I began a subject with four figures, which I told you I had in contemplation when I was at Brighton – an episode from the boy's crusade. (If you are by any chance asked what I am doing, do not mention this.) I painted one of the principal heads and feet appertaining from a Todi boy, and managed to get in nearly all the background from a street and cellar in the place. I hope to finish it in Italy but am very doubtful if I can. [Bradbury 2019, I: 634]
George replied on November 19: "I am very glad that you are obliged to let slip, that you will bring back with you something, - if not many, - on canvas. That will at the least interest us. Altho' 'by no means satisfactory,' I shouldn't wonder if I and others are betrayed into those dreadful fits of enthusiasm and admiration, which rile you so much. But you must really learn to bear them stoically or give up painting" (Bradbury 2019, I: 639). On November 24, 1857 Henry Wells wrote to Joanna's brother, George Price Boyce, about her progress on her picture: "She has been very idle (keeping me company) since we have been in Rome, and has scarcely touched her brush, but she has now found good models and has commenced upon her picture (Bradbury 2019, I: 647).
Joanna and Henry Wells were finally married on 9 December 1857 in Rome. On 5 March 1858 Joanna wrote to George from Rome: "What with the intense cold, want of a studio, and my being laid up, my painting has long been at a stand still" (Bradbury, 2019, I: 669). After their return to England in April 1858 the picture took a number of years to complete, perhaps due to demands on Joanna's time from being first a wife and then a mother. She may have delayed finishing the work because she was far from satisfied with it. Even as late as March 1860 Joanna was still trying to improve her painting before sending it to the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy. On 16 March 1860, her brother George wrote in his diary: "Met Millais at dinner at Joney's and Wells's.… He looked at Joney's Boys' Crusade picture and suggested some improvements. Said that a picture, that was really and entirely good, always looked good at any distance, even when the detail and subject were not always intelligible" (Bradbury 2019, II: 1035). Finally, on 9 April 1860, when George visited the Wells's home at Stratford Place, he commented on The Departure that "Joney's picture very fine indeed" (Bradbury, 2019, II, 1036).
Prior to its being exhibited Joanna wrote to Henry in late March or early April 1860 about adjusting the asking price for the painting: "You'll think me a fool for writing, I dare say, but the Brookses have just informed as in the most exalting manner, that Rebecca Solomon has sold her picture, now going to the R.A., for 250 guineas and Gambart has given her another 50 guineas for the copyright. On hearing this I thought you might like to put a higher price on mine. I think 150 more than it is worth, but I do not feel pleased at the odious comparison. Do what you think best and I shall be perfectly satisfied" (Bradbury 2019, I: 759-60). The painting was accepted by the Royal Academy for its Summer Exhibition in 1860 but unfortunately was skied by the hanging committee.
On May 7, 1860 G. P. Boyce wrote in his diary: "To Academy early in the morning, imagining that as my Isle of Wight had been accepted, it would be hung. It was not hung, so I retired ignominiously. Joney's picture of the Boys' Crusade most shamefully and unjustly hung" (Bradbury 2019, II: 1040). On May 9, 1860 Joanna wrote to George: "My poor 'crusade". I only wish it had shared the fate of Sidney" (Bradbury 2019, I: 761). Joanna's portrait of her infant son Sidney Wells had been rejected by the Royal Academy. On May 10, George replied: "When I entered the rooms and found where your picture was placed, I could have had the hangmen flayed on the spot, or what would have been far worse, condemned them to have contemplated their own works during the remaining terms of their unnatural existence. In all sincerity I think it about the meanest and most unjust act I remember the Academy hangmen to have committed, for the rejection of the picture would have been one of comparative mercy and courtesy. Its flagrancy is so great, that I should hope that after the first feeling of indignation and disgust, you will be the more determined to take by storm the justice, which has been so shamefully withheld, and to laugh to scorn such judgment on your work, for [if] it be a judgment at all, it is ridiculous and beneath contempt. I hope you will send the picture to Liverpool" (Bradbury 2019, I: 761). Joanna replied in a letter of May 16, 1860: "I think I may safely say, I feel more real satisfaction in the hearty sympathy I have had about the placing of my picture, than if I had been on the line at the R.A., because, amongst other reasons, it is far more reliable proof that my work is good for something. Your letter especially made me feel very grateful to you. I assure you I am very proud of your appreciation of what I do" (Bradbury 2019, I: 762).
Despite its poor position on the walls of the Royal Academy, the critic for The Saturday Review gave a favourable opinion of the work in his review of the exhibition: "Mrs. H. T. Wells, in her 'Departure – an episode in the Child's Crusade, 12th century' (466), has chosen an admirable subject. It is strange that so many painters should persist in the vain attempt to illustrate the creations of Shakespeare and other great poets, when history affords them themes so excellently suited to their purpose as this which Mrs. Wells has chosen. Of the execution of the picture it is difficult to form a confident opinion, as it is hung in a very unfavourable position, but the expression of the woman who is bidding adieu to the poor little crusader is forcible and natural" (709).
Joanna Wells died on July 15, 1861 from complications following the birth of her third child. In 1862 five of her paintings were shown at the International Exhibition held from May 1- November 1 in South Kensington. Her husband Henry noted in his diary for April 26, 1862 that fortunately in this show her painting The Departure was "by no means ill-placed" (Bradbury 2019, I: 85).
Nunn felt that the primary influence on this painting was Joanna's French training: "Boyce's vigorous treatment here of this subject shows the continuing influence on her of the French artists Thomas Couture and Ary Scheffer, painters of the 'juste milieu,' which she had encountered during her training in Paris in 1855" (132). A more likely source of inspiration for this painting, however, was the work of J. E. Millais, a painter who Joanna greatly admired and whom she had asked for advice about her painting. The composition and subject owe much to Millais's scenes of anguished encounter/parting in such early masterpieces as A Huguenot of 1852, or The Order of Release of 1852-53. Ironically Joanna's painting, in turn, may possibly have influenced the embracing figures in Millais's The Romans Leaving Britain that he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1865. The Departure may also have influenced Henry Holiday's The Burgesses of Calais, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1859. Holiday's painting shows a young wife clutching her husband, one of the Burghers of Calais who are to be executed by Edward III, much as the mother holds her younger son in Boyce's painting.
After Boyce's death F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum praised her work:
Almost every visitor to the current Exhibition of the Royal Academy will share our regret to learn of the death of Mrs. Wells, who was known as the most promising of our female artists. An artist she was, in the best sense of the term, gifted with a rare power of execution and knowledge of practical Art such as we feel safe in saying has not been possessed by any English lady. Beyond this her works evinced feelings for design which were superior to the average gifts of many painters of high note…As a young and consequently incompletely practiced artist, Mrs. Well's works erred rather in excess of strength than the common fault of feminine tameness. [89]
In a later piece that same year in The Athenaeum Stephens stated about Joanna: "In 1857, she visited Italy and was married to Mr. H. Wells at Rome. During the tour which followed this, Mrs. Wells painted the first portion of a picture exhibited at the Royal Academy last year, entitled The Departure, - an episode in the Child's Crusade, Twelfth Century which seems to have been her most important work known to the public" (121). Stephens was not the only member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to mourn her loss. William Michael Rossetti in his Reminiscences was later to write: "Miss Boyce had a picturesque face, with a noticeable air of concentration and resolve; she was probably conscious of power, but (so far as I saw) was quite free from self-applause – looking upon what she had done as a mere imperfect earnest of what she might aim at doing.… All the artists whom I best knew and valued deplored her death as a real loss to art; they had looked upon her as the leading hope for painting in the hands of a woman. [154]
A number of studies for The Child's Crusade are in Joanna's Todi sketchbook in the collection of the British Museum (registration number 1995,0401.9.1-79). This sketchbook contains a drawing of an early idea for the overall composition, which was later slightly modified, as well as a sketch for the architectural background of the picture taken from a building in Todi. Another page in the sketchbook shows additional architectural drawings intended for the background. A sketch of the older boy model is dated 27 July 1857.
Bibliography
Bradbury, Sue. Joanna, George and Henry. A Pre-Raphaelite Tale of Art, Love and Friendship. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2012. 201, 249-250, 268, 283, and colour plate XLI.
Bradbury, Sue: Ed. The Boyce Papers. The Letters and Diaries of Joanna Boyce, Henry Wells and George P. Boyce, Vols. I & II. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2019.
Gerrish Nunn, Pamela. "Liberty, Eqality and Sorority: Women's representations of the Unification of Italy. Chapter 6 in Unfolding the South. Nineteenth-century British women writers and artists in Italy, edited by Alison Chapman and Jane Stabler. See 131-32.
Marsh, Jan and Pamela Gerrish Nunn: Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists. Manchester: Manchester City Art Galleries, 1997. 154, 156, and colour plate VI.
Marsh, Jan. The Pre-Raphaelite Circle. National Portrait Gallery Insights. London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2005. 69.
Marsh, Jan. Pre-Raphaelite Sisters. London: National Portrait Gallery, 2019. See 93, 95, & 199, fig. 61.
Rossetti, William Michael: Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906, Vol. I: 154.
"The Royal Academy." The Saturday Review IX (2 June 1860): 709-10.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Art Gossip." The Athenaeum No. 1760 (20 July 1861): 89.
Stephens, Frederic George: "Our Weekly Gossip." The Athenaeum No. 1761 (July 27, 1861): 120-21
Walker, Kristy Stonell. Pre-Raphaelite Girl Gang. Chicago: Unicorn Publishing Group, 2018, 52.
Created 22 July 2024