31. Painting from history: two artists at work

Continued from 
https://conant400.blogspot.com/2020/06/portrait-of-peacemaker.html

 

Cllr Tom Wright, Mayor of Budleigh Salterton, admires Millais'  'The Boyhood of Raleigh' on the opening day of  Fairlynch Museum's Raleigh 400 exhibition, 28 May 2018 

John Washington’s sketch of Roger Conant the peacemaker has been well received both locally in Devon and in the USA. We’re looking forward to seeing how his depiction of a dramatic event 400 years ago in far-off Massachusetts will develop from what is just the artist’s working drawing.   

With Roger Conant's Devon boyhood in mind, I can’t help thinking of another painting which started life in a Budleigh studio.

Budleigh Salterton beach, looking east to Otter Head 

One hundred and fifty years ago the PreRaphaelite artist Sir John Everett Millais decided that our pebble beach – known by some as the place where the late Princess Diana took secret walks with her lover – would be the perfect setting for his depiction of a moment in the life of a very different character from Devon’s history.

Portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh in All Saints' Church, East Budleigh. This is a copy of one of the best known portraits of Sir Walter formerly attributed to Zuccaro but now to the monogrammist 'H' (? Hubbard) and dated 1588. It shows Raleigh in court dress at the height of his favour with Queen Elizabeth I. Raleigh had been appointed Captain of the Guard in 1587 

What greater contrast could there be between the flamboyant, arrogant but brilliant Elizabethan  courtier Sir Walter Raleigh and the ‘tolerant, mild and conciliatory, quiet and unobtrusive, ingenuous and unambitious’ founder of Salem as he’s been described by one 19^th century historian.

Above: Hayes Barton, Raleigh's birthplace a few miles outside East Budleigh, with an illustration of the village's Mill House, where Roger Conant grew up. Sadly, the building was demolished

Yet both were born in the same century in the same tiny Devon village of East Budleigh. And both are associated with the history of two of the USA’s best known regions.

The Octagon, on Budleigh's Fore Street

So Millais came to Budleigh Salterton in the late 1860s, settled in a studio on our fair town’s Fore Street within a few yards of the famous beach, supposedly engaged a brawny and tanned local ferryman as a model and set to work painting an imagined scene from the life of a great English hero. 

The result, in which he also used his own son as a model, was the very successful ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’. The painting, first exhibited in 1870, is now one of the masterpieces in the collection of Tate Britain.  

'The Boyhood of Raleigh', watched by 'Sir Walter', being carefully unloaded at Fairlynch Museum after its journey from Tate Britain

In 2018 to mark the 400^th anniversary of Raleigh’s death, Budleigh’s Fairlynch Museum staged one of its most successful exhibitions. One of the highlights was Millais’ painting, on loan from London to Budleigh for only the third time in its 150-year life.  

In the steps of a master: John Washington in costume as

Sir John Everett Millais 

Part of the Museum’s celebrations was a re-enactment of Millais’ work close to where the Victorian artist would have worked. Who better to play the part of Millais himself and paint the scene than our John Washington!

Local children were volunteered to act as models. Our ‘brawny sailor’ was nobly played by the Museum’s former treasurer Nick Speare who managed to keep his arm outstretched for hours on end, with a few breaks of course.

Riding Donut from Budleigh Salterton Riding School is Rob Batson, in costume as Raleigh, meeting his double

To amuse the crowds of spectators, curious to see the latest performance by Budleigh eccentrics, we even had two adult Raleighs on the scene, one on horseback.  

Group photo of the actors in our 'Boyhood' re-enactment 

It was a scorcher of a day and my false beard kept falling off, much to my discomfiture as I played the part of one of England’s heroes. But it was good fun and we have some fabulous photos of the event thanks to the very talented and professional Rob Coombe from Dorset-based Matt Austin Images.

The Extent of the British Empire in 1886, made by J. C. R. Colomb, Supplement to the Graphic magazine 24 July 1886, with British territories coloured red Artist: Walter Crane (1845-1915)

So it won’t be the first time that an artist working from a Budleigh studio has tackled the subject of a celebrated moment in history. Millais’ painting, of course, was full of historical inaccuracies and really just amounted to a pleasing piece of Victorian propaganda about what were seen as the glorious beginnings of the British Empire.

Continued at
https://conant400.blogspot.com/2020/06/history-in-art-arms-and-men.html

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