John Callcott Horsley
London 1817 – 1903

Critics on Costume, Fashions Change
signed and dated in the lower right J.C. Horsley 1880

oil on canvas

19 × 15 inches (48.2 × 38 cm.)

PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Kingston, Ontario

In his Recollections Horsley states that a visitor to his studio summed up the charm of his work as ‘Sunshine and pretty women’¹ and these are undeniably the focus of the present work. Two languid beauties of the 1880s are caught in a shaft of light as they inspect a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, herself a great beauty in her time. As with all of Horsley’s paintings, the viewer is led into a tight psychological narrative, with application beyond the period he has evoked. In this case the point of the parasol and the lady’s gesture with her fingers show that the women are contrasting the Queen’s stiff, jeweled stomacher and tiny waist with their own more soft and flowing costume. Just visible through the door behind the dealer is a further beauty of the Court of King Charles II whose décolletage gives a hint of yet more unconstrained times still. Critics on Costume – a version of which had been exhibited at the Royal Academy in the previous year – make a particularly sharp comment as women’s corsets were just beginning to tighten again at this date, and the fashion plates of the 1880s would make the women’s blithe incredulity less comfortable still.

The qualities apparent in Horsley’s first great success, Rent Day in the 16th Century at Haddon Hall (York City Museum and Art Gallery) exhibited at the British Institution in 1837, are conspicuous in the present work. In keeping with much Victorian taste, Horsley worshipped the seventeenth century Dutch masters – he called them ‘the gods of my idolatry’² – especially Pieter de Hooch. He recognized in them certain fundamental and highly satisfactory principles of composition and execution. The vertical format here, the placing of the figure group parallel to the picture plane and the recession through to a figure in a secondary space are all mannerisms of De Hooch³, as is the way in which the painting is animated by a wealth of still-life detail, which satisfy the eye and expand the painting’s narrative. The tools with which the dealer has uncrated the picture, or perhaps removed it from its frame, and the sponge in a Delft bowl of water or spirit for cleaning off centuries of country house grime provide a solid note in his ‘light comedy of painting.’⁴ Such passages emphasize the fact that Horsely was not merely a formulaic artist providing a whiff of the Dutch Old Masters for a modern audience, but a painter of considerable technical skill who was their equal in observation and painterly finish. Horsley’s love and profound affinity for painting of this period is shown by works such as The Morning Mail, 1865 (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and other versions) which are pure recreations of the spirit of Gabriel Metsu, cabinet pieces painted for the artist’s own recreation when he was otherwise engaged on larger projects.

Although much of Horsley’s clientele lay among Midlands industrialists who appreciated the ‘period drama’ of his historical genre, Horsley also designed the first Christmas Card in 1843 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London) and enjoyed national prestige when he was selected in 1844 to produce two large frescoes for the newly-finished Houses of Parliament, The Spirit of Religion, 1847 and Satan Wounded by Ithuriels Lance, 1848. These in turn may have brought him to the notice of Prince Albert, for whom he painted L’Allegro and Il Penseroso (Royal Collection, Osbourne House), but one senses that Horsley was less comfortable working in this more grandiose Italianate manner and his commercial and private works avoid the quattrocento flavor of the Osbourne paintings. From the 1850s onwards Horsley experimented with depictions of contemporary life – inspired by the success of his friends William Powell Frith and John Leech. Showing a Preference (Sotheby’s, London, November 19, 2008, lot 123) alludes to the Choice of Hercules in a sharp commentary on mid-Victorian courtship, but despite its technical virtuosity and brilliantly-evoked pastoral mood one feels that the painter is far more at home with Mary Queen of Scots in Captivity, 1871 (Sotheby’s at Gleneagles Hotel, August 29, 2007, lot 2). Critics on Costume, therefore, must rank as one of his most successful works in crossing the boundary between historical and contemporary genre, and shows the painter-dramatist’s wit at its sharpest, with a note of irony rare in his work.

Horsley was born into the Victorian artistic establishment. His father was William Horsley, the organist and composer, and his great uncle was Sir Augustus Wall Callcott R.A.. His first calling was portraiture but his success at the British Institution in 1837 fixed him on the artistic path he followed consistently until his retirement sixty years later. He was elected A.R.A. in 1855 and a full Academician in 1864. As Rector of the Royal Academy he established in 1870 the Winter Exhibitions of Old Masters which remain such an important feature of the London cultural calendar. Horsley died in 1903 and his posthumous Recollections of a Royal Academician were published in the same year.

¹John Callcott Horsley, Recollections of a Royal Academician, London, 1903, p.343.

²Ibid. p.53.

³Susan P Casteras, The Edmund J. and Suzanne McCormick Collection, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1984, exhibition catalogue no. 16.

⁴“The R.A.” Magazine of Art, 1878, p.102.

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