Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- VOLUME I
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- The principles of this edition
- Family tree
- General introduction
- 1 Memoir by Alice Street, including diaries and letters to 1855
- 2 Letters and diaries 1855
- 3 Letters and diaries 1856
- 4 Letters and diaries 1857
- 5 Letters and diaries 1858
- 6 Letters and diaries 1859
- 7 Letters and diaries 1860
- 8 Letters and diaries 1861
- 9 Epilogue: 1862 onwards
- VOLUME II
- 10 Essays by Alice Street
- 11 The reviews
- G. P. Boyce’s Diaries 1848–1875
- APPENDICES
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Letters and diaries 1856
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- VOLUME I
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- The principles of this edition
- Family tree
- General introduction
- 1 Memoir by Alice Street, including diaries and letters to 1855
- 2 Letters and diaries 1855
- 3 Letters and diaries 1856
- 4 Letters and diaries 1857
- 5 Letters and diaries 1858
- 6 Letters and diaries 1859
- 7 Letters and diaries 1860
- 8 Letters and diaries 1861
- 9 Epilogue: 1862 onwards
- VOLUME II
- 10 Essays by Alice Street
- 11 The reviews
- G. P. Boyce’s Diaries 1848–1875
- APPENDICES
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
AT the end of the previous year, Joanna had been launched in the Saturday Review as an art critic. Her two articles on ‘Some of the French Pictures at the Paris Exposition’ excited intense interest and speculation. And though she was writing anonymously (her youth and gender were not initially known, though her cover was blown soon enough when the editor John D. Cook confided her identity to John Ruskin), her voice was sufficiently original and her opinions strongly enough expressed to attract attention. Spencer Hall, the librarian at the Athenaeum and a close friend of the family, was among the first to write to her following her debut: his letter, dated New Year's Day 1856, is characteristically elaborate, but his judgment is shrewd. Meanwhile, from Cook's point of view, his faith in his young protégée had been amply rewarded, and he proceeded to work on her to produce articles on the Royal Academy Exhibitions later in the year.
Her studies under Couture continued and her portrait of her Parisian landlady, Mme Héreau, was later accepted for the R.A. But it was becoming clear that Couture's influence on her work was not entirely benign. In one of her last extended commentaries, surviving in manuscript, Alice Street had the following to say about the influence of Couture on her mother's work.
It was most unfortunate that my Mother, whilst under the tuition of Couture should have felt it imperative, for the reasons which we gather from her letters, to follow his ill-judged method. Not only did this go against the grain with her, but it proved most disastrous to the two pictures – Madame Héreau and Rowena – painted according to Couture's precepts. The layer of bitumen between the grounding and the final coat (the process recommended by him), though giving at the time of painting a pleasant quality to the finished work, soon wrought havoc on the picture. Bitumen does not dry and has the dangerous effect of ultimately contracting the superimposed paint into patches, leaving brown bituminous cracks in between. Even in the early stages, the bitumen, in its effort to come to the surface, seems to have had the effect of giving a general darkness to the pictures on which it had been used.
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- Information
- The Boyce Papers , pp. 333 - 510Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2019