Curator Hannah Squire
Wightwick Manor in Wolverhampton is hosting an exhibition devoted to the art and poetry of Elizabeth Siddall, and, shockingly, it’s only the second exhibition to focus exclusively on Siddall. I’ve been writing about Siddall for a while now (my book My Ladys Soul: The Poetry of Elizabeth Siddall will be published in June) and while her face is familiar to many, her work less so, particularly her poetry, though her life exerts a great fascination. This exhibition makes a good attempt at redressing the balance, then: although information about Siddall’s life and Pre-Raphaelite connections is there, the focus is on her as an artist and poet. And Wightwick is the perfect place for it: they hold the second-largest collection of Siddall’s works (the first being the Ashmolean).
2018 is proving to be a year for celebrating women’s achievements, often against all odds, given that it is 100 years since women were able to vote (though this was not on equal terms until 1928). The Manders, who built Wightwick and collected Pre-Raphaelite 
and Arts and Crafts works with which to furnish it, were also keen suffragists, and one room of the house is currently set up for a Suffragette meeting. Siddall’s achievements as an artist, limited by her early death and all too often viewed as dependent on her more famous husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, are appropriately celebrated, then. Wightwick’s collection of 12 works by Siddall are on display in the beautiful Daisy Room, framed for the first time, along with other works no longer in the collection but loaned for the exhibition. This offers a genuinely unique opportunity to consider Siddall’s work as a body (though of course there are many other works), but there is plenty here to give you a feel for her skill as an artist, with her expressive and evocative pencil drawings, 
and two small and beautiful oils, St Agnes’ Eve and The Haunted Wood (above).
I’m delighted to see that the exhibition also includes some of Siddall’s poetry. A few of her poems are beautifully printed and hung on the walls alongside her artworks, and I hope that this will encourage visitors to explore her under-appreciated poetry. It’s a particular pleasure that some lines appear on the walls above the wallpaper, drawing the eye. Her work as an artist and poet, in the complex gendered environment of the nineteenth-century cultural sphere, is outlined in exhibition boards, and visitors are encouraged to see Siddall as a creator of serious art in her own right – something which, despite three decades of serious critical work on her art, and less sustained but still significant work on her poetry, is still overlooked. Both the art and the poetry demonstrates Siddall’s engagement with her cultural milieu: her illustrations for poems and ballads, and the influence of these works and forms on her own writing, bear out her deep consideration – and transformation – of other works of art.
This is a small exhibition, but it is beautiful, and the room with its fireplace and gorgeous wallpaper feels intimate and cosy. It is open from March 1st until December 24th, 2018, so there is no excuse not to go and see it! Siddall is so often remembered as the model for Millais’s Ophelia, and it is encouraging to see this exhibition encouraging us to go ‘beyond Ophelia’.
Forbes studied in France where he learned the ‘plein air’ style, and recorded life there while he studied, and some of these early French paintings are on display here (The Convent, 1882, reminded me in its effects of open air of The Pretty Baa Lambs by Ford Madox Brown). His move to Cornwall in 1884 was primarily a search for subjects, and he certainly found it; his works have atmosphere and local colour in bucketloads, and the appeal to tourists ever since is clear, but there is something more genuine, and less chocolate-box, about his work than simply a postcard painting. He celebrates local festivals, bands playing, people celebrating – but he also shows us the heartbreak and the sheer hard work of life on the coast. A Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach (1885, above) was one of his first Cornish paintings, and one which taught him the challenges of painting outside, as light and people moved and weather made things difficult. This is one of his most famous works, and demonstrates that he is not sentimentalising the topic, I think, though it’s clear he had an eye for the market (and the Royal Academy). Regatta Day, Penzance (c1890, below) shows a cheerier scene which captures both the period and the idiosyncrasies of the local population, but in these two paintings as in the others it’s clear that he is watching the local community as an outsider with privileged access, rather than as part of it, which is perhaps the lot of a painter, maintaining detachment and distance.
painting outside, and also fishing, with other artists, etc, suggesting he was a jolly outdoors sort of chap of the type that the late nineteenth century bred so well (I’ve no idea if this is true, though). There are some more idyllic scenes among those on display: Chadding in Mounts Bay (1902) is a more cheerful, sentimentalised and more Edwardian scene (right), in which the sun shines, the sea is blue and the children are rosy-cheeked and cheerful(ish). Gala Day (1907) is slightly less so, because despite its emphasis on the local and the patriotic, there are figures on the fringes – an elderly woman straightening a child’s sleeve, women chatting and pointing – which makes the work feel real, almost photographic in composition if not in style.
The colours of the paintings are often the colours of the sea; apart from some interiors, blues and greys (glas is the Cornish word for whatever colour the sea is) predominate, some muted and some vivid, but usually with a touch of brightness somewhere in the painting. The exhibition is carefully hung to emphasise this, I think; gallery 3 is darker, with many indoor or night paintings. The light effects in darkness here are masterly, seen in Lighting Up Time (1902), for example (left). The Steel Workers (1915) depicts a much more modern industry and seems uncharacteristic of his previous topics, though logically it’s another relevant industry to depict, and the painting demonstrates similar techniques with spots of light highlighting different parts of the painting. The Letter (1898, below) provides a major contrast, though: this is high Victorian melodrama, featuring dramatic lighting for a scene in which a presumably tragic letter has arrived, and the mother of the family opens it in the doorway watched by her family, the postman and, for full sentimental effect, the dog.
I am a fairly regular visitor to 
the tone of the house). The Smoking Room has a wonderful Arts and Crafts chimney piece, dated 1883, and other small details such as Minton tiles demonstrate the incorporation of and enthusiasm for this late-Victorian aesthetic. As the guidebook notes, much of the house’s interior was influenced by Charles Eastlake, an architect trained by Philip Hardwick and a strong advocate for Morris’s medieval style. Eastlake’s book A History of the Gothic Revival (1872) has clear implications for Lanhydrock’s furnishings, and it is fascinating to see how such manuals of style influenced the creation of rooms such as those found here.
Lord Robartes or his wife, had a particular interest in the style of painting produced by the Pre-Raphaelites. On the whole the paintings don’t include the big names of the PRB; there are no Rossettis or Burne-Joneses here, but the aesthetic is unmistakeable. There are a number of works which are untitled and for whom the artist and date are unknown, which in their colour and subject matter suggest a Pre-Raphaelite influence, and others where it is clearer. The Madonna with Attendant Angels (1901) by John Melhuish Strudwick is one of the best examples of this; Strudwick had worked as an assistant to Burne-Jones and Spencer Stanhope, and the influence of this is very clear. The painting is striking if somewhat overblown, known also as Virgin and Child, with glowing gold leaf halo; it was bought for the house by Michael Trinick, the Trust’s regional director, who perhaps had himself a penchant for Pre-Raphaelitism. Another, more obscure example, is A Girl with a Violin (1884-1896) by Henry Harewood Robinson, a St Ives based artist whose other interest was music. A young woman with long red hair in a green medieval style dress contemplatively plays a violin, surrounded by lilies; though little seems to be known of the artist the clearly implies an emulation of Pre-Raphaelite subject matter and use of 
colour; the painting was given to the family by the artist’s widow. Similarly, a head of Pan (1889) by the unknown C E Lawrance recalls Simeon Solomon’s poised and beautiful heads of young men; this appears to have been in the Robartes collection.
but whose work again appears influenced by the PRB; he was a friend of Morris and Burne-Jones, it seems, and the jewel colours of his painting, the hyper-real style coupled with the medievalised aesthetic demonstrate their influence. This, however, is one of the paintings which was bought by the National Trust in the 1970s rather than originating with the family.
A while ago now, we went to see 
journey into Moominland. You begin in a tent, where the Moomins camp out, and there is a tour guide (who refers to the children as ‘My young adventurers’) and also a voice-over with more discussion of the author, Tove Jansson’s life, beautifully done by Sandi Toksvig. You travel through magic forests with “real” snow on the ground, tropical gardens with sand, haze and plants, where the Hemulen collects his botanical samples, the boathouse (which doubles up as Jansson’s studio), and many other scenes, and end up in Moominhouse, where the Moomins are asleep, snoring, in the next room. There’s two interlinking narratives here; the guide presents one suitable for children, and while the children are 
exploring there is also the voiceover which gives more information for adults. I didn’t know much about Jansson’s life but it was fascinating: how she developed the characters of the Moomin family and their friends, how she worked contemporary events during WW2 into her stories, etc. There are not just scenes, of course, but also many, many original drawings by Jansson, and they really are wonderful; the detail (and, often, menace) in them really makes them works of art in their own right. They are in protective cases that appear as suitcases, set in walls, or otherwise presented so that they are at child level but safe from small fingers! It’s an innovative and informative way of exhibiting Jansson’s work which draws on her life and her work, and has equal appeal to adults and children. It was meant to close in April but has been extended until August, giving more people a chance to see it.
It is surprising that I’ve never been to Kelmscott Manor before, but this week I went with a group from the Birmingham Midland Institute. I gave a lecture about William Morris while we were travelling, so I spent the preceding week deeply immersed in Morris’s life and work, and it has increased my passion for him. Visiting Kelmscott consequently felt like something of a pilgrimage. The Manor has an interesting history anyway, dating from 1600, and Morris felt that it was “the loveliest haunt of ancient peace”, which seemed to be rooted in the soil and the people who had lived there. The image of Kelmscott is particularly famous for its appearance as the frontispiece for Morris’s utopian novel News from Nowhere, and it was wonderful to see it in the stone, as it were, and to feel the deep peace which the place exudes.
expect, but in a distinctive style (I’ve now discovered why my parents painted all their furniture dark green) with natural, clear colours. Many of the fabrics and objects there were brought there after his death, but it’s wonderful to see his bed, with the poem he wrote for it embroidered by Jane around it, which begins:
not only for equality but for dignity and respect for all, and that comes in a very Marxist form in News from Nowhere, where all receive the same pay and love their work. The guiding principal of ‘The Firm’ which Morris set up to produce useful and beautiful household objects was that art should be handmade, using the skill of the craftspeople, and that all should have access to it. Of course these things may seem improbable or even impossible, and Morris is nothing if not an idealist, but there is something incredibly appealing about his beautiful, medievalized utopia in which all can share in the beauty of life through art, nature and love. The environment was an important part of this, too: how we connect to what is around us – buildings, places, the natural world – indicates who were are, and it is very clear what he thought of the pollution and destruction of the natural environment in the nineteenth century:
rld and there will be ecological payback, and that capitalism in the form of industrialised society is the main driver of climate destruction are echoed vividly in Klein’s arguments. Wandering the beautiful gardens at Kelmscott, and walking beside the Thames where Rossetti and Morris wandered, one can see why he felt so strongly about this, leaving behind the polluted rivers and skies of London.
It’s sad when one only really hears about somewhere when it might be lost; I’ve never read so much in the press about the 
he gallery clearly engages thoroughly with the community, including family events, children’s holiday activities, an art library and a range of exhibitions. I spent most of the time there looking at the permanent collection, which is arranged thematically, including ‘Trees’, ‘Landscape and Townscape’, ‘Animals and Birds’ and ‘Models and Muses’. Given the diversity of the collection – though most of it falls within a relatively narrow timeframe, from around the turn of the century to the present – this is a clear and appealing approach which creates some inspired juxtapositions. The range of artists is impressive; I was struck by several Pissarros, and particularly taken with a Picasso drawing which, oddly, reminded me of Elizabeth Siddall’s work (left – excuse the crooked photo!)
