Gainsborough Paintings and Drawings by John HayesReview by: Ellis WaterhouseThe Art Bulletin, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Sep., 1976), pp. 459-460Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3049549 .

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K. A. CITROEN, Amsterdam Silversmiths and Their Marks (North-Holland Studies in Silver, I), Oxford, North-Holland Publishing Company; New York, American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., 1975. Pp. 254; 1253 figs. $86.50

K. A. Citroen's book, a labor of love, has been eagerly awaited by students and collectors of Dutch silver. A long period has passed since 1912, when E. Voet published his Merken van Am- sterdamse Goud-en Zilversmeden. In compiling this volume, Citroen had to face almost insurmountable difficulties. Only one of sixteen existing copper plates with proofs of Amsterdam marks survives in the Amsterdam Historical Museum, the others having been destroyed in 1798 when the city corporations were dissolved. Nevertheless, Citroen persevered, discovering additional documentary evidence in depositories such as the General Public Record Office in The Hague and the Dutch Gold and Silver Museum in Utrecht. Citroen's patient pursuits were well rewarded, for he has been able to trace the identity of most Amsterdam silversmiths of the period be- tween 1550 and 1800, masters hitherto known only by their initials.

Few masters were established in Amsterdam before 1650. As their tax returns show, the silversmiths were well-to-do citizens, bearing arms and owning property. The eventual increase in numbers occurred mainly after 1650 and 1685 from two waves of immigrants, the first of German silversmiths unable to find work at home in the chaos following the Thirty Years' War and the second of French Huguenot Masters after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The prosperity of Amsterdam allowed them to make a good living; their numbers increased steadily until an average of three hundred freemen was reached between 1660 and 1800. The full set of hall- marks was legally enforced, guaranteeing the consistently high- grade alloy of the silver the masters used. At the same time this maintenance of high standards encouraged the melting down of domestic plate for coinage in times of war or other financial difficulties, a practice that destroyed the once abundant examples of superb craftmanship.

The full set of marks includes those of the town, a date letter that was changed every December 1 (St. Eligius's day), the country lion, and the maker's mark, all of which were struck by the Warden who held the position of Assay Master. The maker's mark does not necessarily indicate his authorship because the mark could also be used by the journeymen or apprentices active in his work- shop. A master's admission to the Corporation depended upon his submission of a gold jewel with enamel and precious stones, an engraved signet ring, and a piece of embossed silver. The models and designs for these were selected by the Wardens who judged the applicants. This practice continued to the end of the 18th cen- tury when the prospective master himself could choose the models for his "masterpieces." This custom explains why the term goldsmith was initially applied to all masters and why that of silversmith does not appear in the records until after 1630, the period when specialization took over. Thereafter, some masters would make flat- ware, others furnished hollow-ware, particularly services for choco- late, tea, and coffee. Still other masters would cast large works

such as candlesticks, ewers and basins, toilet sets, trays, and liturgical plate. In addition, the special branch of so-called small- workers made toys, snuff-boxes, handles for flatware, and other items; some of which promoted a lucrative export business.

Citroen reproduces well over one thousand marks, enlarged to twice actual size. The book is easy to use, both for the Dutch and the English-speaking reader. The introduction is in English, whereas the biographical entries are in Dutch; exceptions are the English translations of the descriptions of signs of which some makers' marks are composed. Marks with initials are given in alphabetical order; marks with symbols are divided into four categories: human, ani- mals, plants, and objects. Exceedingly useful are the Dutch- English Glossary of technical terms and the impressive index of makers' names, most of which had remained completely unknown throughout the past centuries. Finally Citroen supplies a fold-out list of the changing town mark of Amsterdam, the country lions, and the cycles of date letters. Because Citroen refrained from illustrating any of the plate these masters produced, he could keep the book slim and easy to handle, something distinctly advantageous for a reference book. Citroen's volume is the first in a series called North-Holland Studies in Silver, a series that promises well after these auspicious beginnings. Both author and publisher are to be congratu- lated on having presented us with this concise volume that adds so considerably, to our knowledge of Amsterdam silversmiths.

YVONNE HACKENBROCH

Metropolitan Museum of Art

BOOK REVIEWS 459

range of genre painters from various artistic centers whose work reflects Dou's. Among the artists Robinson treats are Frans van Mieris the Elder, Pieter van Slingelhandt, Caspar Netscher, Jan Verkolje, Quirin Brekelankam, and Godfried Schalcken. Both these discussions will be particularly useful for further studies on the nature of Dutch genre painting of the late 17th century.

Despite its limitations, Robinson's book serves an important function in bringing together a vast amount of information on Metsu's artistic activity. One regrets, however, that in a book that will undoubtedly serve as the standard monograph and refer- ence work on the artist, information is not more easily accessible to the reader.

ARTHUR K. WHEELOCK, JR. National Gallery of Art,

University of Maryland

JOHN HAYES, Gainsborough Paintings and Drawings, London, Phaidon, 1975. Pp. 232, 186 ills. $30

The Phaidon series to which this book belongs is intended to be popular rather than learned, and this purpose is admirably fulfilled. The text is composed of two succinct discourses. "Gainsborough's personality and methods of work" (thirteen pages) is very well put together, largely from contemporary evidence; "Gainsborough's art" (seventeen pages) is essentially an introduction to the plates, which are followed by a series of notes on each work illustrated. There are sixteen color plates (five of them excellent new details), of which-as too often happens-only those from the London Na- tional Gallery are poor. The notes have been allowed to follow a strictly chronological sequence, but the illustrations have been moved around in the interests of book-making, only occasionally with felicitous effect. This is a pity because the actual sequence of illustrations, which includes twenty-four drawings, forms the most comprehensive illustration of the whole of Gainsborough's art to be found anywhere. They are very well chosen-only about three of the paintings are wholly new-and the comparative illustrations of the works of other painters, Hayman, Devis, Van Dyck, Rubens, etc., are always to the point.

The most valuable and original part of the book is in the notes. These are perceptive and informal, often concerned with Gainsborough's methods of work, and they are very helpful to an understanding of the artist's development and intentions. There is an occasional "Paulsonism" in which I do not believe- such as in note 12 that the stooks of corn in the background of Mr. and Mrs. Andrews are a "traditional symbol of fertility." (In the same note the reference to a group portrait of the wife's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Carter, should be deleted, as the late owner assured me that it was a myth of Armstrong's). I wonder also if, as early as 1757, Gainsborough can have seen pastels by La Tour and Perronneau in sufficient number to influence his style. It would be desirable to be clear about the date of Perronneau's visit to England, which was probably in 1761.

The dating of the landscapes is better established than has been done before; Hayes's work on the landscape drawings has enabled him to fix a reasonably convincing sequence. It is an interesting point that the Toledo landscape (n. 62) was one of the pictures, with a Barret and a Wilson designed by Lord Shelburne, "to lay the foundation of a school of British landscapes."

Some of the new detail photographs are excellent, but the

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460 THE ART BULLETIN

quality of the blockmaking is sometimes below standard (notably pls. 58, 125, 153, and 166, for which excellent photographs exist). Nevertheless the book achieves very well its purpose of illustrating the full range of Gainsborough's work in all mediums. The only information that is out of date is that Lady Eardley (pl. 85) is in the Stockholm Gallery and that Giovanna Bacelli (pl. 128) has, since the book was published, been acquired for the Tate.

ELLIS WATERHOUSE

Oxford, England

TERENCE DAVIS, The Gothick Taste, Newton Abbot and London, David & Charles, 1974. Pp. 168, 130 ills. ?12

The architectural revival of Gothic styles in England during the 18th and early 19th centuries is, from a number of points of view, most important in the development of modern architecture. The Gothic Revival explored the possibilities of visual expression out- side rigid formal canons and also provided an emotional foundation for the later efflorescence of Romanticism. In addition, the Gothic- together with Palladian, Greek, Norman, Roman, and other revivals-provided architects a theoretical base for incorporating a range of meanings and associations into their formal compositions.

Davis has applied himself primarily to the visual expression, and in part to the emotional foundation, of Gothic Revival. In a field in which Charles L. Eastlake's History of the Gothic Revival (1872), Kenneth Clark's Gothic Revival (1928), and J. Mordaunt Crook's introduction to the reprint of Eastlake (1970) are our only guides, another study is long overdue. Although Davis himself provides very little information that has not already been published, his work is of some value. The book has an elegant layout; he has designed his study as a "visual compendium" of the architecture of the period, supplying superb illustrations, contemporary views and prints as well as modem photographs, including a number by the late master of architectural photography, Edwin Smith. Davis has written a somewhat authoritative text that describes the historical develop- ment: the text is clear and readable, even outright enjoyable. Where physical quality is concerned, Davis's book is a tribute to the many elegant architectural publications of the period of which he writes.

The text treats various architectural essays in Gothic style made in the period from Wren to Pugin, although Davis chooses to emphasize the "Rococo phase," or mid-18th century. Davis makes his greatest contributions in regard to this phase, emphasizing material (furniture, churches, and the works of Sanderson Miller, for example) not before readily available in illustration. But emphasis on the visual, in itself entirely respectable, has led Davis into a number of misconceptions. One of the more glaring, if ultimately rather harmless, is the notion that the era from Wren to Pugin may be clearly distinguished under the term "Gothick Revival." In fact "Gothick" is only an alternate form of "Gothic"; both were in common and interchangeable use since the 17th century to refer either to actual medieval works or to modern essays in that style. Even people in the 18th century did not use "Revival" to refer to the architecture they were erecting. Davis's use of the term probably derives from its codification in Howard Colvin's article, "Gothic Survival and Gothick Revival" (1948), but Colvin used it simply as a verbal aid to determine when and how medieval stonemasons' techniques finally became extinct. The perpetuation of the notion of a "Gothick Revival" style in Davis's text is yet mitigated by his title, which uses a term appropriate to the period ("Gothick Taste").

A more serious problem of his visual approach is that he never carefully discriminates the phases within the chosen period: their definitions vary as one moves from place to place in the book. Perhaps the clearest exposition is on p. 45, where one may discern four phases: at mid-century the style had "emerged from the intellectualism of neo-Gothic and was passing through the decora- tive, associational Kent-Langley phase towards Walpole's isolated archaeological contributions, which would later be rejected in favour of the fanatical school of structural honesty [i.e., the mid-19th century?]." Yet even this statement remains confusing, for

somewhere in between the last two phases is evidently a "pic- turesque" phase, one to which, indeed, he devotes most of the final chapter. Clearly, to define these phases Davis has used terms that apply to a much broader intellectual background, e.g., "asso- ciational" and "archaeological." Although he has done some justice to this background, which is necessary to an understanding of the architecture, still his exposition is insufficient, both in sub- stance and as an accounting for the visual character of any individual phase.

If Davis sets the limits of the period essentially from Wren to Pugin, it would seem that Wren and Hawksmoor are included solely because of Davis's desire for a "visual compendium," for Wren's London and Oxford Gothic, like Hawksmoor's towers at West- minster Abbey, are really less revivals than attempts at sympathetic restoration. Restoration and completion of Gothic structures were important issues in contemporary France and Italy; Wren and Hawksmoor were nevertheless parochial in their efforts toward similar ends, ends that embodied little of the attitude of conscious revivalism, something that was embraced only by Vanbrugh and his successors. Davis characterizes Wren's work through contrast with works of architects of the following century: "In almost direct con- trast the eighteenth century was to squeeze every drop of sentiment out of its feeling for the past" (p. 24). But one wonders whether this use of sentiment as a criterion says more about Wren's sensibility or about that of the 18th century, especially in the light of Victor Fiirst's finding Wren such a cool, rational, and cal- culating architect in all of his work. Vanbrugh, on the other hand, makes a much more proper starting point for a study of the beginnings of revivalism in the 18th and early 19th centuries, for his work on the medievalizing battlements at Castle Howard and his call in 1709 for the preservation of Woodstock Manor because of its historical associations involved a view of medieval architecture that was consciously historicized. Davis does not neglect certain historicized aspects of Vanbrugh's work but unfortunately fails to differentiate him sufficiently from the Wren-Hawksmoor context or to show him in his proper relation to the 18th century.

At the other end, Davis notes (p. 152) that the Houses of Parliament are "beyond the scope" of the essay, presumably referring to the wealth of available historical documentation of little visual interest. But this omission renders poor justice to an exposition of Gothic Revival, because one of the funda- mental reasons for the existence of the Gothic Revival from Vanbrugh onwards, association, reaches its culmination in the Houses. Contemporary recognition of this fact was wide: the very Select Committee that narrowed the choice of styles to Elizabethan and Gothic included Gothic, at least in part, due to its associa- tions: "The peculiar charm of Gothic architecture is in its asso- ciations; these are delightful because they are historical, patriotic, local and intimately blended with early reminiscences."' Davis closes the period with Pugin, the man who changed the prevailing notion of Gothic as an architecture looking no further than style and association to one embodying morality and religion. Davis does little to elucidate this fundamentally different way in which Pugin wanted his architecture to be experienced; our under- standing of that architecture suffers correspondingly.

Even the "Rococo phase," the avowed centerpiece of this work, is rather loosely defined; nor does Davis provide sufficient illustra- tion of English Rococo to permit the reader to appreciate the full character of Gothic Rococo. Davis makes few direct connec- tions between Rococo and the contemporaneous Gothic Revival and takes less notice of what the Rococo might have learned from the Gothic at, for example, Claydon House.

Thus, in determining the extent and defining specific phases of the material he wishes to cover, Davis is torn between his primary objec- tive of a "visual compendium" and a need to consider the intellectual background as a means of organizing that compendium. The result, as

SP. B. Stanton, "Pugin: Principles of Design versus Revivalism," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, xmii, 1954, 22.

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