William John Wainwright (1855-1931)
Youth in Medieval Costume, c1883
Signed: W.J. Wainwright
Medium Watercolour on Paper
252 x 171mm
William John Wainwright’s pictures might suggest a competent, if parochial painter, alert to the late Victorian demand for sentimental scenes. But his early years reveal an ambitious figure, whose time in Antwerp, Paris and later Newlyn, gave him opportunites to observe and influence artistic developments of his time. ‘The Singers’, Wainwright’s symbolist inspired work of 1883, portraying adolescents in medieval costume, would upset a critic in the Spectator.
The drawing shows very plainly the marks of foreign teaching, and has a good deal of somewhat unpleasant ability which marks much of the French works, but it is well and strongly drawn, is full of power, and has a definite style and meaning in its painting, in fact it is by a man who knows his business, and is neither namby-pamby nor trivial. Whether it is insolent is another question
(Spectator 26 May 1883).
Nevertheless, the painting was bought by James Staats Forbes, the uncle of Stanhope-Forbes, thus bringing Wainwright into contact with the figure that later became the father of the Newlyn School.
“Study of Job” for Antwerp Concours, 1880 - William John Wainwright (Untraced)
Antwerp & Verlat
“As far as painting goes I have received more knowledge from Mr. Verlat than I ever did in my life before…”
In late 1879 Wainwright entered the Antwerp Academy and quickly became a favourite of the director Charles Verlat, who introduced him to an aging Eugene Isabey (1803-1886), the French romantic painter that had visited England with Bonington and Delacroix in 1825.
Though Wainwright was given a spacious studio away from less talented classmates, he still described how they “crowd round my work” as well as a “wish to go somewhere where the conceit will be taken out of me by better work than my own.”
Such sentiments, as well as the downgrading of his entry to the ‘Concours’ in 1880, a competition, which by all accounts he should have won, likely account for his decision to leave for Paris before finishing the year.
The snub caused an open split with Verlat and his employers, but Wainwright left Antwerp furnished with the artistic traditions of northern Europe and indebted to Verlat for his “insistence upon technical competence.” He also took to heart his generous advice to stick with watercolours, as he would be better off being “first class in that than second in oil painting.”
My Water Colour drawing has gained second place in the Competition at the Antwerp Academy. If I had done it in oil I should have had the gold medal, as it is considered by far the best drawing this year...I am considered to have won it. It was the first water-colour ever painted for the Concours, and showed what could be done.
Letter to the Artist’s Mother, 1880
Paris & Newlyn
Wainwright arrived in Paris late in 1880, taking a studio near the Académie Colarossi and settling into a daily routine of 10 hour days. A holiday at this time stands not simply as a significant moment in Wainwright’s career, but also for the direction of British art in the early twentieth century. His visit to the then largely-unknown fishing village of Newlyn in 1881 appears to have been a happy one, for Wainwright recommended it to his friend Stanhope-Forbes, who arrived in 1884 and remained for the rest of his life.
Nevertheless Wainwright left Cornwall soon after and it is likely for this reason that his seminal place in the Newlyn School has been forgotten. Forbes regarded Wainwright as “a better man than Langley even”, but Newlyn held less sway over him, for its charms were in the outdoors: the rugged coast, the quiet serenity of a remote setting. Wainwright painted the ‘great indoors’, calling on a imagination informed by history and literature, as well as a Catholic taste for costume and ceremony.
Wainwright’s restlessness is a possible reason for his decline. As is his decision to paint almost exclusively in watercolour, the less permanent medium shunned by the Royal Academy in London and Antwerp, and generally seen as a waypoint on the road to producing finished oils.
Artists in Newlyn, c1884: Standing (3rd from left): Frank Bramley (studied Antwerp 1879-1882)
Seated (left to right): William John Wainwright; Edwin Harris (studied Antwerp c1880-1881); Stanhope Forbes.
The brotherhood of the palette is a strong bond, and should unite us very closely. There are few painters, I think, who will not have to confess that the society they take most pleasure in is that of their brother artists, for it is a charming and fascinating country, this little Bohemia of ours, in which we are privileged to dwell. Not very rich, perhaps, or influential, but its inhabitants are happy, simple, and contented. You must not envy us our kingdom, nor grudge us our domain.
Address to the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society of Falmouth
Alexander Stanhope Forbes (1857-1947)