Description
Hotspur and the Courtier oil on canvas 39 x 53 in. (99 x 134.6 cm.) LITERATURE Athenaeum, no. 1269, 21 February 1852, p. 231. EXHIBITION London, British Institution, 1852, no. 447. Shakespeare in Western Art, 1992-3, no. 70. NOTES Rainford is one of those tantalisingly obscure figures who clearly adhere to an important movement (in his case, Pre-Raphaelitism), but whose actual careers are shrouded in mystery. In 1850 he is recorded living in, or at any rate having a studio in, Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury, and since this was the heart of London's bohemian quarter in the mid-nineteenth century, he was probably in touch with a number of other artists. However, if any references to him are lurking in the literature, they have yet to be spotted. In particular, we lack any information about the contact he surely had with the Pre-Raphaelites, the crucial influence on his style. One reason for his obscurity is his relatively short period of activity and the corresponding rarity of his work. He seems to have exhibited only six pictures, three at the Royal Academy between 1850 and 1864 and three at the British Institution between 1852 and 1864. Three Shakespearean subjects and An Interior (British Institution 1854) were shown in fairly quick succession, and then there was a gap until 1864, when a view in Sicily was exhibited at each of the two venues. This strongly suggests that he gave up painting for travel and other pursuits. Only two examples of Rainford's work have actually been identified, the present picture and Celia telling Rosalind that Orlando is in the Forest, a scene from As You Like It which was exhibited at the RA in 1853. Formerly in the Leverhulme collection and included in Sotheby's Thornton Manor sale, 26-8 June 2001, lot 397, the latter picture is obviously indebted to Millais, and indeed was long attributed to the master himself. The first Lord Leverhulme bought it as such as early as 1902, and it was still sailing under false colours when it appeared in the exhibition to mark the centenary of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood held at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, in 1948. The present picture is another of Rainford's Shakespearean subjects (the third, still missing, was an illustration to Cymbeline ). It is inspired by Hotspur's speech in Henry IV, Part I Act I, Scene 3. The warlord is explaining his failure to send prisoners to the King after suppressing an insurrection in the north, saying that he was annoyed by the effeminate manners of the courtier who came to demand them: My liege, I did deny no prisoners: But I remember, when the fight was done, When I was dry with rage and extreme toil, Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, Came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dress'd, Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin, new reap'd, Show'd like a stubble-land at harvest-home: He was perfumed like a milliner, And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held A pouncet-box, which ever and anon He gave his nose and took't away again;............... With many holiday and lady terms He question'd me; among the rest, demanded My prisoners in your majesty's behalf. I then all smarting with my wounds being cold, To be so pester'd with a popinjay, Out of my grief and my impatience Answer'd neglectingly, I know not what, He should, or he should not. The picture was the first of those that Rainford showed at the British Institution, appearing there in 1852. By now he had moved from Charlotte Street and was living at the more up-market address of 7 Grafton Street, Mayfair. It was now four years since the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had been launched, and the Brothers and their associates were still adhering to the movement's original principles. At the Royal Academy this year Millais was showing Ophelia (Tate Gallery) and A Hugenot (private collection), Holman Hunt The Hireling Shepherd (Manchester), and Madox Brown The Pretty Baa-Lambs (Birmingham) and Jesus washing Peter's Feet (Tate Gallery). Rainford's picture has all the hallmarks of the style, close attention to detail, brilliance of colour, an interest in pyschology, and a certain wilful quaintness. It might almost be a textbook example of what were currently perceived as Pre-Raphaelitism's outrageous eccentricities. It was still only two years since Dickens had launched a vitriolic attack on Millais' Carpenter's Shop (Tate Gallery), and only one since Ruskin, urged on by William Dyce, had come to the beleaguered Brothers' defence in two letters to the Times. Florence Claxton's well-known satire on the Pre-Raphaelite style would not appear until 1860. Du Maurier's parodies in Punch were as late as 1866. Given this climate of opinion, it is hardly surprising that Hotspur and the Courtier came in for its share of obloquy. The art critic on the Athenaeum thought it 'the worst example' of Pre-Raphaelite 'mania' in the British Institution's exhibition. 'There could', he continued, 'be no more effectual comment on the absurdity of the practice...It is a caricature on the extravagant theories of the school, - a censure on those who would elevate it into consideration, - a libel on even the illuminated page of the medieval missal which it affects to imitate'. No doubt the writer would have been astonished to learn that, a hundred and fifty years later, Pre-Raphaelitism is regarded as the most significant development in British art in the mid-nineteenth century. It is interesting to compare Hotspur and the Courtier with the Leverhulme Celia and Rosalind, exhibited at the RA a year later, and to note how much less our picture is indebted to Millais. That stylistic shift, from a fairly generalised Pre-Raphaelite idiom in 1852 to a more specifically Millaisian mode in 1853, is all we know at present about Rainford's artistic development. It is curious that the subject of the encounter between the battle-scarred Hotspur and the foppish courtier was not painted more often by the Victorians, offering as it did such a golden opportunity to explore a clash of temperaments and character. The only other example so far identified is a lost painting by Alfred Elmore exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1851, and it is perhaps no coincidence that Rainford showed his version only a year later. Certainly the Athenaeum linked the two pictures, calling Rainford's 'a travesty of Mr Elmore's able work'. For a wood-engraving after Elmore's picture, see the Art Journal, 1857, p. 113.
