Sir Frederic William Burton R.H.A., R.W.S. 1816-1900
The Widow of Wöhlm
Watercolour on paper, 58.5 x 46 cm.
Signed and dated ‘FWBurton. / MDCCCLIX.’; titled, signed and dated on the remnants of a label attached to the backboard
Exhibited: London, Old Watercolour Society, 1859; London, International Exhibition, 1862, no. 1211; Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, Frederic William Burton: For the Love of Art, 25 October 2017 - 14 January 2018, no. 107
Frederic William Burton was a talented artist with a keen intellect whose oeuvre encompassed miniatures, portraits, landscapes and narrative paintings. The Widow of Wöhlm is a leading work of the artist’s late career reflecting his interest in Northern European art. The watercolour illustrates a widow and her daughter praying at a chapel in Wöhlm, a village near Gößweinstein in the northern Bavarian district of Bamberg. It is drawn from Burton’s German period although dated 1859, the year after he left Germany for London.
Burton first visited Germany in 1842, travelling to Berlin, Naumburg, Dresden, Frankfurt and Cologne. On his next visit in 1844, he travelled to Munich, with introductions to the Bavarian Royal Family through his relative William Burton (1815-1845), aide-de-camp to King Ludwig I. Walter Strickland, registrar and acting director of the National Gallery of Ireland, reported that ‘the artist copied pictures for the King of Bavaria’, while Sir Theodore Martin, a close friend in London added, ‘he restored pictures in the Royal Collection’.(1) Following the deaths, in 1850, of Burton’s elder brothers followed by his mother, he returned to Munich in 1851, spending a year in Nuremberg in 1855, travelling extensively, sketching, increasing his familiarity with art history and old master collections. He moved to London in 1858.
Burton visited the Franconian town of Wöhlm in 1842 and 1851 sketching its medieval streets and interiors. The Widow of Wöhlm is distinguished by a sensitive composition based on these German studies, as well as refined drawing and selective use of colour. Great care is taken over the drawing of the figures and costumes set against a sombre chapel interior. The presence of death is seen in the widow and daughter’s black garments, the mother’s white headdress and pale face emphasising her concern over her daughter’s future. The most striking colour is visible in the child’s pink headdress, her rosy cheeks and decorative blue shawl and apron.
The girl in this painting is like the child in Burton’s Sunday Morning, c. 1860 (private collection) (illustrated), a ‘cabinet picture’ which may have been listed as Child in a Procession ‘Am Schutzpatronnentage; om der Procession’ in the 1860 Old Watercolour Society (OWS, now Royal Watercolour Society) catalogue. The sweet-faced girl in her Franconian costume would appeal to Victorian audiences enthralled by images of beauty and innocence.
The Widow of Wöhlm’s Franconian interior shows the chapel’s carved seating forming a backdrop to the mother and daughter, who kneel in prayer on the stone floor. Beyond the green curtain a woman prays at a decorative altarpiece in a side chapel. Burton employed these Bavarian interiors in many works, including The Peasants of Upper Franconia Waiting for Confession (NGI.2394) (illustrated).
Burton exhibited his Bavarian scenes between 1855 and 1872. In 1855, at the OWS, Franconian Peasantry (Pilgrims) in the Cathedral of Bamberg (No.181) was displayed. In 1862, again at the OWS, Statue of St Stephen, King of Hungary, Bamberg Cathedral (No.211) was on view, and, in the same year, The Widow of Wöhlm (No.1211) was exhibited at the International Exhibition, Kensington London.
Of The Widow of Wöhlm, The Times (5 May 1859) reported: ‘No early master, not Van Eyck, or Martin Schön, Cranach, or Holbein, ever painted a more individual physiognomy more conscientiously than Mr Burton painted this widow.’ Blackwood Magazine (December 1859) added: ‘This picture is of the highest intent not another picture of the year asserts stronger claim to the high dignity of art.’
During Burton’s subsequent painting career in London, he executed significant portraits of Mrs George Smith and the famous image of novelist George Eliot. He also painted important narrative paintings including The Child Miranda, The Knight's Esquire, Cassandra Fedele, and his best-known work, Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs, 1864 (NGI.2358). In 1874, he was appointed director of the National Gallery, London, a post he held with distinction for twenty years. Burton is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin.
Maria Bourke
(1) W.G. Strickland, Dictionary of Irish Artists, 1913; Irish University Press, 1968 p.130-41, and Dictionary of National Biography, 1903, entry on Burton by Theodore Martin, pp.346-8.