Art and Action: Making Change in Victorian Britain

This winter, Watts Gallery Artists Village presents Art in Action, Making Change in Victorian Britain. Co-curated by Dr Chloe Ward, this exhibition explores how art was used as a vehicle of social change from the 1840s through to the end of the 19th century. This exhibition is the first to explore why the Victorians believed art was a critical tool of social change. In the middle of the 19th century in Britain, two important ideas developed simultaneously. The first was that society had some very serious problems that were growing worse as a result of industrialization. Dire poverty, dangerous factory conditions, and the destruction of nature were all becoming increasingly visible. The second idea that developed at the same time was that all areas of life, everything from poetry to mathematics, should contribute to the general good and should improve people's lives. If they were used the right way, literature or music, for instance, could help to solve the very problems people were seeing in British society. This exhibition's displays show how this belief applied to the visual arts. Art forms like painting, print, or ceramics were thought to offer ways to fix problems in society, to make people's lives better, and to bring about the changes in politics that would allow these transformations to take place. This report on child labor in the mines became famous because readers were scandalized by its illustrations. The images showed what working in the mines looked like, something that was hard to imagine for people who had never been down a dark, narrow mineshaft. In doing so, they revealed just how dangerous the mines were, especially for the children who worked there, some of whom were as young as four. The thing that shocked readers most was that so many of the workers in the mines, of both genders, were partially or completely naked. The mines were hot and dirty, and going without clothes made this work easier. But many of the middle-class readers of the report considered this practice very upsetting and degrading to its workers. Middle-class women, in particular, started to discuss these shocking illustrations with one another, wondering what they could do to help the miners forced to work in these conditions. Before long, a movement began to develop, and women who objected to child labor in the mines started writing letters to newspapers and to politicians. Soon, the public outcry caused by the illustrations became so loud that the issue of the mines was debated in parliament. Only a few months after this report was published, new laws were enacted that successfully ended child labor for the very youngest children, and prohibited women from working in the mines altogether. The images published in this report directly caused political change, convincing Victorians that art was a powerful source of action. In the mid-19th century, as public inquiries and news reports began to actively investigate social issues, authors and artists began to represent poverty more vividly than ever before. Among the early Victorian painters who first started to represent society's most pressing problems was the young George Frederick Watts. Painted in the late 1840s, Watts did not exhibit these paintings as a group until over 30 years later. Exhibited altogether at London's Grosvenor Gallery in 1881, critics still recognised the continued relevance of the images. While one reviewer suggested that the paintings articulated the great facts of the modern problem, another criticised the subject matter of works like Found Drowned, remarking, you come too close to home sir to our consciences to be agreeable. By the late 19th century, scenes of everyday urban life had begun to disrupt conventional gallery displays of historical, biblical and mythological paintings. In bringing social issues to the public's attention, artists aimed to arouse support from audiences who had both the influence and the financial means to take action. They used a variety of stylistic strategies to represent inequality, from idealised depictions of suffering, like Thomas Kennington's The Pinch of Poverty, to harrowing scenes of deprivation, like Sir Luke Fylde's Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward. This painting was inspired by undercover investigations that studied poverty, which became very popular in the middle of the 19th century. In 1866, the journalist James Greenwood pretended he was a vagabond in order to spend a night in a casual ward or a night shelter for people without a home. He wrote about the terrible conditions he found there in a famous series of articles. When critics saw this painting showing people waiting for admission to the same type of night shelter, they immediately associated it with Greenwood's investigation. One reviewer wrote that anyone who knew Greenwood's work would immediately understand the painting. Another wrote that the conditions painted here were even worse than those Greenwood described because this painting showed people waiting for admission to the casual ward outside in the snow. At least Greenwood got in. Some of these people, in contrast, might not. Fylde's, the artist of this painting, was very familiar with scenes of people waiting for admission to night shelters because he lived next door to a police station where people would have queued each night for tickets to the nearby casual ward. When this painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874, a barrier had to be placed in front of it to prevent people from getting too close. They wanted to get a good look at each of the characters Fylde's had painted, which showed the variety of different types of people who sought shelter in a casual ward. At the center back, there's a family. The woman weeps into a handkerchief while the man tenderly cradles their barefoot daughter. Next to them is a drunkard in a top hat. At the front, the woman in black may be a widow with no way to support her young child and the infant in her arms. In ancient Greek mythology, the Minotaur was a monster who was half-man and half-bull. He lived in a labyrinth on the Greek island of Crete, and every nine years he demanded a sacrifice of seven youths and seven maidens from Athens. Young Athenians drew lots, and whoever lost was put on a boat, sailed to Crete, and released into the labyrinth where they were never able to find their way out again. Before long, the Minotaur would devour them. In this black-and-white chalk drawing, Watts portrays the monster looking out to sea from his labyrinth, awaiting the ship that brings his sacrificial victims. In his hand, he crushes an innocent bird with his powerful fist. The muscles in his arm throb and bulge, and although we know he's a monster, there's something about that arm that is so human, so familiar. Perhaps Watts was inviting us to identify with the monster, and maybe by doing so, recognize the things that are monstrous in ourselves. The idea that humans can be monstrous was certainly the inspiration for this work. Watts was responding to a series of articles about an undercover investigation into child prostitution in London. The articles described the men who hired child prostitutes as Minotaurs, monsters who soon destroyed their young victims. First, Watts made a painting, and then this drawing as his response to the scandal. With his very human portrayal of the Minotaur, Watts tries to convince us that monsters are not so far from men. If we aren't careful to behave morally, any of us is capable of cruelty and evil. In 1881, Samuel and Henrietta Barnett staged an art exhibition in the local schoolhouse in Whitechapel, East London. It was the first of what became 20 annual exhibitions before they opened a permanent gallery, now known as the Whitechapel Art Gallery. In the 19th century, Whitechapel was considered to be the very worst slum in London, so it was an unusual place to hold an exhibition. At the time, most art galleries were located in West London, but this was a journey too time-consuming and too expensive for many of the people in East London to make. Samuel Barnett, who was the vicar of Whitechapel, believed that if his parishioners couldn't travel to see art, he could bring art to them. He contacted the country's most famous artists, like G.F. Watts, as well as important art collectors, to see if they had paintings they could loan to his exhibition. Many Victorians believed that poverty was caused by flaws in people's characters. The Barnetts, however, disagreed. Instead, they believed that poverty was a result of social failings, bad schools, very few training opportunities for workers, poor health care, and a lack of access to culture. These were the things they believed caused and perpetuated poverty. The exhibitions the Barnetts staged in Whitechapel were just one small way they tried to end this inequality. In 1884, a group of supporters commissioned a large mosaic to be installed on the exterior of the Barnetts' church, St Jude's. The mosaic recreated G.F. Watts' oil painting, Time, Death, and Judgment, which the artist had loaned to the first Whitechapel exhibition and which is currently on display in our historic galleries. According to Samuel Barnett, it was this painting that most touched his parishioners. Looking closely at this watercolour, made by Watts' assistant Cecil Schott, you can see how this recently conserved cartoon was used as a study for the mosaic's design. St Jude's church was demolished in the 1920s, but the mosaic was safely removed. Today, it hangs in St Giles-in-the-Fields near Tottenham Court Road. The concluding sections of the exhibition explore how artists saw creative practice as a means to stimulate social change. Opposing the dehumanising effects of industrialised labour, many artists sought to revive traditional craft practices which they feared would otherwise be lost. Artists like William Morris and Mary Watts argued that craft production would provide improved working conditions, support local economies, and create higher quality, more beautiful objects. This ethos underpinned the arts and crafts movement. Having previously taught clay modelling in Whitechapel, Mary Watts set up three weekly classes for the villagers of Compton. Based in the drawing room of her Surrey home, Nimless Lease, participants created decorative terracotta tiles for the exterior of Compton Cemetery Chapel. Building on the success of this enterprise, Mary Watts established the Compton Pottery, or Potters Arts Guild. She described that her aim was to keep the people in their village homes and to give them profitable and beautiful work. This initiative provided employment and a creative outlet for the local community for over 50 years. Striving to expand public access to art beyond Britain's urban centres, Mary and her husband G.F. Watts founded the Watts Picture Gallery. Opened on the 1st April 1904, today the building remains a testament to the couple's united belief in the value of art. G.F. Watts described how art played a key role in the world's well-being that is more than ever valuable and even necessary in an age like the present. A poignant sentiment that continues to resonate today.