Edward Armitage
Encyclopedia
Edward Armitage was an English
Victorian era
painter whose work focussed on historical, classical and biblical subjects.
to a family of wealthy Yorkshire
industrialists, the eldest of seven sons of James Armitage (1793–1872) and Anne Elizabeth Armitage née Rhodes (1788–1833), of Farnley Hall
, just south of Leeds
, Yorkshire
. His great-grandfather James (1730–1803) bought Farnley Hall from Sir Thomas Danby in 1799 and in 1844 four Armitage brothers, including his father James, founded the Farnley Ironworks, utilising the coal, iron and fireclay on their estate. His brother Thomas Rhodes Armitage
(1824–1890) founded the Royal National Institute of the Blind
.
Armitage was the uncle of Robert Armitage (MP), the great-uncle of Robert Selby Armitage
, and first cousin twice removed of Edward Leathley Armitage
.
in October 1837. He studied under the history painter, Paul Delaroche, who at that time was at the height of his fame. Armitage was one of four students selected to assist Delaroche with the fresco
Hemicycle in the amphitheatre of the Palais des Beaux-Arts, when he reputedly modelled for the head of Masaccio
. Whilst still in Paris, he exhibited Prometheus Bound in 1842, which a contemporary critic described as 'well drawn but brutally energetic'.
In 1843 Armitage returned to London, where he entered competitions for the decoration of the new Houses of Parliament at Westminster, the old Houses of Parliament having been destroyed by fire in 1834. To organise and oversee this project, a Royal Commission had been appointed in 1841, the President of which was Queen Victoria's new Consort, Prince Albert. Decorations were to be executed in fresco and were to illustrate subjects from British history or from the works of Spenser
, Shakespeare or Milton
. Competitions were held for appropriate designs ('cartoons'), with a number of leading artists commissioned to take part. The first competition entries were unveiled in Westminster Hall in the summer of 1843 and attracted considerable attention from the public. Armitage's cartoon, The Landing of Julius Caesar in Britain, secured one of the three first prizes of £300. He won a further prize in 1845 in a subsequent Westminster competition for his cartoon The Spirit of Religion. Although neither of these cartoons was executed in fresco, Armitage did execute two frescoes in the Poets' Gallery off the Upper Waiting Hall: The Thames and its Tributaries (also referred to as The Personification of the Thames) (1852), from the poetry of Alexander Pope
; and The Death of Marmion (1854), from Sir Walter Scott's poem. Unfortunately frescoes were ill-suited to the atmosphere of 19th-century London, and many started to disintegrate almost as soon as they were completed.
Armitage won one of the first-class premiums in 1847 for his oil painting The Battle of Meanee, which was subsequently purchased by Queen Victoria. In this battle, General Sir Charles Napier brought the provinces of Sindh under the dominion of Great Britain, an account of which was written by his brother, Sir William Napier. Armitage consulted both brothers for detailed information on the battle and he used sketches of the locality lent by Sir Charles. However, the painting was the subject of much controversy, with doubts expressed that the war had been justified. The 1847 Art-Union review concluded with the following: "Notwithstanding the great ability displayed by Mr. Armitage in this production, which of its class, has never been excelled in England, we cannot but regret that he did not select a theme more purely historical - one more honourable to our nation than the slaughter of thousands - of whom, after all, we were the oppressors". Thackeray, writing in Punch under the pseudonym of Professor Byles, also disapproved of the subject-matter: "With respect to the third prize - a Battle of Meeanee - in this extraordinary piece they are stabbing, kicking, cutting, slashing, and poking each other about all over the picture. A horrid sight! I like to see the British lion mild and good-humoured ... not fierce, as Mr. Armitage has shown him."
when he showed two paintings, Henry VIII
and Catherine Parr
, and Trafalgar. He continued to send contributions most years until his death. These included Retribution (1858), Esther's Banquet (1865) (also known as Festival of Esther), The Remorse of Judas (1866), Herod's Birthday Feast (1868), A Deputation to Faraday (1871), Julian the Apostate (1875), Pygmalion's Galatea (1878), Meeting of St. Francis and St. Dominic (1882), Faith (1884), The Siren (1888), and The late T.R. Armitage, M.D., the Friend of the Blind (1893).
Probably the best known of these is Armitage's huge imperialistic painting, Retribution, in which he allegorized the suppression and punishment of the Indian Mutiny by Great Britain in 1857. This was painted after luridly sensationalised details of the massacre of British soldiers, women and children had been circulated by the press. The Illustrated London News of 1859 described Retribution thus: "Britannia, represented of colossal proportions, has seized the assassin tiger by the throat, and is about to plunge her sword into its heart ... The melancholy results of the mutiny, which have spread mourning through so many homes, are typified in the figures of prostrate victims, with debris of books, etc., scattered around."
sent Armitage to the Crimea
in 1855 to make on-the-spot sketches for pictures including The Stand of the Guards at Inkerman and The Heavy Cavalry Charge at Balaclava, which were shown at Gambart's French gallery in London in the spring of 1856. He exhibited Souvenir of Scutari at the Royal Academy in 1857 (now in Tyne and Wear Museums). A number of Armitage's sketches from the Crimea were reproduced in the Illustrated London News and The Graphic, including Lord Raglan and Sir Edmund Lyons, General Bosquet, Captor of Malakoff Tower, General Trochu and Before Sebastopol, Zouaves Making Gabions.
modelled for the head of an apostle. Armitage also did frescos at St. Marylebone Parish Church and St. Mark's Church, London, and a monochrome fresco at University College Hall, Bloomsbury, commemorating Henry Crabb Robinson
and other figures eminent at that time (later painted over). Other decorative work includes part of the terracotta frieze, The Triumph of Art and Letters, at the Royal Albert Hall and part of what was referred to as the Kensington Valhalla at South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum).
Examples of his work include:
After retiring from the Royal Academy in May 1894, Armitage spent some time in Tunbridge Wells, where he died on 24 May 1896 of apoplexy and exhaustion following pneumonia. He is buried in Hove Cemetery.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
Victorian era
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
painter whose work focussed on historical, classical and biblical subjects.
Family background
Armitage was born in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
to a family of wealthy Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
industrialists, the eldest of seven sons of James Armitage (1793–1872) and Anne Elizabeth Armitage née Rhodes (1788–1833), of Farnley Hall
Farnley Hall (West Yorkshire)
Farnley Hall is a stately home in Farnley, west Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It is a grade II listed building. It was built in Elizabethan times by the Danbys...
, just south of Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
. His great-grandfather James (1730–1803) bought Farnley Hall from Sir Thomas Danby in 1799 and in 1844 four Armitage brothers, including his father James, founded the Farnley Ironworks, utilising the coal, iron and fireclay on their estate. His brother Thomas Rhodes Armitage
Thomas Armitage
Thomas Rhodes Armitage was a British physician, and founder of the Royal National Institute of Blind People.He was born on 2 April 1824 at Tilgate in Sussex into a family of wealthy Yorkshire industrialists, the son of James Armitage and Anne Elizabeth Armitage née Rhodes , of Farnley Hall, just...
(1824–1890) founded the Royal National Institute of the Blind
Royal National Institute of the Blind
RNIB is a UK charity offering information, support and advice to almost two million people in the UK with sight loss.- History :The Royal National Institute of Blind People was founded by Thomas Rhodes Armitage, a successful doctor who suffered from eyesight problems.In 1868 Dr Armitage founded an...
.
Armitage was the uncle of Robert Armitage (MP), the great-uncle of Robert Selby Armitage
Robert Selby Armitage
Lieutenant-Commander Robert Selby Armitage GC, GM, RNVR won both the George Cross and George Medal for his bomb disposal work during the Second World War, one of only eight people to have been awarded both....
, and first cousin twice removed of Edward Leathley Armitage
Edward Armitage (cricketer)
Edward Leathley Armitage was an Irish born English cricketer, the son of John Leathley Armitage and his wife Annie Jessie, née Nicholas...
.
Art Training
Armitage's art training was undertaken in Paris, where he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-ArtsÉcole des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...
in October 1837. He studied under the history painter, Paul Delaroche, who at that time was at the height of his fame. Armitage was one of four students selected to assist Delaroche with the fresco
Fresco
Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...
Hemicycle in the amphitheatre of the Palais des Beaux-Arts, when he reputedly modelled for the head of Masaccio
Masaccio
Masaccio , born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was the first great painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense...
. Whilst still in Paris, he exhibited Prometheus Bound in 1842, which a contemporary critic described as 'well drawn but brutally energetic'.
Westminster Competitions
Spenser
Spenser is an alternative spelling of the British surname Spencer. It may refer to:Geographical places with the name Spenser:* Spenser Ecological District in New Zealand* Spenser Mountains, a range in the northern part of South Island, New Zealand...
, Shakespeare or Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
. Competitions were held for appropriate designs ('cartoons'), with a number of leading artists commissioned to take part. The first competition entries were unveiled in Westminster Hall in the summer of 1843 and attracted considerable attention from the public. Armitage's cartoon, The Landing of Julius Caesar in Britain, secured one of the three first prizes of £300. He won a further prize in 1845 in a subsequent Westminster competition for his cartoon The Spirit of Religion. Although neither of these cartoons was executed in fresco, Armitage did execute two frescoes in the Poets' Gallery off the Upper Waiting Hall: The Thames and its Tributaries (also referred to as The Personification of the Thames) (1852), from the poetry of Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
; and The Death of Marmion (1854), from Sir Walter Scott's poem. Unfortunately frescoes were ill-suited to the atmosphere of 19th-century London, and many started to disintegrate almost as soon as they were completed.
Armitage won one of the first-class premiums in 1847 for his oil painting The Battle of Meanee, which was subsequently purchased by Queen Victoria. In this battle, General Sir Charles Napier brought the provinces of Sindh under the dominion of Great Britain, an account of which was written by his brother, Sir William Napier. Armitage consulted both brothers for detailed information on the battle and he used sketches of the locality lent by Sir Charles. However, the painting was the subject of much controversy, with doubts expressed that the war had been justified. The 1847 Art-Union review concluded with the following: "Notwithstanding the great ability displayed by Mr. Armitage in this production, which of its class, has never been excelled in England, we cannot but regret that he did not select a theme more purely historical - one more honourable to our nation than the slaughter of thousands - of whom, after all, we were the oppressors". Thackeray, writing in Punch under the pseudonym of Professor Byles, also disapproved of the subject-matter: "With respect to the third prize - a Battle of Meeanee - in this extraordinary piece they are stabbing, kicking, cutting, slashing, and poking each other about all over the picture. A horrid sight! I like to see the British lion mild and good-humoured ... not fierce, as Mr. Armitage has shown him."
Exhibiting at the Royal Academy
In 1848 Armitage exhibited for the first time at the Royal AcademyRoyal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
when he showed two paintings, Henry VIII
Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...
and Catherine Parr
Catherine Parr
Catherine Parr ; 1512 – 5 September 1548) was Queen consort of England and Ireland and the last of the six wives of King Henry VIII of England. She married Henry VIII on 12 July 1543. She was the fourth commoner Henry had taken as his consort, and outlived him...
, and Trafalgar. He continued to send contributions most years until his death. These included Retribution (1858), Esther's Banquet (1865) (also known as Festival of Esther), The Remorse of Judas (1866), Herod's Birthday Feast (1868), A Deputation to Faraday (1871), Julian the Apostate (1875), Pygmalion's Galatea (1878), Meeting of St. Francis and St. Dominic (1882), Faith (1884), The Siren (1888), and The late T.R. Armitage, M.D., the Friend of the Blind (1893).
Probably the best known of these is Armitage's huge imperialistic painting, Retribution, in which he allegorized the suppression and punishment of the Indian Mutiny by Great Britain in 1857. This was painted after luridly sensationalised details of the massacre of British soldiers, women and children had been circulated by the press. The Illustrated London News of 1859 described Retribution thus: "Britannia, represented of colossal proportions, has seized the assassin tiger by the throat, and is about to plunge her sword into its heart ... The melancholy results of the mutiny, which have spread mourning through so many homes, are typified in the figures of prostrate victims, with debris of books, etc., scattered around."
Marriage
On 3 February 1853 Armitage married Catherine Laurie Barber, also an artist. They were among the first artists to settle in the St John's Wood area of London, and their friends included other artists in the neighbourhood.The Crimea
The art dealer Ernest GambartErnest Gambart
Jean Joseph Ernest Theodore Gambart was a Belgian-born English art publisher and dealer who dominated the London art world in the middle of the nineteenth century.-Life and career:...
sent Armitage to the Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
in 1855 to make on-the-spot sketches for pictures including The Stand of the Guards at Inkerman and The Heavy Cavalry Charge at Balaclava, which were shown at Gambart's French gallery in London in the spring of 1856. He exhibited Souvenir of Scutari at the Royal Academy in 1857 (now in Tyne and Wear Museums). A number of Armitage's sketches from the Crimea were reproduced in the Illustrated London News and The Graphic, including Lord Raglan and Sir Edmund Lyons, General Bosquet, Captor of Malakoff Tower, General Trochu and Before Sebastopol, Zouaves Making Gabions.
Decorative Work
Unlike some of his fellow artists, Armitage was not discouraged by his experience of working on the Parliament frescos. During the summer of 1858 he spent several weeks' research at Assisi, prior to executing frescos (since painted over) in the Roman Catholic Church of St. John the Evangelist, Islington, when his friend the artist George Frederic WattsGeorge Frederic Watts
George Frederic Watts, OM was a popular English Victorian painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life...
modelled for the head of an apostle. Armitage also did frescos at St. Marylebone Parish Church and St. Mark's Church, London, and a monochrome fresco at University College Hall, Bloomsbury, commemorating Henry Crabb Robinson
Henry Crabb Robinson
Henry Crabb Robinson , diarist, was born in Bury St. Edmunds, England.He was articled to an attorney in Colchester. Between 1800 and 1805 he studied at various places in Germany, and became acquainted with nearly all the great men of letters there, including Goethe, Schiller, Johann Gottfried...
and other figures eminent at that time (later painted over). Other decorative work includes part of the terracotta frieze, The Triumph of Art and Letters, at the Royal Albert Hall and part of what was referred to as the Kensington Valhalla at South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum).
Election to Royal Academy
Armitage was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1867 and a full member in 1872, and in 1875 he was appointed Professor and Lecturer on painting. His lectures to the Royal Academy were published as Lectures on Painting (London, 1883).Selected works
- The Return of Ulysses (1840, retouched 1853, Leeds City Art Gallery)
- The Battle of Meanee (1847, Royal Collection, St. James's Palace)
- The Thames and its Tributaries (1852, Upper Waiting Hall, Palace of Westminster)
- The Death of Nelson (1848, Britannia Museum Trust, Dartmouth)
- Retribution (1858, Leeds City Art Gallery)
- Benozzo Gozzali (1864, Victoria and Albert Museum)
- Festival of Esther (1865, Royal Academy, London)
- The Remorse of JudasJudas IscariotJudas Iscariot was, according to the New Testament, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. He is best known for his betrayal of Jesus to the hands of the chief priests for 30 pieces of silver.-Etymology:...
(1866, Tate Collection, London) - Herod's Birthday Feast (1868, Guildhall, London)
- A Deputation to Faraday (1871, Royal Society, London)
- A Dream of Fair Women (1872 and 1874, Hastings Public Library)
- Julian the Apostate Presiding at a Conference of Sectarians (1875, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool)
- Samson and the Lion (1881, Brighton & Hove Museums)
- Sea Urchins (1882, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand)
- Institution of the Franciscan Order (1887, Church of St. John the Evangelist, Islington) (replacing original 1859 fresco of St Francis before Pope Innocent III)
After retiring from the Royal Academy in May 1894, Armitage spent some time in Tunbridge Wells, where he died on 24 May 1896 of apoplexy and exhaustion following pneumonia. He is buried in Hove Cemetery.