Richard Burchett
Encyclopedia
Richard Burchett was a British artist and educator on the fringes of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who was for over twenty years the Headmaster of what later became the Royal College of Art
.
He was later described as "a prominent figure in the art-schools, a well instructed painter, and a teacher exceptionally equipped with all the learning of his craft" by his ex-pupil, the poet Austin Dobson
. Burchett's pupils included the extremely varied talents of Kate Greenaway
, Christopher Dresser
, Elizabeth Thompson
(Lady Butler), Sir George Clausen
, Sir Luke Fildes
, Gertrude Jekyll
, Hubert von Herkomer
, William Harbutt
and Helen Allingham
. Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll
, Queen Victoria's daughter, and a talented artist, was also a student.
As an artist he achieved some reputation for large history paintings, and decorated public buildings including parts of the Palace of Westminster
and the Victoria and Albert Museum
, but his View across Sandown Bay, Isle of Wight is seen by modern art historians as his best work. Burchett published collections of his lectures as text-books for the South Kensington system of art education
, which he helped to devise.
(founded 1823, the forerunner of Birkbeck College
, University of London
), before in about 1841 entering the "Government School of Design", founded three years before in 1837, which he was later to head, and which eventually became the Royal College of Art. In 1845 he was a ringleader of students protesting to the Board of Trade
about the teaching methods, in what was at the time a controversy that attracted a great deal of public attention, and finally a Parliamentary Committee of Enquiry. He gave evidence to this in 1846-7, by which time he had become a master at the school (the "Master of Form", from 1845), remaining on the staff until his death in 1875, from 1852 as Headmaster.
Burchett spent most of his time throughout his adult life on his work at the school, and that his most highly-regarded work today is an untypical landscape subject is an indication of how much his personal painting was neglected for teaching, and public commissions through the school. According to the Memoirs of William Bell Scott
, who had worked under him, Burchett was: "an able, self-dependent actor in the affairs of life, yet one whose action was rarely to his own benefit, although largely to the benefit of those under him in his official position".
In the mid-1850s Burchett converted to Roman Catholicism; it is presumed that he was influenced by the already-converted Pre-Raphaelite James Collinson
, with whom he was living after Collinson's engagement to Christina Rossetti
had broken down for the second time. He married twice, and had several children. What appear to be a son and grandson are recorded exhibiting paintings in London. Ebenezer Stanley Burchett (1837–1916) worked at South Kensington and then was Head Master of the Bedford Park
School of Arts & Crafts. In 1870 Richard Burchett is described as "formerly of 43 Brompton Square [very near the School], but now of 8 Bedford Road, Clapham
." Burchett was in very bad health for the last years of his life, and when he died in Dublin, on May 27, 1875, he was staying with his wife's uncle, Sir Samuel Ferguson
, for his health. He had only been in the School for 133 days in 1872, arriving punctually on only seven of these.
In 1870, he began proceedings for bankruptcy, which were still not concluded by his death. Scott says he "took to a sort of farming at considerable expense ... He began to get into deep water, and into the hands of 20 per cent money-lenders. Still he fought bravely with his difficulties, and even when his large salary was placed under trustees, he went on with his historic subjects". His venture was ill-timed, hitting a period of agricultural depression. A series of twelve dividends to his creditors, between 1871 and September 1876, paid off at least 7s 7d in the pound - dividends number 1, 7 & 8 seem not to appear in the London Gazette search results.
His will was probate
d at less than £200, and Frayling records that a letter from his widow asking for a pension was found unanswered in the school files thirteen years later. Obituaries were published in the Athenaeum
, the Art Journal
, and The Graphic
.
s, at the Royal Academy between 1847 (The Death of Marmion, "famous in its day" according to Hugh Thomas
) and 1873 (The Making of the New Forest
). These are rather generously described as "in the Pre-Raphaelite style" by the DNB
. His best-known work in this genre is Sanctuary (RA, 1867), the snappy modern title for Edward IV Withheld by Ecclesiastics from Pursuing Lancastrian Fugitives into a Church, in the Guildhall Art Gallery
, London. William Bell Scott has an anecdote of Burchett, who "had chosen the subject as a glorious example of the power of the Church and the faith of the prince at that blessed period in Merry England" failing to sell the painting to an "extreme Radical" shipping magnate: ""I admire the picture, Mr. Burchett, it is excellently painted, and I like it for its subject ; these men in full armour won't go in, they won't end the day completely after risking all their lives, because of that old priest with the jack-in-the-box! Superstition, you see, turns them into caitiffs!" This knocked over poor Burchett so much, the transaction came to nothing" He exhibited a work at the British Institution
in 1855. Scott comments that Burchett: "gave himself up to historical painting on a rather large scale, just the kind of art which English taste and the R. Academy as the mediocre exponent of the same would like to crush out of existence".
However the work which has attracted the most attention and praise from critics in recent decades is what appears to be his "only known landscape", View across Sandown Bay, Isle of Wight probably of 1855, in the Victoria and Albert Museum
, who describe it as a "minor masterpiece". This small painting, which more closely approaches a Pre-Raphaelite landscape style, shows a half-harvested cornfield, with tools and jugs of the farm-workers piled up beside a corn stook. But the only figures visible are two clearly middle-class women, no doubt part of the same party as the artist, one sitting against a stook reading a book, and the other walking with a parasol. Any georgic or realist focus on agriculture is absent "his cornfield is just part of a landscape where middle-class people take their leisure. The corn is no more or no less useful than the beaches which we imagine to be in the distance of this brilliantly coloured painting". Here too a more subtle hint of religious feeling is found: "the church in the distance hints at the source of the bounty represented by the partially garnered harvest in the foreground fields". Treatments of the almost identical view by William Dyce
and James Collinson (Mother and Child, Mellon Centre, Yale), both Burchett's colleagues at the school, are taken by Geoffrey Grigson
to mean that the three artists were on a visit, or holiday, together. Dyce, like Burchett, was an artist who saw himself as a history painter but is now most often remembered for a single Pre-Raphaelitish landscape, his Pegwell Bay.
There are a number of public paintings by Burchett, with help of his students, commissioned through the school. He and his students painted, from Renaissance portraits, a number of full-length portraits of the House of Tudor for the royal antechamber to the House of Lords
in the Palace of Westminster
(1855-9). He painted other works for the new Palace, including a large Spanish Armada
scene The English Fleet Pursuing the Spanish Fleet Against Fowey, copying from an 18th century print a one of a set of tapestries made for Lord Howard of Effingham
, the victorious admiral. The death of Prince Albert
brought the project to reproduce the full set to an end, but it was revived in the 21st century, and finally completed in 2010. Like the works in the Palace by better-known painters like Dyce, these have been generally disliked by critics from their first unveiling; the overall painting of the Palace after its rebuilding was probably the largest public painting commission in England during the 19th century, and, unlike the architecture of the Palace, has been regarded as very disappointing by most critics from the start.
From a number of designs for mosaics for the exteriors to the south court of the Victoria and Albert Museum he produced William Torrell (two versions in fact) and William of Wykeham
. The mosaics remain in place, and two of the cartoons are now themselves on display in the staircase on the Exhibition Road side of the building. He and his students decorated large medallions in the dome of the now-vanished Great Exhibition building
of 1862 at South Kensington
, and he painted a window in the Greenwich Hospital.
and applied and commercial art and design; these questions were to remain a perennial bone of contention for at least another century, and are a recurring theme in Christopher Frayling
's 1987 history of the College. The new teaching methods implemented by Burchett were themselves to become a matter of controversy.
The school had been founded in 1837, as the Government School of Design, occupying part of Somerset House
on the Strand
, until the space was needed for the Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages
. It became the National Art Training School in 1853, moving to the equally palatial setting of Marlborough House
, thanks to Prince Albert
, leaving a section just for training art teachers on the Strand, and establishing a separate "Female School" in Gower St, from 1861 Queen Square, Bloomsbury. In 1861 the main school moved again to buildings adjoining (and now absorbed by) the Victoria and Albert Museum
in South Kensington
, and long after Burchett's death it became in 1896 The Royal College of Art. It is often referred to as the "Government Art School", and later the "South Kensington Schools", in the 19th century (the school was at various points divided into different sections, such as the "Female School", also under Burchett, and there were also science schools run by the Science and Art Department
, hence the plural).
The main art school in London was the Royal Academy
Schools, which made space for the new school by its decision to vacate Somerset House for the new National Gallery
building, where it stayed until 1867. They had been established decades before the Government School, to provide a full training in Academic art
; by the 1830s the majority of successful English artists had trained there. The Government School was funded by the Board of Trade
, and intended, at least by them, for different purposes, though precisely what these were remained a political battleground for decades. The school was not founded to train academic painters; this at least was clear, although in fact many ex-students became just that. The Government had recognised that British industrial design was falling behind that of the Continent, and believed that the training of designers was worth public subsidy. Later, a national network of schools to train students in applied art and design was established, and the central London school was both to be the flagship of the network, and to train teachers for the rest of the schools.
William Dyce was the first Director, and Burchett studied under him, and then worked with him as a colleague, until Dyce left in 1848. The Isle of Wight paintings from 1855 suggest the two remained friends.
After the internal disputes of the 1840s, the school acquired a firm sense of control and direction when in 1853 the Government placed it under the control of Henry Cole
, for whom the Science and Art Department was set up, with a large tract of land, and much of the large profit from the 1852 Great Exhibition to spend. Cole was an extremely dynamic figure, with some training as a painter, and experience as an entrepreneurial designer of china. He made the young painter Richard Redgrave
, master of botany at the school since 1847, responsible for the superintendence of the national system, and appointed Burchett as Headmaster of the London School.
Redgrave, drawing on Dyce's ideas, and propelled by Cole, set out the "South Kensington system", a highly specific syllabus
for the teaching of art, which was to be dominant in the UK, and other English-speaking countries, at least until the end of the century, and not to entirely vanish until the 1930s. Burchett was the first to implement the course in London, and worked with Redgrave in drawing it up - Redgrave had much less teaching experience. Burchett's published lectures reflected the system, and were widely used as text-books for it; how far he was involved in devising it cannot be said.
The full course was divided into twenty-three stages, most with several sections. Different types of students were to take different combinations of stages: "machinists, engineers and foremen of works" should take stages 1–5, and then skip to the final 23rd stage, "Technical Studies", while designers and "ornamentalists" took most stages.
There were several types of students, pursuing different courses: the "general students", who paid no fees and were given a small living allowance, training to be teachers of art (though many ended up elsewhere), the "National Scholars" intended for industrial designers, and fee-paying students, pursuing a course more oriented to the fine arts. Latterly these were in fact the majority. Women pupils were taught at least partly separately, and their life class
es consisted of drawing a man wearing a suit of armour. The Royal Academy Schools did not accept women students until 1861, although there were other alternatives for women. The female school, under Royal patronage, became a rather fashionable place for young ladies, able to support its expansion by society fundraising.
: Practical Geometry (1855), Practical Perspective (1857), which was translated into Chinese, Linear Perspective for the Use of Schools of Art (1872).
He appears buying a number of lots for the school ("Marlborough House") and a few for himself in the huge (4294 lot) sale in 1855 of the distinguished collection of Ralph Bernal
. He was also at the studio sale of Augustus Egg
, buying two paintings now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, probably on their behalf, although he also sold them works apparently from his collection, as well as his Sandown landscape (in 1861).
Burchett looked after a number of paintings by his colleague, the Pre-Raphaelite Walter Howell Deverell (1827–54) for a decade after Deverell's early death, before handing them on to Dante Gabriel Rossetti
. These included Twelfth Night, Deverell's major work, which fetched £600,650 ($957,436) in an auction at Christies in 2003. He must have known Deverell as a boy, as his father had been Secretary to the school, and the family lived on the premises until 1852. Deverell joined the staff of the school in 1848, and was there until his death.
Apart from his own students, Burchett encouraged other young artists, sending the Royal Academy
schools a letter of recommendation for the young Albert Moore
.
in an elaborate bronze frame designed by George Clausen that has followed the Royal College to its new Darwin Building on Kensington Gore
, where it is installed in a courtyard. He was painted by Val Prinsep standing next to Lord Leighton in his Distribution of Art Prizes (1869, Victoria and Albert Museum), and there is a wood engraving
after an unknown artist, very likely a student (above) published with an obituary.
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...
.
He was later described as "a prominent figure in the art-schools, a well instructed painter, and a teacher exceptionally equipped with all the learning of his craft" by his ex-pupil, the poet Austin Dobson
Henry Austin Dobson
Henry Austin Dobson , commonly Austin Dobson, was an English poet and essayist.-Life:He was born at Plymouth, the eldest son of George Clarisse Dobson, a civil engineer, of French descent. When he was about eight, the family moved to Holyhead, and his first school was at Beaumaris in Anglesey...
. Burchett's pupils included the extremely varied talents of Kate Greenaway
Kate Greenaway
Catherine Greenaway , known as Kate Greenaway, was an English children's book illustrator and writer, who spent much of her childhood at Rolleston, Nottinghamshire. She studied at what is now the Royal College of Art in London, which at that time had a separate section for women, and was headed by...
, Christopher Dresser
Christopher Dresser
Christopher Dresser was an English designer and design theorist, now widely known as one of the first and most important, independent, designers and was a pivotal figure in the Aesthetic Movement, and a major contributor to the allied Anglo-Japanese branch of the Movement; both originated in...
, Elizabeth Thompson
Elizabeth Thompson
Elizabeth Southerden Thompson, Lady Butler was a British painter, one of the few female painters to achieve fame for history paintings, especially military battle scenes, at the end of that tradition...
(Lady Butler), Sir George Clausen
George Clausen
Sir George Clausen RA , was an artist working in oil and watercolour, etching, mezzotint, dry point and occasionally lithographs. He was knighted in 1927.-Biography:...
, Sir Luke Fildes
Luke Fildes
Sir Samuel Luke Fildes RA was an English painter and illustrator born at Liverpool and trained in the South Kensington and Royal Academy schools....
, Gertrude Jekyll
Gertrude Jekyll
Gertrude Jekyll was an influential British garden designer, writer, and artist. She created over 400 gardens in the UK, Europe and the USA and contributed over 1,000 articles to Country Life, The Garden and other magazines.-Early life:...
, Hubert von Herkomer
Hubert von Herkomer
Sir Hubert von Herkomer , British painter of German descent. He was also a pioneering film-director and a composer. Though a very successful portraitist, especially of men, he is mainly remembered for his earlier works that took a realistic approach to the conditions of life of the poor...
, William Harbutt
William Harbutt
William Harbutt was a painter and the inventor of Plasticine.Born in North Shields, England, Harbutt studied at the National Art Training School in London, and eventually became an associate of the Royal College of Art...
and Helen Allingham
Helen Allingham
__NOEDITSECTION__Helen Allingham was an English watercolour painter and illustrator of the Victorian era.-Biography:...
. Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll
Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll
The Princess Louise was a member of the British Royal Family, the sixth child and fourth daughter of Queen Victoria and her husband, Albert, Prince Consort.Louise's early life was spent moving between the various royal residences in the...
, Queen Victoria's daughter, and a talented artist, was also a student.
As an artist he achieved some reputation for large history paintings, and decorated public buildings including parts of the Palace of Westminster
Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament or Westminster Palace, is the meeting place of the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom—the House of Lords and the House of Commons...
and the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
, but his View across Sandown Bay, Isle of Wight is seen by modern art historians as his best work. Burchett published collections of his lectures as text-books for the South Kensington system of art education
Art education
Art education is the area of learning that is based upon the visual, tangible arts—drawing, painting, sculpture, and design in jewelry, pottery, weaving, fabrics, etc. and design applied to more practical fields such as commercial graphics and home furnishings...
, which he helped to devise.
Life
Burchett was born in Brighton on January 30, 1815. He attended the "London Mechanics Institute" in Chancery LaneChancery Lane
Chancery Lane is the street which has been the western boundary of the City of London since 1994 having previously been divided between Westminster and Camden...
(founded 1823, the forerunner of Birkbeck College
Birkbeck, University of London
Birkbeck, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It offers many Master's and Bachelor's degree programmes that can be studied either part-time or full-time, though nearly all teaching is...
, University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
), before in about 1841 entering the "Government School of Design", founded three years before in 1837, which he was later to head, and which eventually became the Royal College of Art. In 1845 he was a ringleader of students protesting to the Board of Trade
Board of Trade
The Board of Trade is a committee of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, originating as a committee of inquiry in the 17th century and evolving gradually into a government department with a diverse range of functions...
about the teaching methods, in what was at the time a controversy that attracted a great deal of public attention, and finally a Parliamentary Committee of Enquiry. He gave evidence to this in 1846-7, by which time he had become a master at the school (the "Master of Form", from 1845), remaining on the staff until his death in 1875, from 1852 as Headmaster.
Burchett spent most of his time throughout his adult life on his work at the school, and that his most highly-regarded work today is an untypical landscape subject is an indication of how much his personal painting was neglected for teaching, and public commissions through the school. According to the Memoirs of William Bell Scott
William Bell Scott
William Bell Scott was a Scottish poet and artist.-Life:The son of Robert Scott , the engraver, and brother of David Scott, the painter, he was born in Edinburgh. While a young man he studied art and assisted his father, and he published verses in the Scottish magazines...
, who had worked under him, Burchett was: "an able, self-dependent actor in the affairs of life, yet one whose action was rarely to his own benefit, although largely to the benefit of those under him in his official position".
In the mid-1850s Burchett converted to Roman Catholicism; it is presumed that he was influenced by the already-converted Pre-Raphaelite James Collinson
James Collinson
James Collinson was a Victorian painter who was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood from 1848 to 1850.Collinson was a devout Christian who was attracted to the devotional and high church aspects of Pre-Raphaelitism...
, with whom he was living after Collinson's engagement to Christina Rossetti
Christina Rossetti
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems...
had broken down for the second time. He married twice, and had several children. What appear to be a son and grandson are recorded exhibiting paintings in London. Ebenezer Stanley Burchett (1837–1916) worked at South Kensington and then was Head Master of the Bedford Park
Bedford Park
Bedford Park is the name of several places around the world:*In Australia:** Bedford Park, South Australia, a suburb of Adelaide*In Canada:** Bedford Park, Toronto, Ontario, a neighborhood of Toronto*In the United Kingdom...
School of Arts & Crafts. In 1870 Richard Burchett is described as "formerly of 43 Brompton Square [very near the School], but now of 8 Bedford Road, Clapham
Clapham
Clapham is a district in south London, England, within the London Borough of Lambeth.Clapham covers the postcodes of SW4 and parts of SW9, SW8 and SW12. Clapham Common is shared with the London Borough of Wandsworth, although Lambeth has responsibility for running the common as a whole. According...
." Burchett was in very bad health for the last years of his life, and when he died in Dublin, on May 27, 1875, he was staying with his wife's uncle, Sir Samuel Ferguson
Samuel Ferguson
Sir Samuel Ferguson was an Irish poet, barrister, antiquarian, artist and public servant. Perhaps the most important Ulster-Scot poet of the 19th century, because of his interest in Irish mythology and early Irish history he can be seen as a forerunner of William Butler Yeats and the other poets...
, for his health. He had only been in the School for 133 days in 1872, arriving punctually on only seven of these.
In 1870, he began proceedings for bankruptcy, which were still not concluded by his death. Scott says he "took to a sort of farming at considerable expense ... He began to get into deep water, and into the hands of 20 per cent money-lenders. Still he fought bravely with his difficulties, and even when his large salary was placed under trustees, he went on with his historic subjects". His venture was ill-timed, hitting a period of agricultural depression. A series of twelve dividends to his creditors, between 1871 and September 1876, paid off at least 7s 7d in the pound - dividends number 1, 7 & 8 seem not to appear in the London Gazette search results.
His will was probate
Probate
Probate is the legal process of administering the estate of a deceased person by resolving all claims and distributing the deceased person's property under the valid will. A probate court decides the validity of a testator's will...
d at less than £200, and Frayling records that a letter from his widow asking for a pension was found unanswered in the school files thirteen years later. Obituaries were published in the Athenaeum
Athenaeum (magazine)
The Athenaeum was a literary magazine published in London from 1828 to 1921. It had a reputation for publishing the very best writers of the age....
, the Art Journal
Art Journal
Art Journal may refer to:* Art Journal , 1941–present, published by College Art Association of America* The Art Journal, 1839–1912, London* Art diary, art journal or visual journal, a daily journal kept by artists...
, and The Graphic
The Graphic
The Graphic was a British weekly illustrated newspaper, first published on 4 December 1869 by William Luson Thomas's company Illustrated Newspapers Limited....
.
Artist
Burchett exhibited five works, apparently all large history paintingHistory painting
History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style, depicting a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject such as a portrait...
s, at the Royal Academy between 1847 (The Death of Marmion, "famous in its day" according to Hugh Thomas
Hugh Thomas
Hugh Thomas , is a British historian and life peer.Hugh Thomas may also refer to:* Hugh Thomas , American choral conductor, pianist and educator* Hugh Thomas , Australian rules football coach...
) and 1873 (The Making of the New Forest
New Forest
The New Forest is an area of southern England which includes the largest remaining tracts of unenclosed pasture land, heathland and forest in the heavily-populated south east of England. It covers south-west Hampshire and extends into south-east Wiltshire....
). These are rather generously described as "in the Pre-Raphaelite style" by the DNB
Dictionary of National Biography
The Dictionary of National Biography is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published from 1885...
. His best-known work in this genre is Sanctuary (RA, 1867), the snappy modern title for Edward IV Withheld by Ecclesiastics from Pursuing Lancastrian Fugitives into a Church, in the Guildhall Art Gallery
Guildhall Art Gallery
The Guildhall Art Gallery houses the art collection of the City of London, England. It occupies a building that was completed in 1999 to replace an earlier building destroyed in The Blitz in 1941...
, London. William Bell Scott has an anecdote of Burchett, who "had chosen the subject as a glorious example of the power of the Church and the faith of the prince at that blessed period in Merry England" failing to sell the painting to an "extreme Radical" shipping magnate: ""I admire the picture, Mr. Burchett, it is excellently painted, and I like it for its subject ; these men in full armour won't go in, they won't end the day completely after risking all their lives, because of that old priest with the jack-in-the-box! Superstition, you see, turns them into caitiffs!" This knocked over poor Burchett so much, the transaction came to nothing" He exhibited a work at the British Institution
British Institution
The British Institution was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery...
in 1855. Scott comments that Burchett: "gave himself up to historical painting on a rather large scale, just the kind of art which English taste and the R. Academy as the mediocre exponent of the same would like to crush out of existence".
However the work which has attracted the most attention and praise from critics in recent decades is what appears to be his "only known landscape", View across Sandown Bay, Isle of Wight probably of 1855, in the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
, who describe it as a "minor masterpiece". This small painting, which more closely approaches a Pre-Raphaelite landscape style, shows a half-harvested cornfield, with tools and jugs of the farm-workers piled up beside a corn stook. But the only figures visible are two clearly middle-class women, no doubt part of the same party as the artist, one sitting against a stook reading a book, and the other walking with a parasol. Any georgic or realist focus on agriculture is absent "his cornfield is just part of a landscape where middle-class people take their leisure. The corn is no more or no less useful than the beaches which we imagine to be in the distance of this brilliantly coloured painting". Here too a more subtle hint of religious feeling is found: "the church in the distance hints at the source of the bounty represented by the partially garnered harvest in the foreground fields". Treatments of the almost identical view by William Dyce
William Dyce
William Dyce was a distinguished Scottish artist, who played a significant part in the formation of public art education in the UK, as perhaps the true parent of the South Kensington Schools system.Dyce began his career at the Royal Academy schools, and then traveled to Rome for the first time in...
and James Collinson (Mother and Child, Mellon Centre, Yale), both Burchett's colleagues at the school, are taken by Geoffrey Grigson
Geoffrey Grigson
Geoffrey Edward Harvey Grigson was a British writer. He was born in Pelynt, a village near Looe in Cornwall.-Life:...
to mean that the three artists were on a visit, or holiday, together. Dyce, like Burchett, was an artist who saw himself as a history painter but is now most often remembered for a single Pre-Raphaelitish landscape, his Pegwell Bay.
There are a number of public paintings by Burchett, with help of his students, commissioned through the school. He and his students painted, from Renaissance portraits, a number of full-length portraits of the House of Tudor for the royal antechamber to the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
in the Palace of Westminster
Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament or Westminster Palace, is the meeting place of the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom—the House of Lords and the House of Commons...
(1855-9). He painted other works for the new Palace, including a large Spanish Armada
Spanish Armada
This article refers to the Battle of Gravelines, for the modern navy of Spain, see Spanish NavyThe Spanish Armada was the Spanish fleet that sailed against England under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia in 1588, with the intention of overthrowing Elizabeth I of England to stop English...
scene The English Fleet Pursuing the Spanish Fleet Against Fowey, copying from an 18th century print a one of a set of tapestries made for Lord Howard of Effingham
Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham
Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham , known as Howard of Effingham, was an English statesman and Lord High Admiral under Elizabeth I and James I...
, the victorious admiral. The death of Prince Albert
Prince Albert
Prince Albert was the husband and consort of Queen Victoria.Prince Albert may also refer to:-Royalty:*Prince Albert Edward or Edward VII of the United Kingdom , son of Albert and Victoria...
brought the project to reproduce the full set to an end, but it was revived in the 21st century, and finally completed in 2010. Like the works in the Palace by better-known painters like Dyce, these have been generally disliked by critics from their first unveiling; the overall painting of the Palace after its rebuilding was probably the largest public painting commission in England during the 19th century, and, unlike the architecture of the Palace, has been regarded as very disappointing by most critics from the start.
From a number of designs for mosaics for the exteriors to the south court of the Victoria and Albert Museum he produced William Torrell (two versions in fact) and William of Wykeham
William of Wykeham
William of Wykeham was Bishop of Winchester, Chancellor of England, founder of Winchester College, New College, Oxford, New College School, Oxford, and builder of a large part of Windsor Castle.-Life:...
. The mosaics remain in place, and two of the cartoons are now themselves on display in the staircase on the Exhibition Road side of the building. He and his students decorated large medallions in the dome of the now-vanished Great Exhibition building
1862 International Exhibition
The International of 1862, or Great London Exposition, was a world's fair. It was held from 1 May to 1 November 1862, beside the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society, South Kensington, London, England, on a site that now houses museums including the Natural History Museum and the Science...
of 1862 at South Kensington
South Kensington
South Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. It is a built-up area located 2.4 miles west south-west of Charing Cross....
, and he painted a window in the Greenwich Hospital.
The South Kensington system
The controversy at the school in 1845 was about the Headmaster and his teaching methods, but reflected wider issues about the aims of the school in terms of the balance between fine artFine art
Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"....
and applied and commercial art and design; these questions were to remain a perennial bone of contention for at least another century, and are a recurring theme in Christopher Frayling
Christopher Frayling
Sir Christopher John Frayling is a British educationalist and writer, known for his study of popular culture.-Biography:Frayling read history at Churchill College, Cambridge and gained a PhD in the study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau...
's 1987 history of the College. The new teaching methods implemented by Burchett were themselves to become a matter of controversy.
The school had been founded in 1837, as the Government School of Design, occupying part of Somerset House
Somerset House
Somerset House is a large building situated on the south side of the Strand in central London, England, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The central block of the Neoclassical building, the outstanding project of the architect Sir William Chambers, dates from 1776–96. It...
on the Strand
Strand, London
Strand is a street in the City of Westminster, London, England. The street is just over three-quarters of a mile long. It currently starts at Trafalgar Square and runs east to join Fleet Street at Temple Bar, which marks the boundary of the City of London at this point, though its historical length...
, until the space was needed for the Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages
General Register Office
The General Register Office for England and Wales is the section of the UK Identity and Passport Service responsible for the civil registration of births , adoptions, marriages, civil partnerships and deaths in England and Wales and for those same events outwith the UK if they involve a UK citizen...
. It became the National Art Training School in 1853, moving to the equally palatial setting of Marlborough House
Marlborough House
Marlborough House is a mansion in Westminster, London, in Pall Mall just east of St James's Palace. It was built for Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, the favourite and confidante of Queen Anne. The Duchess wanted her new house to be "strong, plain and convenient and good"...
, thanks to Prince Albert
Prince Albert
Prince Albert was the husband and consort of Queen Victoria.Prince Albert may also refer to:-Royalty:*Prince Albert Edward or Edward VII of the United Kingdom , son of Albert and Victoria...
, leaving a section just for training art teachers on the Strand, and establishing a separate "Female School" in Gower St, from 1861 Queen Square, Bloomsbury. In 1861 the main school moved again to buildings adjoining (and now absorbed by) the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
in South Kensington
South Kensington
South Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. It is a built-up area located 2.4 miles west south-west of Charing Cross....
, and long after Burchett's death it became in 1896 The Royal College of Art. It is often referred to as the "Government Art School", and later the "South Kensington Schools", in the 19th century (the school was at various points divided into different sections, such as the "Female School", also under Burchett, and there were also science schools run by the Science and Art Department
Science and Art Department
The Science and Art Department was a British government body which functioned from 1853 to 1899, promoting education in art, science, technology and design in Britain and Ireland....
, hence the plural).
The main art school in London was the Royal Academy
Royal 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...
Schools, which made space for the new school by its decision to vacate Somerset House for the new National Gallery
National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
building, where it stayed until 1867. They had been established decades before the Government School, to provide a full training in Academic art
Academic art
Academic art is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism,...
; by the 1830s the majority of successful English artists had trained there. The Government School was funded by the Board of Trade
Board of Trade
The Board of Trade is a committee of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, originating as a committee of inquiry in the 17th century and evolving gradually into a government department with a diverse range of functions...
, and intended, at least by them, for different purposes, though precisely what these were remained a political battleground for decades. The school was not founded to train academic painters; this at least was clear, although in fact many ex-students became just that. The Government had recognised that British industrial design was falling behind that of the Continent, and believed that the training of designers was worth public subsidy. Later, a national network of schools to train students in applied art and design was established, and the central London school was both to be the flagship of the network, and to train teachers for the rest of the schools.
William Dyce was the first Director, and Burchett studied under him, and then worked with him as a colleague, until Dyce left in 1848. The Isle of Wight paintings from 1855 suggest the two remained friends.
After the internal disputes of the 1840s, the school acquired a firm sense of control and direction when in 1853 the Government placed it under the control of Henry Cole
Henry Cole
Sir Henry Cole was an English civil servant and inventor who facilitated many innovations in commerce and education in 19th century Britain...
, for whom the Science and Art Department was set up, with a large tract of land, and much of the large profit from the 1852 Great Exhibition to spend. Cole was an extremely dynamic figure, with some training as a painter, and experience as an entrepreneurial designer of china. He made the young painter Richard Redgrave
Richard Redgrave
Richard Redgrave RA was an English artist.-Early life:Redgrave was born on 30 April 1804 in Pimlico, at 2 Belgrave Terrace, the second son of William Redgrave, and younger brother of Samuel Redgrave. While was employed in his father's manufacturing firm, he visited the British Museum to make...
, master of botany at the school since 1847, responsible for the superintendence of the national system, and appointed Burchett as Headmaster of the London School.
Redgrave, drawing on Dyce's ideas, and propelled by Cole, set out the "South Kensington system", a highly specific syllabus
Syllabus
A syllabus , is an outline and summary of topics to be covered in an education or training course. It is descriptive...
for the teaching of art, which was to be dominant in the UK, and other English-speaking countries, at least until the end of the century, and not to entirely vanish until the 1930s. Burchett was the first to implement the course in London, and worked with Redgrave in drawing it up - Redgrave had much less teaching experience. Burchett's published lectures reflected the system, and were widely used as text-books for it; how far he was involved in devising it cannot be said.
The full course was divided into twenty-three stages, most with several sections. Different types of students were to take different combinations of stages: "machinists, engineers and foremen of works" should take stages 1–5, and then skip to the final 23rd stage, "Technical Studies", while designers and "ornamentalists" took most stages.
There were several types of students, pursuing different courses: the "general students", who paid no fees and were given a small living allowance, training to be teachers of art (though many ended up elsewhere), the "National Scholars" intended for industrial designers, and fee-paying students, pursuing a course more oriented to the fine arts. Latterly these were in fact the majority. Women pupils were taught at least partly separately, and their life class
Life class
A life class is a class held in art schools for the purpose of instructing art students on drawing or painting the human figure from live models, typically nude or with minimal clothing...
es consisted of drawing a man wearing a suit of armour. The Royal Academy Schools did not accept women students until 1861, although there were other alternatives for women. The female school, under Royal patronage, became a rather fashionable place for young ladies, able to support its expansion by society fundraising.
Author and collector
Collections of Burchett's lectures from the school were published in book form, through Chapman and HallChapman and Hall
Chapman & Hall was a British publishing house in London, founded in the first half of the 19th century by Edward Chapman and William Hall. Upon Hall's death in 1847, Chapman's cousin Frederic Chapman became partner in the company, of which he became sole manager upon the retirement of Edward...
: Practical Geometry (1855), Practical Perspective (1857), which was translated into Chinese, Linear Perspective for the Use of Schools of Art (1872).
He appears buying a number of lots for the school ("Marlborough House") and a few for himself in the huge (4294 lot) sale in 1855 of the distinguished collection of Ralph Bernal
Ralph Bernal
Ralph Bernal was a British Whig politician and art collector. His family were Sephardi Jews of Spanish origin, but he was baptised at St Olave Hart Street in London....
. He was also at the studio sale of Augustus Egg
Augustus Egg
Augustus Leopold Egg 2 May 1816 in London, England – 26 March 1863) was a Victorian artist best known for his modern triptych Past and Present , which depicts the breakup of a middle-class Victorian family.-Biography:...
, buying two paintings now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, probably on their behalf, although he also sold them works apparently from his collection, as well as his Sandown landscape (in 1861).
Burchett looked after a number of paintings by his colleague, the Pre-Raphaelite Walter Howell Deverell (1827–54) for a decade after Deverell's early death, before handing them on to Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
. These included Twelfth Night, Deverell's major work, which fetched £600,650 ($957,436) in an auction at Christies in 2003. He must have known Deverell as a boy, as his father had been Secretary to the school, and the family lived on the premises until 1852. Deverell joined the staff of the school in 1848, and was there until his death.
Apart from his own students, Burchett encouraged other young artists, sending the Royal Academy
Royal 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...
schools a letter of recommendation for the young Albert Moore
Albert Joseph Moore
Albert Joseph Moore was an English painter, known for his depictions of langorous female figures set against the luxury and decadence of the classical world....
.
Portraits
Portraits of the heavily-bearded Burchett include a bronze bust by his pupil Henrietta MontalbaHenrietta Montalba
-Early life:Henrietta Montalba was born in 1856, the youngest of four daughters of Anthony Rubens Montalba and Emeline , all of whom would attain considerable success as artists. She was born in London. The 1871 British census shows Anthony Montalba living at 19 Arundel Gardens, Notting Hill,...
in an elaborate bronze frame designed by George Clausen that has followed the Royal College to its new Darwin Building on Kensington Gore
Kensington Gore
Kensington Gore is a street in central London, England, the same name having been formerly used for the piece of land on which it stands. It runs along the south side of Hyde Park, continuing as Kensington Road to both the east and west. A gore is a narrow, triangular piece of land.The road is part...
, where it is installed in a courtyard. He was painted by Val Prinsep standing next to Lord Leighton in his Distribution of Art Prizes (1869, Victoria and Albert Museum), and there is a wood engraving
Wood engraving
Wood engraving is a technique in printmaking where the "matrix" worked by the artist is a block of wood. It is a variety of woodcut and so a relief printing technique, where ink is applied to the face of the block and printed by using relatively low pressure. A normal engraving, like an etching,...
after an unknown artist, very likely a student (above) published with an obituary.
Main references
- Dictionary of National BiographyDictionary of National BiographyThe Dictionary of National Biography is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published from 1885...
, online, "Richard Burchett", by Anne Pimlott Baker, accessed Feb 13, 2008.("DNB") - Frayling, ChristopherChristopher FraylingSir Christopher John Frayling is a British educationalist and writer, known for his study of popular culture.-Biography:Frayling read history at Churchill College, Cambridge and gained a PhD in the study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau...
: The Royal College of Art, One Hundred and Fifty Years of Art and Design, 1987, Barrie & Jenkins, London, ISBN0712618201 - MacDonald, Stuart, The History and Philosophy of Art Education, 2004, James Clarke & Co.,ISBN 0718891538
- Parkinson, Ronald: Victoria and Albert MuseumVictoria and Albert MuseumThe Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
, Catalogue of British Oil Paintings, 1820–1860, 1990, HMSO, ISBN0112904637, ("V&A") - Rosenthal, Michael: British Landscape Painting, 1982, Phaidon Press, London
- Scott, William BellWilliam Bell ScottWilliam Bell Scott was a Scottish poet and artist.-Life:The son of Robert Scott , the engraver, and brother of David Scott, the painter, he was born in Edinburgh. While a young man he studied art and assisted his father, and he published verses in the Scottish magazines...
, Autobiographical notes of the life of William Bell Scott, and notices of his artistic and poetic circle of friends, 1830 to 1882, Volume II, ed. W Minto, 1892, New York edition, online text