The Victorians - Jeremy Paxman > Reviews (1)

Oh, Victorian paintings. Large, horrible, gloomy, dark, sentimental pictures which you'd cross the street to avoid. Right?

Well, no. There's more to them than meets the eye. Victoriana has always had a bad press, but if anybody is equipped to fight back against it, Jeremy Paxman is first-class in communicating his enthusiasm and putting it across in a lively way without sounding either too intellectual or forced. Maybe you have been drawn to this book by his excellent 4-part TV documentary series first shown in 2009 [see below], but the book stands alone very well without it.

He opens with an assessment of 'Victorian', with all its pejorative connotations, and the reaction against the Victorian age as personified by the demolition of so much 19th century architecture in London. Only when it was too late did something of an enthusiasm for everything come back - 'you don't know what you've got till it's gone', as Joni Mitchell once sang. Further on in his introduction, he makes the point that Victorian storytelling is rightly recognised as second to none - but the visual art of the same age has yet to be rescued from indifference.

Throughout the years they have been much misunderstood, and his sensitive yet good-humoured analysis goes a long way towards rehabilitating them. He is candid enough to admit that some are greater than others, but whatever one's viewpoint of pictures which may at first glance look leaden and uninspiring, it's impossible not to be carried away up to a point by his sheer enthusiasm for the subject. Pictures tell us stories, he reminds us, and he is fascinated by them as a journalist. Yet, being Paxman, there is always a twinkle in the eye that reminds us he knows when something is not to be taken too seriously.

The Pre-Raphaelites, he acknowledges, are rather an acquired taste. I admit I used to think they were dreadful - until halfway through my A-level History of Art course at school, when I was taught to look beyond the surface at what had inspired them. Some of them still remained pretty sickly, but at least I could understand them and what motivated the artist to paint them. This is what Paxman does throughout. He looks beyond the picture, to what inspired its creator, be it the social background, such as the appalling living conditions created by the industrial revolution, personal experience, or anything else. Take 'Work' by Ford Madox Brown, a large canvas which took 13 years to complete. The focal point is a couple of navvies digging a hole in the pavement, surrounded by beggars, children, street traders, a wealthy man and woman on horseback who have no need to work. If I was to describe the picture adequately, this would be a very long review.

The same goes for several other works which come under Paxman's analysis. He shows us pictures of crowds in everyday life, like Frith's 'Derby Day' and 'Ramsgate Sands', both of which seem to be telling several stories all at once, those driving home a moral message like Egg's trilogy 'Past and Present' and Hunt's 'The Awakening Conscience', history and battle scenes showing both the glories and the sheer horrors of war, Martin's huge apocalyptic works like 'The Great Day of his Wrath', prophesying the end of the world, and Richard Dadd's astonishing 'The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke', to name but a few.

(Dadd spent most of his life in a mental hospital after going berserk and killing his father, and created most of his pictures while he was locked up). With regard to the last, he admits that fairy painting can be viewed as very odd if not horribly unsettling - but maybe the Victorians found in them some kind of reassurance, the possibility of keeping alive a sense of faith, a belief that not everything could be discovered by the telescope or microscope. Every age has its dreams.

Sometimes that was all they had, one might think, when confronted with such a stark reminder of the age in Hardy's 'The Chimney Sweep'. Just a page away, the commentary tells us of the death of a child sweep, who suffocated at the age of 12 and was found to have lungs and windpipe full of black powder. This is not the book's only excursion into the highways and byways of social history. A section on paintings of children and family life is followed by a few paragraphs on the Poor Law of 1834, which led indirectly to the rise of 'baby farming' (women who would advertise to adopt babies from their mothers who could not afford to keep them, for a small fee, and then dispose of them). This resulted in the notorious case of Mrs Dyer, who 'adopted' and then murdered possibly up to fifty babies before she was convicted and hanged in 1896.

One of the things I found so enjoyable about Paxman's selection is that he chooses several familiar paintings by well-known names, alongside a number of obscure one I was meeting for the first time. If you visit one of the major national art galleries, there is a certain comfort in seeing something you know well, but it's equally fun to discover something for the first time. So it is with this book.

I've always loved art and been fascinated by the 19th century, so I'm probably not the most objective reviewer. Nevertheless, in my view Paxman is a superb author and presenter, and I think that anybody with an open mind who comes to this book totally uninterested in the subject will find themselves at least partly converted by the end.

Hardback, paperback or DVD

I have reviewed the hardback, which has pictures integrated with the text throughout. This has the advantage of placing paintings and relevant text side by side. A few days ago I saw a copy of the paperback, which is in smaller format and reproduces the plates in separate sections. Naturally a good deal cheaper, but not quite so practical. And although it may be beyond the scope of this review, the original TV programmes are also available on DVD (2 discs), for the same price as the hardback.