If the landscape foretells little concerning the future of the artist, the figures standing on the brink of the quarry, the elder with her arm placed lovingly and protectingly round the neck of the younger, whilst they watch the martins rejoicing in the warm summer evening, are eminently suggestive of the success which Mrs. Allingham was to achieve in the addition of figures to landscape composition.
10. THE OLD MEN’S GARDENS, CHELSEA HOSPITAL
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. Charles Churchill.
Painted 1876.
Contemporary criticism is not, as a rule, palatable to an artist, for amongst the varied views which the art critics bring to their task there are always to be found some that are not seen from the same standpoint as his. Besides, for some occult reason, the balance always trends in the direction of fault-finding rather than praise, probably because it is so much the easier, for work always has and will have imperfections that are not difficult to distinguish. But in the case of the water-colour before us the critics’ chorus must have been very exhilarating to the young artist, especially as, at the time of its exhibition at the Royal Water-Colour Society, in the spring of 1877, she was by no means in good health. The Spectator, for instance, wrote that artists would have to look to their laurels when ladies began to paint in a manner little inferior to Walker. The Athenæum gave it the exceptional length of a column, considering it “one of the few pictures by which the exhibition in question would be remembered.” Tom Taylor in the Times wrote as follows:—
Of all the newly associated figure painters there is none whose work has more of the rare quality that inspires interest than Mrs. Allingham. She has only two drawings here, a pretty little child’s head and a large and exquisitely finished composition, “The Old Men’s Gardens, Chelsea Hospital,” where some hundred and forty little garden plots are parcelled out among as many of the old pensioners, each of whom is free to follow his own fancies in his gardening.
In the hush of a calm summer evening, two graceful girls in white dresses accept a nosegay from one of the veterans, a Guardsman of the vieille cour, by his look and bearing. All around are plots of sweet, bright flowers all aglow with variegated petals. Here and there under the shade of the old trees sit restful groups of the old veterans, with children about them; one little fellow reverentially lifts and examines one of the medals on a war-worn breast. Behind, the thickly-clothed fronds of a drooping ash spread to the declining sun, and the level roofs of the old Hospital rise ruddy against the warm and cloudless sky. No praise can be too high for the exquisiteness with which the flowers are drawn, coloured, and combined, or for the skill with which they are blended into an artistic whole with the suggestive and graceful group in the foreground. The drawing deserves to take its place as a pendant of Walker’s “Haven of Rest.”
It is curious that all the critics seem to have misinterpreted the main meaning of the artist’s motive, namely, that whilst the Pensioners naturally, in the first place, wish to sell their posies, they are always ready to give them to those who cannot afford to buy. The well-to-do ladies are purchasing the flowers, the little group of mother, boy, and baby, on the right, who can ill afford to buy, are having a posy graciously offered to them. The drawing represented Mrs. Allingham at the Jubilee Exhibition in Manchester, 1887, and the Loan Water-Colour Exhibition at the Guildhall, London, in 1896. It is of the large size, for this artist’s work, of 25 inches by 15 inches.
11. THE CLOTHES-LINE
From the Water-colour in the possession of Miss James.
Painted 1879.
How considerable and rapid an advance now took place in Mrs. Allingham’s powers may be seen from the two drawings which are dated two years later, namely, in 1879. In figure draftsmanship there is no comparison between the timid and haltingly painted children of “The Sand-Martins’ Haunt” and the seated baby in “The Clothes-Line.” In the first the capacity to draw was no doubt present, but the power to express it through the medium of water-colour was as yet unacquired. But after two years’ study, knowledge is present in its fulness, and from now onwards the only changes in Mrs. Allingham’s work are a greater precision, breadth, facility of handling, and harmony of colour. The figure of the woman still smacks somewhat too much of the studio, and she is a lady-like model,[7] certainly not the type one would expect to see hanging out the washing of such a clearly limited and humble wardrobe as in this case. The figure again detaches itself too much from the rest of the picture, and Mrs. Allingham, we are sure, would now never introduce such a jarring note as the scarlet and primrose handkerchief, to which Mr. Ruskin objected at the time it was painted. The blanket, clothes-line, clothes-basket, and other accessories are painted with a minuteness which was an admirable prelude to the breadth that was to follow; but are singularly constrained in comparison with the yellow gorse bushes, most difficult of any shrubs to limn, but which here are noteworthy for unusual easiness of touch. Even with these qualifications the picture is a delightful one, replete with grace and beauty, and complete in its portrayal of the little incident of the baby, a less robust little body than Mrs. Allingham would now paint, capturing as many of the clothes-pegs that her mother needs as her small fingers and arms can embrace.
