After the Party, by John Brett ARA (1831-1902)

After the Party

John Brett, RA (1831-1902)

25 November 1859

Pen and ink (with some discolouration)

3.5 ins x 4.5 inches

Private collection, by descent from Daisy Watson, John Brett's eldest daughter

This exquisite pen and ink sketch is inscribed in the author's own hand. [Commentary continues below. Mouse over the text for links.]

Photograph, caption and commentary by Mike Hickox; formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the Victorian Web and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite it in a print one.]

Small as it is, the sketch shows the variety of Brett's work in his Pre-Raphaelite period. Looking at his long career as a whole, art-lovers generally see Brett as a painter of landscapes and seascapes, and of a handful of major Pre-Raphaelite works such as The Stonebreaker (RA exhibited 1858). However he was also an accomplished portrait artist, who, says Christiana Payne, had been "working to establish himself as a figure and portrait painter" in the mid-1850s (Payne and Brett 30). Since his portraits have largely remained within his family attention has only been paid to them in recent years.

This work should be associated with a number of other fine pen and ink figure studies he made a little later, in the winter of 1858-59, when he was "working intensively on the human figure" (Payne and Brett 53). In particular, at this time "he made many drawings, mostly in pen and ink, of women engaged in various domestic activities" (Payne and Sumner 20). He seems to have been experimenting with different styles after the failure of Val D'Aosta to find a buyer, despite being praised by Ruskin, after the 1859 Royal Academy Exhibition. Although he had good things to say about Val D'Aosta, Ruskin had also criticised it for its lack of feeling. In this new sketch, with its figure study and sense of a story being told, Brett seems to be trying to redress the balance. It anticipates Brett's next RA exhibit The Hedger (RA exhibited 1860) which includes several studies of children in a wooded landscape.

Related Material

Title in Brett's handwriting, below a fold in the left-hand corner

Bibliography

Payne, Christiana, and Charles Brett. John Brett: Pre-Raphaeliite Landscape Painter. New Haven and London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Yale University Press, 2010 (see particularly Chapter 4, "Aspiring figure painter")

Payne, Christiana, and Ann Sumner. Objects of Affection: Pre-Raphaelite Portraits by John Brett. Barber Institute of Fine Arts, 2010.

Created 28 August 2021