Finished composition of The King's Orchard in its frame. c.1857-58. Oil on canvas. 26 ½ x 21 inches (66 x 51 cm). Collection of Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber. Image courtesy of Philips Auctions. [Click on this and the following images to enlarge them.]
This painting was rejected by the Royal Academy in 1858, which John Ruskin found surprising, writing in his Academy Notes in 1858, although unaware at the time that it had been rejected: “He had another picture perfectly finished — and, though a little grotesque in fancy, exquisitely beautiful — The King‘s Garden: why has he not sent that?” (163). The painting was resubmitted and accepted for the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1859, no. 609. It was accompanied in the catalogue by these lines, unkindly printed as prose, from Robert Browning’s verse drama Pippa Passes, first published in 1841:
And songs tell how many a page
Pined for the grace of one so far above
His power of doing good to, as a queen –
"She never could be wronged; be poor" he sighed,
"For him to help her!"
Details from the painting. Left: The pageboy, playing a stringed instrument. Right: The little princess beside him, with the dog resting its head on her lap. [Notice also the exotic bird among the blossoms.]
This is the major version of this picture, initially in the collection of Thomas Edward Plint, but now, as noted above, in the collection of Andrew Lloyd Webber. However, there is another version, an oil sketch originally owned by James Hamilton Trist of Brighton, and now in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. This was exhibited at Ernest Gambart's French Gallery in 1861, no. 27.
Sketch for The King's Orchard, by Arthur Hughes (1832-1915). Oil on paper laid on panel. 11¼ x 11½ inches (28.6 x 29.2 cm). Collection of Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, accession no. 1509. Image courtesy of Fitzwilliam Museum under the terms of a Creative Commons License (BY-NC-ND).
The two works are similar but differ in significant details. Certainly the orchard shown in the background differs markedly in the two versions. The poses of the queen and her attendant and their outfits are very similar in both versions. The pose of the page, however, and his costume, as well as the stringed musical instrument he plays, differ markedly in the two designs. In the sketch the boy is seated on a rock looking forward towards the two girls, whereas in the finished composition he is seated on the ground, his eyes looking heavenwards and apparently deep in thought. His costume is much more elaborate here, too, with a crown embroidered on the right shoulder and his red cap lying on the ground at his feet. It appears that Hughes was pleased with the final composition, writing to his friend the Irish poet William Allingham on 16 May 1858: "Don't think you have seen my King's Orchard; best thing I have done yet I believe" (Roberts 141). Hughes later exhibited a watercolour version at the French Gallery in 1862.
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
Ruskin in his Academy Notes in 1859 praised its colour, and particularly the painting of the apple blossoms, while also pointing out what he considered to be its deficiencies:
The King's Orchard, A. Hughes. Mr. Hughes's exquisite sense of colour and delicacy of design are seen to less advantage than usual. He has been allowing himself to go astray by indulging too much in his chief delight of colour; and this picture, which was quite lovely when I saw it last year incomplete, is now throughout too gay, and wanting in sweetness of shade, but most accomplished and delicious in detached passages; and the apple-blossom, among all its ruddy rivals on the walls this year, is tenderly, but triumphantly, victorious — it is the only blossom which is soft enough in texture, or round enough in bud. There is the making of a magnificent painter in Mr. Hughes; but he must for some time yet stoop to conquer — be content with cottagers' instead of kings' orchards, and bow to the perhaps distressing but assured fact, that a picture can be no more wholly splendid than it can be wholly white. [233]
The critic of The Athenaeum found this picture poetic, but found the subject absurd and questioned Hughes's judgment in painting it:
Mr. A Hughes is quaint to affectation, and subtle to the extent of almost super-feminine feebleness; but he is brimming over with poetry, draws fairly and paints with a delicate sense of texture and colour. But though the imagination is potent, and of a most sweet quality, the judgement seems of a far inferior vintage. The Kings' Orchard (609), as telling the story of a page playing an extraordinary instrument, and in love with a queen, is ridiculous. It is just some children, lolling and resting from play in an orchard…. This is the most P.R.B. picture in the Academy (Mr. Millais being now one of the painters against time, and more intent on quantity than quality). It is full of poetry of a quaint and eccentric kind, and in its imitative painting is specially exquisite. But the drawing is crotchety and out of focus, and there is throughout it a general want of common sense and of that perception of the ridiculous that helps an artist out of all sorts of absurdities and incongruities. There is a fairy-story character about the beautifully painted rose velvet of the queen's cap and about her cloth-of-gold, striped robe, about the pink blossoms and the page's dress; but though there is a serene and magical beauty in the queen's face, in spite of its hard contoured outline, the greys in the page's face have run mouldy and wild. Will not artists remember that the outside world does not see grey at all in a face? There is no reason because one has thought out and learnt that there are such colours, that therefore faces should be painted all grey. Mr. Hughes has evidently not yet discovered whether outlines are distinct or sharp when looked at near. Half these modern discussions on such points resolve themselves into this. [617]
The critic of Blackwood's Magazine, when reviewing the London Exhibitions in 1859, was harshly critical of the Pre-Raphaelite works shown that year, with his initial complaint being about Millas's The Vale of Rest:
In like manner, we believe, such works as the Return from Marston Moore, by Mr. Wallis – Too Late, by Mr. Windus – and The King's Orchard, by Mr. Hughes – have for three long months attracted curiosity only to incite disgust or provoke to ridicule. Again we repeat we have full confidence that the verdict of the British public will be pronounced on the side of sobriety, sanity, and the modesty of nature. For a while the multitude may be misled. Wild eccentricity – even the unaccustomed strangeness of gross mannerism – may for the moment attract the public gaze, but in the end we again find devotion centre around the names which have long been worshipped – admiration again revert to those works of the old English school, which admits of progression while it decries revolution, and is now and ever content to walk humbly with nature, and submit to the teachings of an agent wisdom, [127]
The critic then goes on to savage Hughes's picture based on his following of Ruskin's teachings: "The same melancholy tale is told in other works.
The King's Orchard, by Mr. Hughes, is one of the saddest examples of intellect prostrated, and sound common-sense turned to ridicule, which has ever come within our notice. Apple-blossoms for a landscape, and dolls for the figures, may well convince Mr. Ruskin that one man at least has rightly understood the purport of his teachings. Thanks, we presume, to this manly tuition, the painter has here given us an art hopelessly emasculate; silks and velvets dotingly dotted with purposeless detail; childhood lifelessly lying on trunk of tree; youth crippled upon knees maundering mawkish music. This is the noble art which has at length been secured to our English school; this the fitting exponent of tinsel words and bauble eloquence – childhood hopelessly childish – impotent in body to play or to sport, and in mind incipient of idiocy. [132]
When the sketch for the picture was shown at the Winter Exhibition at Gambart's French Gallery in 1861 it was admired by F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum who found it both charming and delightful:
The Sketch for Mr. Arthur Hughes's picture, recently at the Royal Academy, styled The King's Orchard (27). Every one of these the visitor will gladly see again, and, for so much, thank the proprietors for the opportunity…. Mr. Hughes little study is fascinating in delicate and elegantly-arranged colour; the figure of the page sitting at the feet of the little queen, who reclines along the bent bough of an orchard tree, is indeed charming and delightful in every sense, – that other girl-queen herself, notwithstanding its disproportionally large head, is sweet and fair and fresh; while the landscape behind is such as children dream of when reading an old romance. The work suffers greatly from its position – in a narrow and half-lighted lobby. [692]
Bibliography
"Fine Arts. Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 1645 (7 May 1859): 617-18.
The King's Orchard. Art UK. Web. 5 March 2025
The King's Orchard. Fitzwilliam Museum. Web. 5 March 2025
"London Exhibitions – Conflict of the Schools." Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine LXXXVI (August 1859): 127-42.
Roberts, Len. Arthur Hughes His Life and Works. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club, 1997, cat. 35 and 35.2. 141-42.
Ruskin, John. "Academy Notes." The Works of John Ruskin XIV. Edited by E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. London: George Allen, 1904. 163 and 233.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. The Winter Exhibition." The Athenaeum No. 1778 (23 November 1861): 692-93.
Created 5 March 2025