The Test [? The Lesson]. Oil on canvas, 31 X 23 inches (79 X 58.5 cm). Collection of Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT, accession no. 1984.5.
There is some controversy as to whether this early work by Armstrong is The Test, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1865, no. 573, or The Lesson, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1867, no. 594. Although the painting is dated 1865, which would tend to favour the former, it closely fits contemporary descriptions of The Lesson. This picture seems transitional between Armstrong's works of social realism and his later purely Aesthetic Movement works. It features a tall middle-class woman with a classical hairstyle in a flowing green-black Medieval-inspired "Aesthetic" dress with a long string of pearls around her neck. She is shown leaning against a mantelpiece with an apple in her right hand and a book in her left. The room is very much an Aesthetic Movement interior. On the mantelpiece are accessories definitely inspired by the Aesthetic Movement – a late Ming blue and white dish, china beloved of Whistler and Rossetti, a large white Japanese 19th century charger, while peacock feathers droop out of a vase. Blue and white Delft tiles line the fireplace. The woman and the young girl are standing on a cheetah skin rug, similar to ones featured in the work of artists like Simeon Solomon or Albert Moore. The walls are decorated in the olive green and gold tones later satirised by Gilbert and Sullivan in their "greenery-yallery Grosvenor Gallery" line from the opera Patience from 1881 that mocked the Aesthetic Movement.
F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum was impressed by this work: "Mr. T. Armstrong's name is not well known, but should be more so on account of his picture The Lesson (594): a young mother, who, standing by a fireplace, with old plates upon its shelf, is teaching her little child. This artist has a dry, rather uncommon mode of painting, much good feeling for colour and nature in a very pretty order of expression" (697-98). The illustrated London News complained about the quality of draughtsmanship in the figures: "Two pictures by Mr. Armstrong, 'Peach Gathering' (486) and a domestic interior subject (594), afford a grateful relief to eyes fatigued with the general garishness of the exhibition by their quiet, unvulgar, greyish scale of coloring. The hues, however, have very little artistic harmony, and the ridiculously-thin figures are weakly drawn" (519)
Bibliography
"Fine Arts. Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Illustrated London News L (May 25, 1867): 519.
"Nineteenth Century European Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture" . London: Sotheby's (November 22, 1983): lot 55.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 2065 (May 25, 1867): 697-98.
Created 19 March 2023