An Incident in the Life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary [The Renunciation of St. Elizabeth of Hungary], by James Collinson (1825-1881). Pen and ink over traces of pencil within brown ink borders, on paper; 11 7/8 x 17 3/4 inches (30.4 x 45.2 cm). Collection of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, accession no. 1929P38. Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust, Creative Commons 0 - Public Domain.
Drawings by Collinson are extremely rare so it is highly significant that this preliminary working drawing from 1850 for Collinson's most important Pre-Raphaelite painting has survived. The finished painting, in general, follows the compositional drawing closely although there are significant differences in the costumes of the principal figures in the foreground, in the background figures, and in the background itself. The gothic tiles in the floor are quite different being modelled on Minton Victorian tiles in the painting. It is therefore instructive to compare the drawing and painting side by side to see the modifications Collinson made in the finished painting. One of the more glaring differences is that the crown St. Elizabeth took off during her "renunciation" is given much more emphasis in the drawing. Alastair Grieve has pointed out other difference:
Again there is greater stress on "mortified flesh" in the design than in the painting. For example the bare upturned feet of the prostrated female in the foreground of the drawing are covered up in the painting and the skimpy loin-cloth on the statue of the crucified Christ is also extended. In his design Collinson surely goes out of his way to emphasize the "Popish" ritual and furnishings of the mediaeval church – Holy Water stoop, statues of the Virgin, Christ, and the Saints, stained-glass, a tomb with a Latin inscription urging prayers for the dead, and a Mass in progress in the background. [38]
Colin Cruise felt that "through artistic sincerity the artist might approach a sincerity of religious feeling" (63).
Closer view of the figures on the left.
Ronald Parkinson has also detailed differences between the drawing and the finished painting:
The composition of the drawing is very similar to that of the painting, but there are important differences in the details of the architecture and the figures. The most noticeable change is the greater concealment of certain of the figures' anatomy with drapery – particularly the covering of the soles of the feet of the kneeling figure in the left foreground – perhaps following the adverse criticism of Millais' Christ in the House of his Parents in 1850. The angularity of the drawing is considerably softened in the painting, particularly in the faces, and the drapery folds, and the exaggeratedly pointed footwear worn by the courtiers on the right is curtailed. [250]
Closer view of the figures on the right.
The drawing style Collinson has used is typical of the "strained, awkward and naïve style" of early drawings by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the period 1848-50 (Grieve 25). Cruise thought the linear style adopted by Collinson was "similar to that used for the outline illustrations to Anna Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art (1848) as well as Lasinio's Campo Santo engravings and Retzsch's outline designs for texts by Shakespeare and Goethe" (63). Collinson's drawing has much more internal shading, however, than many of these drawings in the so-called "outline" style. This type of "mediaeval" drawings with their awkward strained gestures and intense expressions on the figures may have originated in the style of drawings being produced for the Cyclographic Society even prior to the formal formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. Collinson is known to have produced a drawing The Novitiate to a Nunnery in 1848 for the Cyclographic Society, but this drawing is unfortunately untraced so it is unknown what it looked like stylistically.
Link to Related Material
- An Incident in the Life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary (The Renunciation of Queen Elizabeth of Hungary)
Bibliography
Cruise, Colin. Pre-Raphaelite Drawing. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2012.
Grieve, Alastair. "Style and Content in Pre-Raphaelite Drawings 1848-50." in Leslie Parris Ed. Pre-Raphaelite Papers. London: Tate Gallery Publications, 1984. 23-43.
An Incident in the Life of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary - Compositional Study. Birmingham Museums. Wed. 2 March 2024.
Parkinson, Ronald. The Pre-Raphaelites. London: Tate Gallery Publications, 1984, cat. 169, 250.
Created 2 March 2024