Answering the Emigrant's Letter [The Reply], by James Collinson (1825-1881). 1850. Oil on panel. 27 5/8 x 35 7/8 inches (70.1 x 91.2 cm). Collection of the Manchester Art Gallery, accession no. 1966.179. Reproduced under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND).
Answering the Emigrant's Letter was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850, no. 448, and then later at the National (Free) Institution of Fine Arts at the Portland Gallery in 1851, no. 93, now entitled The Reply. This was the first of Collinson's exhibited works to deal with a current social issue, in this case emigration. Alastair Grieve noted that, in fact, this was the first Pre-Raphaelite modern-life subject to be exhibited (21). It was still painted in his David Wilkie style, although Collinson's attention to detail was influenced Pre-Raphaelitism. The painting depicts a family, including three young children and a baby, sitting in a humble cottage with the light coming through from a window to the right. The father holds a letter in his left hand and a map of South Australia is laid out on the table before him and extending onto his lap. The mother holds the baby on her lap while the family dog is stretched out at her feet. The oldest boy with a pen in his right hand is answering the letter from a family member or friend that has previously emigrated, while his two siblings look intently on. Collinson's choice of a modern life subject may have been prompted by ideas circulating within the circle of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1850. As Grieve has noted: "In March of that year in the third number of their magazine The Germ, now renamed Art and Poetry, their friend John Tupper asked 'If, as a poet, every painter, every sculptor will acknowledge, his best and most original ideas are derived from his own times: if his great lessonings to piety, truth, charity, love, honour, honesty, gallantry, generosity, courage, are derived from the same source; why transfer them to distant periods, and make them 'not things of today?'" (21).
The progress of this work was discussed in W. M. Rossetti's Diary of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and it is a fascinating account of its slow and meticulous advancement. On 8 October 1849 he writes: "Collinson, to whom I went in the evening, is getting on with his Emigrant's Letter. He has done a considerable part of the window and its adjuncts, finishing up the trees outside to a pitch of the extremist minuteness, and he is advanced with the heads of the boy writing and the girl. He has made a sketch in colour for the picture, and has introduced another boy looking over the one writing" (18). On 9 October he writes: "Collinson called, and says he has done about 20 leaves to the ash-tree in his picture and gone on a little with the bushes in the background" (18). On November 12 he writes: "Collinson has been painting on the head and figure of the man in his picture" (25). On November 15 he mentions, "a little boy Collinson discovered some time ago and whom he has painted in his Emigrant's Letter" (26). On December 10 Rossetti writes: Collinson has done a good deal to the head and figure of the man in his picture of the Emigrant's Letter, to the little girl, and to the boy looking on" (30). On December 28 he records: "Collinson, who was at Gabriel's study, is still at his painting of The Pensioner, and expects to have both it and the Emigrant's Letter ready for the Academy" (37). An entry for 2 March 1850, however, suggests Collinson was becoming nervous about finishing his painting on time: "Gabriel and I went to Collinson's. He is getting apprehensive that he may at last find himself unable to finish his picture of the Emigrant's Letter for the Academy, and seems almost inclined to set about some very small work. He has done a great deal of the background and accessories in his picture, and the figures of the man and three children are considerably advanced" (59). On March 6 Rossetti visited Collinson and wrote: "Collinson, having got pretty well over his illness, has resumed painting, and was engaged on the woman's dress when I came in. He thinks he may yet find himself able to send it into the Academy. After this year he has made up his mind to cut the Wilkie style of Art for the Early Christian" (60). On March 22 he writes: "I went to see Collinson, whom I found quite recovered from his recent illness, and in working trim. His picture is now pretty nearly finished with the exception of accessories. He has repainted the head of the woman (from Miss Norton), and done her figure; and had finished the head of the man and the 2 boys; he has had a sitting too for the baby, – of course almost as good as useless" (65). On 25 March Rossetti again called on Collinson and discovered that the artist had "finished the woman's head in his picture" (66). On 7 April Rossetti wrote: "Collinson came in, and says he's done a vast amount of work since I saw his picture last. He has had a first painting at a dog, which [he] is now unable to get again, will have to finish up entirely without nature" (69).
Collinson obviously did finish his picture in time to submit to the Royal Academy in 1850 where it was accepted but hung so high up as to make difficult to appreciate.
When the picture was shown at the Royal Academy a critic for The Art Journal praised its handling: "No. 448. Answering the Emigrants Letter, J. Collinson. There are numerous figures in this work, which seems to have been very carefully studied throughout. The question of correspondence is sufficiently evident, but it is impossible to determine that the family council is held on the subject of a letter to an emigrant" (173).
W. M. Rossetti in The Critic complained that the work was hung so high at the Royal Academy as to make it impossible to appreciate its fine qualities:
Mr. Collinson has reason to complain of the hangers. His former works entitled him to consideration; and his Answering the Emigrants Letter (448) of this year shows – what, however, nothing short of an opera glass will reveal – an advance in executive skill, some portions being painted with extraordinary delicacy. Besides this, the subject is of so unostentatious a description, as evidently to require to be fully seen in all the detail of its rendering in order to be at all appreciated. A contemporary observes that there are no means of determining that the letter is being written to an emigrant; but a microscopic investigation would have satisfied him that the principal figure holds a map of the district: and from this the inference is obvious. Many nice gradations of incident and character have been here condemned to oblivion. [381]
When the picture was later exhibited at the National Institution in 1851 a critic for The Art Journal would have preferred it had it been more broadly handled: "No. 93. 'The Reply,' J. Collinson. The reply appears to be a letter to Australia, written by a boy, the son of a cottager or small farmer, in answer to one received. The work exhibits everywhere the most minute manipulation, but as this does not appear without a microscopic examination, we submit that a better end had been answered by a more generous touch" (139). W. M. Rossetti writing in The Spectator spent most of his time discussing Collinson's An Incident in the Life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Collinson's most important Pre-Raphaelite painting, and mentions The Reply only in passing, noting that Collinson was capable of more than just painting genre scenes: "The appearance here of The Reply (93), hung but not exhibited last year at the Royal Academy, reminds us too that the present [St. Elizabeth] is Mr. Collinson's first attempt in a new and arduous style: assuredly he will not need to fall back on the 'domestic' repository through inability to transcend it" (377).
Bibliography
Answering the Emigrant's Letter. Art UK. Web. 1 March 2024.
Grieve, Alastair. The Art of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 2. The Pre-Raphaelite Modern-Life Subject. Norwich: Real Life Publications, 1976.
"The National Institution." The Art-Journal New Series III (1 May 1851), 138-40.
Newall, Christopher. Victorian Pictures. London: Sotheby's (2 November 1994): lot 163, 88-90.
Newman, Helen D. James Collinson (aka "The Dormouse"). Foulsham: Reuben Books, 2016. 89-90.
Peattie, Roger W. "W. M. Rossetti's Reviews of James Collinson." The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies V, no. 2, (May 1985): 100.
Rossetti, William Michael. "Fine Arts. Exhibition of the National Institution." The Spectator XXIV (19 April 1851): 377-78.
Rossetti, William Michael. The P.R. B. Journal. William Michael Rossetti's Diary of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood 1849-1853. Edited by William E. Fredeman. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1975.
"The Royal Academy." The Art Journal XII (1 June 1850): 165-78.
"The Royal Academy." The Critic IX (1 August 1850): 381.
Created 29 February 2024