The Bunch of Blue Ribbons
Sir Edward John Poynter, PRA RWS
Royal Academy, 1862, no. 144
Oil on canvas
21 1/4 x 17 inches
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Commentary by Rupert Maas
This is an early work, one of the first that he exhibited at the Royal Academy of a total of 147 in a long career that ended with him as President, painted before he adopted the neo-classical subjects for which he began to be known three years later. The painting was described by his close friend, the cartoonist George du Maurier: "... out & out the best thing he has painted, hung below the line. Modern subject.". Hanging below the line (of sight) at the Royal Academy was not quite as bad as being 'skied', but it was often the fate of younger artists trying to make their name. Poynter and du Maurier had become friends when they met as students, together with Whistler, at the atelier of Gleyre in Paris.
Whistler and Poynter, very opposite characters, were portrayed in Trilby, du Maurier's popular novel of Parisian bohemian life, as Joe Sibley "the idle apprentice", and Lorrimer "the industrious apprentice", respectively. Whistler, after the Ruskin libel trial, thoroughly denied that British painting had had any influence on his work, but in the 60s the cross-currents of ideas about art between France and Britain, many originating from the far East, were extremely complex. Whistler was as susceptible as any other young artist to these influences, rather more so indeed than Poynter, but ...Blue Ribbons is out of the same tilth of ideas as Whistler's Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl, of 1864.
The face in the mirror seems not exactly the face before it, as if Poynter (like Velasquez in The Rokeby Venus) had wished to use the mirror not simply to reflect, but as a device to show a different face, perhaps seen through the mirror rather than in it. Another interesting comparison is with the amateur photography of Lady Clementina Hawarden (1822-65). Lady Hawarden has the reputation of being a 'modern' photographer before her time. In the many photographs of her daughters posed beside mirrors, the real and the reflected are shown side by side, which seems like a commentary on the photographic illusion itself. About this time (1860) photographs were described as "magic mirrors for the reflective man". These photographs also suggest the idea of the double, or doppelganger.
The play of light in Poynter's picture is cleverly contrived, outlining the figure contre-jour and lighting the reflection in the mirror fully, contrasting with the brighter light under the frame, and the light seen through the coloured glass, which, with the ribbon and the earrings provide several coups d'oeil in a subtly muted study.
References
The Maas Gallery. Exhibition catalogue. London, 2007. Catalogue no. 20.
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Last modified 23 June 2007