We needed to trace the article in Apollo magazine by Amanda Kavanagh that the curator at Yale had advised us to read. When eventually we found it – ‘Robert Bateman: A True Victorian’ – it proved to be a watershed in our search for both the artist and the man. The author had clearly undertaken wide-ranging research in a serious attempt to pick up the challenge posed by Basil Taylor twenty-two years earlier. Since the article was published in September 1989, at the same time as The Last Romantics exhibition at the Barbican that featured The Pool of Bethesda and The Dead Knight, we supposed it was a response to the interest in Bateman created by that exposure. She had succeeded in bringing together a larger body of paintings on which to make a critical assessment of his work. In fact, we were soon to discover that almost all later references to Bateman, artistic and biographical, were sourced from this one article which was repeatedly quoted in subsequent years.
Of the pictures illustrated, the portrait of Caroline Bateman was the most instantly intriguing, as we had already learned so much about it and were shortly to see the original (fig. 24). Of course, by now we were as interested in the woman Robert had married as in the painting itself. The initial impression was one of dignified formality, both in the subject and the pictorial organisation of the image. Despite the large classical urn and the distant falling landscape, Caroline’s figure and personality effortlessly dominated the canvas. She was an impressive and formidably attractive woman, of whom the artist was perhaps a little in awe. Kavanagh’s text gave a possible reason for this: ‘In 1883 Robert married Caroline Octavia Howard, daughter of the Very Rev. the Hon. Henry Edward Howard, Dean of Lichfield, son of the fifth Earl of Carlisle’.
By any standards, this was a daunting social connection in Victorian England. Caroline’s grandparents were not only earls and countesses, but the owners of one of the greatest country house estates in Britain: Castle Howard. This might explain her intensely composed, aristocratic demeanour in the portrait. But the other factual information threw little light on either her or Robert:
She had been married previously to the Reverend Charles Wilbraham, but he had died in 1879. The Wilbrahams of Rode Hall were near neighbours and close friends of the Batemans. Robert’s elder brother John had married Rev. Charles Wilbraham’s sister, the Hon. Jesse Caroline Bootle Wilbraham, in 1865.
The implication was that the marriage was the predictable, late union of a rector’s widow and a bachelor of forty-one from the same provincial milieu, presumably to provide familiar, comfortable companionship to each other as they advanced into middle age. It also appeared that from the time of his marriage in 1883, Robert did not actually live at Biddulph Old Hall.
Robert and Caroline spent the first years of their marriage at Benthall Hall, a beautiful sixteenth-century house in Shropshire, where he painted the imposing portrait of his wife which he exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1886, set within a gentle vista, probably inspired by the view of the Severn from Benthall Edge. Caroline Octavia Bateman stands against a classical stone urn, her formidable presence matched only by the austere elegance of her attire, in a manner reminiscent of Reynolds’s most grandiose portraits.
Around 1910 the Batemans moved to Nunney, near Frome, Somerset. According to the Somerset Standard, Robert indulged his enthusiasm for bowling:
His first work at Nunney was to make a bowling green in his own garden which necessitated a considerable amount of blasting and an extensive alteration to the garden. This he did in order that all the young men at Nunney, who so wished, might play bowls there every Saturday afternoon and this amateur bowling club continued until the war made it impossible.
A photograph of Robert holding a silver trophy, flanked by waistcoated bowling enthusiasts (fig. 79), reinforced the impression of comfortable, middle-class respectability which seemed slightly at odds with Caroline’s commanding portrait. Kavanagh strengthened the impression of complacent domesticity by her assessment of Robert:
Despite the undeniable quality of Bateman’s artistic talent, his attitude was that of a dilettante who dabbled similarly in architecture, horticulture and sculpture with considerable degrees of success.
This implied his circumstances might have been too comfortable to enforce the necessary discipline to realise his full potential. However, having established Robert as the relaxed artistic dabbler, it came as a surprise that she chose to end the article by describing Robert’s love for Caroline as the defining inspiration of his life:
Throughout his life Robert Bateman was inspired by the love of his wife; they both bravely bore grave illness, but after the death of Caroline on 30 July 1922, Robert relinquished his struggle to survive and succumbed to the anguish of his irreparably broken heart a few days later on 4 August 1922.
Nothing in the piece had prepared us for the emotional intensity of this conclusion, except that the person it portrayed seemed infinitely more plausible as the creator of the disquieting images that illustrated the article than the bowls-mad country squire and the middle-aged vicar’s widow. Clearly, if we were to understand Robert and his work, we needed to know far more about his relationship with the fabulous figure in the portrait, whose death he was unable to survive by more than a few days.
Before our meeting with Richard Dorment, the owner of Caroline’s portrait, we needed to get some understanding of the wider context of Robert’s life as a late Pre-Raphaelite painter, and his place in the ferment of conflicting ideas that made up the mid-Victorian art world. Kavanagh’s article described his association with a recognised group of young artists, who exhibited their work at the Dudley Gallery, which came to be associated with an avant-garde style of painting and choice of subject. She identified The Dead Knight as a quintessential example of the Dudley Gallery style, quoting a contemporary source, The Art Journal, of 1869:
The Dudley style of landscape is, like the figure painting, a little peculiar . . . for the most part, indeed, there is in these Dudley landscapes dreaminess instead of definiteness and smudginess in place of sentiment . . . landscapes of a peculiar impressiveness, either from a woolly touch or a thin dusky wash, which may be supposed symbolic of poetry . . .
So ‘Dudley’ had come to define both a style of painting and the technical means by which it was executed. The influence of Burne-Jones upon the Dudley group and the distaste for both that was felt by the art establishment was made clear in The Art Journal of 1870:
Mr Burne-Jones in the Old Water Colour Society stands alone: he has in this room no followers; in order to judge how degenerate this style may become in the hands of disciples, it is needful to take a walk to the Dudley Gallery.
However, The Dead Knight seems to be stylistically isolated from the others illustrated in the article, both by its near-abstract subject and its relaxed, impressionistic execution. If this is a ‘quintessential’ Dudley Gallery style painting, the others seem far removed from it. For example, the black-and-white illustration of another oil painting dated 1879 entitled Heloise and Abelard was much more closely related to the disciplined precision of The Pool of Bethesda and to Caroline’s portrait.
Plucking Mandrakes, which Richard Dorment had mentioned to us, was almost a hybrid work between the two contrasting styles: the overall design is much less formalised, and the wooded background and pale sky recall The Dead Knight. However, the figures, engaged in their strange ritualistic activity, dominate the canvas and are wonderfully rendered as solid, three-dimensional forms overlaid with animated swirling fabric that adds a slightly stylised, almost art-nouveau panache (fig. 25). We were intrigued by this versatility of technique which Robert seemed able to adapt at will to convey the essence of the highly eclectic range of subjects that he wanted to portray.
Fig. 25. Robert Bateman, Women Plucking Mandrakes, 1870, body colour on paper laid on canvas, 31.2 × 45.8 cm, Wellcome Foundation, London.
The critique of this work from The Art Journal of 1870 indicated that contemporaries perceived the Dudley exhibitors as a disturbing and loosely coherent entity, with Bateman a leading figure among them:
These Dudley people are proverbially peculiar. Thus it would be hard to find anywhere talent associated with greater eccentricity than in the clever yet abnormal creations of Walter Crane, Robert Bateman and Simeon Solomon . . . ‘Plucking Mandrakes’ recalls a description in the works of Sir Thomas Browne, which recount how the mandrake shrieks when drawn from its roots. There is evidently much mystery in this process as depicted by Bateman, and this picture, in its form, action, colour removed as they are from common life and ordinary experience, is significant of something beyond the usual colours of nature. Though not wholly satisfactory, we hail with gladness the advent of an art which reverts to historic associations and carries the mind back to older times when painting was the twin sister of poetry.
The Kavanagh article illustrated three other works. One was an oil exhibited in 1900 which has an altogether less challenging feel. Entitled At Romsey Abbey, it portrays a small boy asleep beneath a portion of the ancient abbey walls with a relief sculpture of a crucifix set into it (fig. 26). For the first time in Bateman’s work, this picture came perilously near to the sentimentality I had been frightened of at the outset. But every example of his work was valuable if we were to understand his story. We wondered if the late date might provide a clue to the change of intensity in this picture – by 1900 Robert was approaching sixty.
The other two pictures were each fascinating in a different way. Two anthropomorphic studies of ravens strike a disconcerting, almost sinister note (figs. 27, 28). There is no attempt to mitigate the slightly forbidding associations attached to these uncompromisingly black birds. They are presented on a floor of stone slabs, only relieved by Robert’s initials carved into their surface. Although these works bear the comparatively late date of 1889, there is no relieving prettiness or sentimentality here: it is clearly the meticulously delineated birds that interest the artist. The only hint of a narrative is that one of the birds is in prime condition, its wings and body feathers sleek and groomed, its head raised, eating a nut with its tiny beady eye bright and animated; the other is dishevelled, all its feathers ragged with an area of its head and neck apparently almost bald. It has one damaged wing hanging limply to the ground and its dull unfocused eye is starkly contrasted to the gimlet brightness of its companion, expressing the weariness of pain or great age. The choice of subject may be peculiar, but the austere clarity of the images and their meticulous precision relate these pictures stylistically to The Pool of Bethesda and the portrait of Caroline.
Fig. 26. Robert Bateman, At Romsey Abbey, 1899, oil on panel, 40.6 × 30.5 cm, private collection.
Figs. 27, 28. Robert Bateman, Two Ravens, 1889, oil on canvas, 40.6 × 20.3 cm, private collection.
The underlying characteristic of all these pictures, regardless of the range of subject and varied technique, is that they all produce a strange sense of unease in the viewer. Whether this was consciously intended by Robert when he set about the paintings or was an innate part of his personality, expressing itself involuntarily in his work, is impossible to know. His figures, be they lovers or angels, ravens or women performing rituals, dogs with dead knights or even his beloved Caroline, seem pre occupied, detached from their outward surroundings, distracted and inhabiting an inner world dominated by their own thoughts, prayers or memories. Their surroundings, be they architectural or beautifully rendered landscapes, serve only to enhance this haunting sense of isolation.
The last picture in the Kavanagh article was a flower painting, Wild Geranium and Great Master Wort (fig. 29). This did not have quite the same imaginative intensity as his other paintings. Kavanagh quoted Crane’s opinion that ‘Bateman was the most remarkable draughtsman of flowers, among moderns, I have ever seen, after the best Japanese work’. Judging by the black-and-white photograph, it is certainly a wonderfully skilful piece of work. As Kavanagh put it:
In this work of exquisite simplicity, he captures the pure beauty of the wild and wispy bloom, while his depiction of the exhibition label and tube of pigment contribute a capricious touch and allude to his profession as a painter.
Fig. 29. Robert Bateman, Wild Geranium and Great Master Wort, 1883, oil on canvas, 40.6 × 30.4 cm, private collection.
This endearing component of the painting reveals an entirely new and unsuspected aspect of Robert’s character. Without disturbing the spare clarity of the overall design, he incorporated a label attached by string to the neck of the vase which proves to be an advertisement for the fact that the painting is on sale at the Grosvenor Gallery. Nearby, but again so subtly handled that one could look at the painting without really taking it in, is a half-used tube of oil paint. At first one’s attention is drawn to the exquisitely painted flowers and vase, and only later does one register the label and the paint. By referencing the grubby world of money, and the messy process of painting, they gently poke fun at the rarefied sensibilities of the arbiters of the fine art world, among whom this refined image so clearly belongs.
This is a new Bateman, at odds with the purveyor of poetic pathos and implied internalised conflict. Here, suddenly, the flawless technique is the partner of an impish sense of humour, not afraid to make fun of its own preciousness – a most unusual trait, especially for gifted artists in mid-Victorian England. Could it be that this mellowness was related to the date prominently incised on the stone wall in the background of the picture, 1883, the year of his marriage to Caroline?
One other painting, apparently lost, came in for special mention in the article. This was titled variously The Witch of Endor or The Raising of Samuel. Apparently never sold, it was in the artist’s house at Nunney Delamere at his death in 1922. His obituary in the Somerset Standard described it as ‘his most famous picture . . . Its technique is superb and it well deserves the notoriety given to it.’ This judgement was endorsed by Walter Crane who identified its importance when he remarked:
His best-known picture is perhaps ‘The Witch of Endor’ which was in the Royal Acadamy Exhibition. It is a very weird and powerful scene of the Raising of Samuel and is worked out with extraordinary invention and detail.
If this was his masterpiece – and the fact that he elected to keep it with him all his life suggested he might have considered it to be so – it must have been a remarkable piece of work. Had it rivalled or surpassed The Pool of Bethesda? If so, it seems surprising that it has not survived, even in the dangerous years between the wars when the Pre-Raphaelites were ridiculed or ignored.
The remainder of Amanda Kavanagh’s article was largely taken up with Robert’s other interests of gardening, architecture and sculpture, in support of her underlying thesis that he was able to pursue these enthusiasms at will, as he was supported by private means. She produced no real evidence for the architecture, but claimed that he had made a new garden at Benthall. In the case of the sculpture, we were intrigued and uncertain. In support of his prowess, she described and illustrated a large stone frog, supposedly made in his youth and still in the gardens at Biddulph Grange. We had heard this story before, so had put it to the curator there – he told us that they had proof that the frog was not created by Robert, but by Waterhouse Hawkins.
We had been disappointed by this, as we had four pieces of carving at the Old Hall which we thought might be by him. Two were coats of arms, not particularly skilfully executed. One represented the Bateman family and the other the Staniers. Since the Staniers had never lived in the house, it seems unlikely that they put their crest on the building. However, we now knew that during their entire period of ownership the Staniers had only had one tenant, Robert Bateman. It therefore seems highly probable that Robert executed both coats of arms as well as two other, more interesting, pieces of sculpture on the building. The first of these takes the form of a small grotesque face with a gaping mouth that gives access to a recess in the stone behind it (fig. 30). The other is a well-rendered lizard or salamander, clinging to the stonework of the wall and peering into a square recess from which a baby lizard looks warily out (fig. 31).
Kavanagh had of course known nothing of Robert’s association with the Old Hall. The fact that she discussed only the (wrongly attributed) frog made us wonder if there were any other known sculptures by him. If not, it was just possible that we owned the only four pieces of his sculpture to have survived. With what we were discovering about the working of Robert’s imagination, it did seem plausible that these faintly sinister little pieces were his.
Fig. 30. A typical Bateman grotesque head
Fig. 31. sinister salamanders, both by Robert Bateman at Biddulph Old Hall.
Since Kavanagh’s article of 1989, there had been no further published material specifically on Bateman. The two Apollo articles appeared to represent the only serious attempt to rehabilitate him. Kavanagh’s aim of re-evaluating his reputation was only partly successful, perhaps because the biographical material she uncovered was so slight and conventional in nineteenth-century terms that he remained an opaque and insubstantial figure with little personal or artistic context. This had led her to headline her article ‘Robert Bateman: a True Victorian’, indicating that she had come to see him as a highly gifted individual, socially and financially secure, who had applied his abilities and enquiring mind across a wide field of activities, while remaining fundamentally within the conventional middle-class religious and social structures of Victorian England. She acknowledged that he was elusive and difficult to categorise when she concluded:
While it is possible to describe Robert Bateman as a ‘Forgotten Pre-Raphaelite’ and one of the ‘Last Romantics’ of the late Victorian and early Edwardian era, his works are characterised by a cryptic choice of subject matter, a peculiarity of imagination, and an acuity of observation which defy simple categorisation.
Something in this conclusion made us uneasy. The ‘True Victorian’ seemed hard to reconcile with the disquieting quality of his images, just as the bald facts of his marriage to Caroline gave no sense of the intensity of their relationship. Certainly he was interested in architecture, sculpture, gardening, bowls and a dozen other things, but this did not explain what inspired him to conceive and execute highly original images of haunting beauty and emotional intensity in paint.
Why, as a man described in his obituary as ‘six feet four inches in height and with a profile that would have become a Grecian statue’, did he not marry and settle down as a comfortable paterfamilias in his country house until he was over forty, and then chose a woman three years older than himself and therefore unable to bear him children, if he was a ‘true Victorian’?
Where had he been before that?
It mattered because most of the pictures we had seen were from the 1870s, well before his marriage in 1883. If we were to find the answers to these questions we needed to move beyond the Apollo articles and see what we could find.
Fig. 32. Robert Bateman, Reading of Love, HE Being By, 1874, pencil and watercolour with gum arabic, heightened with touches of body colour and scratching out, 25.4 × 34.3 cm, private collection.
