The Choice of Paris: An Idyll
Florence Anne Claxton (c.1838 - 1920)
Category
Art / Drawings and watercolours
Date
circa 1860 - 1862 (exh in Birmingham)
Materials
Watercolour and bodycolour, gum arabic and gold paint on paper laid down on panel
Measurements
292 x 381 mm (11 1/2 x 15 in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Hinton Ampner, Hampshire
NT 1529624
Caption
Florence Claxton (later Mrs Farrington), along with her sister Adelaide, was taught by her father Marshall, a minor Victorian artist with whom she travelled to Australia, Ceylon, India and Egypt. She was primarily an illustrator - most of her work appearing in London Society - but she also exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1859-67. She petitioned to allow women into the Royal Academy Schools and in 1861 painted Women's Work: A Medley (a critique of Madox Brown's Work). Her best-known picture is The Choice of Paris: An Idyll (1860), the whereabouts of the original, presumed to be an oil, is unknown. The Hinton Ampner (Dutton) watercolour, authenticated by a note in the artist's hand on the reverse, is thought to be one of four principal autograph versions. It is a satire of the works of the Pre-Raphaelite artists including: William Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World (Keble College, Oxford), Claudio and Isabella (Tate), The Scapegoat (Lady Lever), The Hireling Sheperd (Manchester City Art Gallery) and The Awakening Conscious (Tate); John Brett‘s The Stonebreaker (Walker); John Everett Millais’s The Blind Girl (Birmingham Museums), A Dream of the Past - Sir Isumbras at the Ford (Lady Lever), Spring: Apple Blossoms (Lady Lever), The Vale of Rest and Isabella (Walker); Philip Calderon’s Broken Vows (Tate); William Lindsay Windus’s Burd Helen (Walker); William Deverall’s A Pet (Tate); William Henry Hunt ‘s Oyster Shell and Onion and Ford Madox Brown’s Christ Washing Peter's Feet (Tate). Dante Gabriel Rossetti seems to have escaped criticism. It shows an interior and exterior following the design of Holman Hunt's A Converted British Family sheltering a Christian Missionary from the persecution of the Druids (Ashmolean). It includes caricatures of many of the main figures of the movement, including John Ruskin, Phineas Taylor Barnum (who was alleged to have coined the phrase "There's a sucker born every minute") and Millais who plays the part of the Trojan prince Paris choosing the most beautiful of the Three Graces and is awarding the golden apple to an angular, medieval-style figure (ignoring a Raphael-type Madonna and a modern woman in fashionable 1850s crinolines) who represents the Pre-Raphaelite ideal. The man examining the surface of the outside wall with opera glasses is parodying their ‘truth-to-nature ‘principles. The portraits of Van Dyck, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Raphael have been turned to face the wall above those wearing dunce hats.
Summary
Watercolour and bodycolour, gum arabic and gold paint on paper laid down on panel, The Choice of Paris: An Idyll by Florence Anne Claxton (c.1832 - Sandown, Isle of Wight 1920), circa 1860/62. Inscribed over the house on the left: AS A COCK WAS SCRABBLING IN A FARMYARD HE CAME UPON A / JEWEL AND SAID HO YOU'RE A VERY FINE THING NO DOUBT BUT / GIVE ME A RARE CORN BEFORE ALL THE PEARLS IN THE WORLD / ASOP [Aesop].
Full description
This painting is a satire of the works of the Pre-Raphaelite artists by Florence Claxton who exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1859-67 and lobbied to allow women into the Academy Schools. It is not typical of Ralph Dutton's collecting taste and may have been bought by his parents or grandparents. This is another version or copy after Claxton's satirical picture of 1860 of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of artists active between 1848-59, which was exhibited at the Institution of Fine Arts at the Portland Gallery, Regent Street, London (176) and reproduced as a full-page engraving by the Illustrated London News XXXVI, 2nd June 1860. Another watercolour which was sold at Sotheby's, London 20 June 1989, lot 28 is now in the V&A. London (E.1224-1989) and another, known to produced for Joseph Crawhall (1821-1896) of Morpeth, the artist and honorary secretary of the Arts Association of Newcastle Upon Tyne in September 1860 was sold Bonhams, London 21 November 2007, lot 80 and is now at Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (B2008.11).
Provenance
Exhibited in Birmingham [Society of Artists] 1862 (label on reverse); in the collection of Ralph Dutton, 8th Lord Sherborne (1898 - 1985) by 1960 (and exhibited at Agnew's 1961, label on reverse) by whom bequeathed to the National Trust
Marks and inscriptions
Verso: Notation in artist's hand on a paper label: Millais was presenting an apple to the uglist of the 3 girls. Rafaels [sic] Madona [sic], a P. R. B and a modern girl of the period. Holman Hunt was copying a corn of a woman with a microscope [sic] All the background was composed of figures out of well-known P. R. B. pictures but I can't remember the details so many years since. It was published in the Illus Londn News with description. Do not know date Verso: Label, in ink manuscript: The Choice of Paris (an Idyll), Florence Claxton price 25 guineas, Birmingham 1862
Makers and roles
Florence Anne Claxton (c.1838 - 1920), artist
References
The Illustrated London News, XXXVI, 2nd June 1860, p. 541-2, engraved full-page reproduction (unprecedented) with an explanatory text The Times 5 May 1920, p. 13 Fredeman 1960 William E. Fredeman, “Pre-Raphaelites in Caricature: 'The Choice of Paris: An Idyll' by Florence Claxton”, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 102, No. 693, December 1960, pp. 523-527 & 529, fig. 26 Pre-Raphaelites Victorian Avant-Garde, Tate Britain,12 September 2012 - 13 February 2013; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 17 February - 19 May 2013; State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, 10 June - 30 September 2013, no. 59 p. 83 The Poetry of Drawing: Pre Raphaelite Studies, Designs and Watercolours exh. cat. (ed. Colin Cruise), Gas Hall, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery 29 January 2011-15 May 2011 and The Art Gallery of New South Wales 17 June 2011- 4 September 2011 Conroy, Rachel, Women Artists and Designers at the National Trust, 2025, p. 118