David Wilkie Wynfield: Princes of Victorian Bohemia

28 January – 14 May 2000

Room 41, ground floor

Curator: Dr Juliet Hacking

Accompanying publication: Princes of Victorian Bohemia: Photographs by David Wilkie Wynfield by Dr Juliet Hacking (Prestel, 2000)

In 1866 Julia Margaret Cameron noted in a letter to the art critic William Michael Rossetti her surprise that David Wilkie Wynfield had not visited her recent exhibition. She said of her photographs that:

‘(they) held the one great fact that to my feeling about his beautiful photography I owed all my attempts and indeed consequently all my success.’

Examples of Wynfield’s ‘beautiful photography’ regularly feature in many of the surveys of 19^th century photography. And yet surprisingly little is known about the artist or his work. This exhibition will be the first devoted to his photography and will provide the opportunity to assess his unique contribution to the art. On display will be a portfolio of over fifty men including both his well-known portraits of John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt and his previously unexhibited portraits of Edward Burne-Jones and George Du Maurier. The most surprising discovery is Wynfield’s portrait of Edouard Manet, the result of a stimulating exchange between the contemporary artists of Paris and London.

Wynfield (1837-1887) was named after his great-uncle, the distinguished British painter Sir David Wilkie. Like his famous relative Wynfield trained as a painter and, inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites, formed a brotherhood known as the St John’s Wood Clique with six of his closest friends. London during the 1860s was emerging as a thriving centre for contemporary art and young artists were eager for their social standing to be acknowledged as the equal of a gentlemen or scholars.

David Wilkie Wynfield’s photographs celebrate both the bohemian camaraderie and the high aspirations of his generation. The series of portraits of his contemporaries which he produced in the 1860s are remarkable for their use of a close-up format, soft-focus effect and the historical costumes worn by the sitters. Victorian painters, sculptors, illustrators, architects and art patrons are transformed into princely figures in the manner of Old master portraits. Dramatic chiaroscuro, a narrow depth-of-field and the suggestion of movement combine to produce portraits which are startling in their immediacy.

‘Despite the beauty of these photographs, it has to be said that what Wynfield was doing in terms of subject. Later in life, Wynfield’s clique, all of whom became more successful than him, tried to distance themselves from the youthful follies his photographs documented. In light of this betrayal, it is Wynfield who comes across as the least grandiose, and the most playful, of the bunch. His pictures seem less nostalgic and more liken creative masquerade. If Julia Margaret Cameron can be said to prefigure the modern art photographs of Sally Mann, then Wynfield was, perhaps despite himself, a precursor to Cindy Sherman.’ – “He liked men in period costume. And women out of shot”, Gaby Wood, The Observer, 30 January, 2000

Handlist

1. Self-Portrait 1837-87
Born in India in 1937, the son of James Stainback Winfield, a captain of the 47th Bengal Native Infantry, and Sophia May (nèe Burroughes), David Wilkie Wynfield was named after his maternal great-uncle and godfather, the distinguished artist Sir David Wilkie. He changed the spelling of his surname shortly after he began to practice as an artist; he probably did so in order to avoid being confused with the historical genre painter J.D. Wingfield.

2. William Frederick Yeames 1835-1918
Yeames returned to London in 1859 having spent most of the decade studying art in Florence and Rome. Four years later he exhibited his first major historical genre painting, The Meeting of Sir Thomas More with his Daughter after his Sentence to Death. Yeames’ name and Wyndfield’s monogram were scratched into the emulsion of the negative and appear on the lower edge of the photograph.

3. George Aldolphus Storey 1834-1919
Storey met Leslie, Claderon and Marks on his return to London in 1850 after two years at school in Paris. He trained at Leigh’s and the Royal Academy schools and painted in a Pre-Raphaelite manner until around 1863. In 1866 he began to produce works in imitation of seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting and was rewarded with the popular success which had so far eluded him.

4. George Dunlop Leslie 1835-1921
The son of the influential artist and art-teacher Charles Robert Leslie, George Leslie grew up in St John’s Wood. His father, who painted humorous genre scenes in the style of Sir David Wilkie, presided over a salon frequented by leading artists and critics. Alone amongst the Clique, Leslie eschewed the production of historical genre paintings and carved out a niche for himself as a painter of pretty women in scenes inspired by history or literature.

5. Philip Hermogines Calderon 1883-98
Calderon was born in Poitiers to a Spanish father and a French mother; the family later settled in London. Sometimes identified as the founder of the St John’s Wood Clique, Calderon entered Leigh’s in 1850 and the atelier of Picot in Paris in 1851. He was the first member of the Clique to be elected an associate of the Royal Academy, in 1864. He was elected an Academician in 1867.
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6. Self-Portrait 1837-1887
Intended for the priesthood, Wynfield decided that he wanted to be an artist and entered Leigh’s in 1856. His early works were usually set in medieval or Renaissance times and frequently dealt with the tragic consequences of love. It is often said that it was he, and not Calderon, who founded the St John’s Wood Clique. He was the only member not to be elected a member or an associate of the Royal Academy.
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7. Henry Stacy Marks 1829-98
At the age of seventeen Marks was working in his father’s coachbuilding business and studying art at Leigh’s by attending both early morning and evening classes. He entered the Royal Academy schools in 1851 and studied briefly in Picot’s atelier in Paris, together with Calderon, in 1852. His paintings of humorous episodes from history and literature became immensely popular in the early 1860s. In 1862 he moved to St John’s Wood.
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8. John Evan Hodgson 1831-95
Like Yeames, Hodgson spent part of his youth in Russia where his father was a merchant. He returned to England, was educated at Rugby, and became a clerk in his father’s business. In 1855 he entered the Royal Academy schools. Having commenced by painting subjects from contemporary life, in 1861 he exhibited a work entitled A Visit to Holbein’s Studio and his next three major works were Elizabethan history.
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9. John Phillip 1917-67
In the late 1850s Philip ran a life class at his home on Campden Hill in Kensington which Yeames, amongst others, attended. Elected a Royal Academician in 1859, he went on to specialise in Spanish genre paintings. This portrait of him, like the majority of Wynfield’s photographs, does not recreate a particular Old Master portrait. It is however very much ‘in the style of’ William Dobson’s oil portrait of Sir Edward Nicholas of c. 1645.
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10. Richard Ansdell 1815-85
Born and raised in Liverpool, by the 1840s Ansdell was a successful artist who specialised in sporting and equestrian scenes. In 1874 he moved to Kensington in London and in the capital his career rivalled that of Landseer. There was a large market for reproductions of Ansdell’s works and by 1864 he was able to build himself a summer home on Loch Laggan in Invernesshire.
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11. Edward Armitage 1817-96
Armitage studied art in Paris under Paul Delaroche and assisted in the decoration of the hemicycle in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Returning to London at the end of the 1840s he became involved in the decoration of the new Houses of Parliament. Armitage was one of the few Victorian artists to receive commissions for large-scale historical and religious works. It was not until 1866 that he was elected as an associate of the Royal Academy.
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12. Alfred Elmore 1815-81
Born in Ireland, Elmore came to London at the age of 12. He entered the Royal Academy schools in 1832 and exhibited at the Academy two years later. From 1833-9 he lived mainly in Paris; in 1840 he studied in Munich and then settled in Rome until 1842. Specialising in historical genre, he is now best known for his modern life paintings, in particular On the Brink (1865) which deals with the perils of gambling.

13. William Swinden Barber FL. 1855-98
Barber travelled to Italy with his fellow architect Frederick Pepys Cockerell during the winter of 1855-6. By 1859 he was living in Hanover Chambers, Buckingham Street, London. He was among the first men to enlist in the Artists Rifle Corps and in 1863 became a founder member of the Arts Club. The petals of the flower which he holds in this portrait were painted onto the negative.

14. Frederick Pepys Cockerell 1833-1878
A founder member of the Arts Club, Cockerell was the son of the architect Charles Robert Cockerell. Like many of his fellow-architects he regularly exhibited his sketches and designs at the Royal Academy. His 1864 design for the Albert Memorial was selected by the judges but vetoed by Queen Victoria who preferred the gothic design by George Gilbert Scott. Cockerell designed the monument to his father in St Paul’s Cathedral.

15. Frederick Mew 1832-98
The architect Frederick Mew was based in London. In the mid-1950s he worked with Michael Pendergast Manning and in 1859 was elected as an associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In the 1860s he went into partnership with Henry Edward Kendall Jr, whose daughter he married. He was the father of Charlotte Mew, the poet.

16. Anthony Salvin Jr. 1827-81
Anthony Salvin Jr was the son of the famous architect of the same name and the cousin of the architect William Eden Nesfield. From school he entered his father’s office as a pupil and in July 1851 began an extensive tour of the continent. He returned to work for his father, and seems to have done so for the rest of his life. His principal independent works were the animal houses which he designed for London Zoo.

17. Henry Wyndham Phillips 1820-68
Philips was the younger son and pupil of the renowned portrait painter Thomas Phillips. When his friend and fellow portraitist Edward Sterling proposed forming an Artists Rifle Corps, the series of discussion meetings which followed took place in Phillips’ studio in London’s George Street. Phillips was subsequently elected as the first captain of the corps.
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18. Joseph Middleton Jopling 1831-84
Jopling was, like his father, a clerk to the Horse Guards in Whitehall. He was also a self-taught artist who exhibited regularly at both the Royal Academy and the New Watercolour Society. A founder member of the Arts Club and one of the first recruits to the Artists Rifles, during the 1860s Jopling specialised in portrait painting. In 1874 he married the artist Louise Romer, nèe Goode.

19. Henry Tanworth Wells 1828-1903
Wells abandoned his practice as a miniature painter in 1860 owing to the deleterious effect of photography on the market. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Wells did not become a photographer himself but instead turned to portraiture in oils. He was married to the artist Joanna Boyce, the sister of George (no. 26), and lived in Campden Hill close to Arthur Lewis (no. 57). This portrait shows him wearing contemporary dress.

20. Carl Haag 1820-1915
Originally from Bavaria, Haag studied in Nuremberg and Munich. He worked for a time as a miniature painter in Brussels and then settled in England in 1847. In the 1850s he was commissioned by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to paint two large highland scenes for Balmoral. Following his tour of the Middle East in 1858-60 he specialised in oriental subjects. Haag joined both the Artists Rifles and the Arts Club on their foundation.

21. Field Talfourd 1814-74
Born in Reading, Field Talfourd was the brother of the judge and playwright Thomas Talfourd. In August 1862 he wrote in his journal that ‘Photography has nearly deprived me of work in my crayon drawings – I am studying with [Edward] Sterling in oil to the end of changing my style’. Talfourd was an initial recruit to the Artists Rifles and a founder member of the Arts Club. In 1865 he began to exhibit landscapes in addition to portraits.

22. Robert Taylor Pritchett 1828-1907
This portrait of Pritchett, a now little-known painter of landscape and genre scenes, is the only known work by Wynfield which is dated. It is also distinctive for the inclusion of an inscription in Latin. Initially painted on the negative, it tells us that the portrait was made in London in 1864 when Pritchett was thirty-six. This is not an albumen but a carbon print, of which nos. 3, 28, 39, 41, 53 & 62 are also examples.

23. Charles Thornely fl. 1858-98
Little is known about Charles Thornely apart from the fact that he was based in Britain and specialised in painting river and coastal scenes. The spelling of his surname and the fact that many of his works were set in Holland suggests that he was of Dutch origin. The intricate lace collar that he wears in this portrait may be a reference to his nationality.

24. George Heming Mason 1818-72
Born near Stoke-on-Trent, Mason was apprenticed to a surgeon at the age of sixteen. Five years later he escaped to Rome in order to become an artist. It is said that he had so little money of his own that he got there by foot. Having taught himself to paint, Mason made his debut at the Royal Academy in 1857 with Ploughing in the Campagna. He returned to England in 1858 and was greatly admired for his idyllic landscapes.

25. Thomas Faed 1826-1900
Born in Scotland, Thomas Faed studied at the School of Design in Edinburgh and came to London in the early 1850s. Between 1856-65 he lived in St John’s Wood; he then moved to Campden Hill in Kensington, another district popular with artists. Faed enjoyed an immensely successful career as a painter of Scottish peasant life, exhibiting works with titles such as The Mitherless Bairn (1855) and The Last of the Clan (1865).
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26. George Price Boyce 1826-97
Born in London, the son of a city wine merchant, George Price Boyce originally trained as an architect but later decided to devote himself to landscape painting in watercolour. A founding member of the Hogarth Club in 1859 and the Arts Club in 1863, he also collected contemporary art. His surviving diaries (1851-75) are an invaluable record of the art world of this period. Boyce was photographed by Wynfield in contemporary dress.
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27. William Gale 1823-1909
A student of the Royal Academy schools, Gale first exhibited at the Academy summer exhibition in 1844. In the 1850s he produced some genre scenes in the Pre-Raphaelite style. He travelled to Syria in 1862 and from then on specialised in historical and biblical genre paintings.
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28. Charles Samuel Keene 1823-91
The cartoonist and illustrator Charles Keene (also no. 51) is best known for his work in Punch, the staff of which he joined in the late 1850s. He illustrated numerous books and, like many artists of his generation, supplied drawings to the Illustrated London News and Once a Week. A founder member of the Arts Club, he worked almost exclusively in pen-and-ink.

29. Thomas Oldham Barlow 1824-89
Thomas Oldham Barlow took his middle name from the town where he was born. His first engraving after his arrival in London was from the work of John Philip (no. 9). Described by George Leslie (no. 4) as ‘a mezzotint engraver of considerable power’, in 1856 Barlow engraved The Huguenot by Millais (no. 31) and the two men became close friends.
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30. Myles Birket Foster 1825-99
Born in North Shields, Birket Foster came to London when he was five. A young man he was apprenticed to a leading wood engraver. He was a successful draughtsman in his own right when in 1859 he turned to painting, mainly in watercolour, and specialised in landscape and rustic scenes. In 1863 he built a house at Witley, near Godalming in Surrey, some of the decoration for which was done by Burne-Jones (nos. 35 & 36).
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31. John Everett Millais 1828-96
Millais’s parents moved from Jersey to London so that their son, a child prodigy, could train as an artist. It was at the Millais family home in Gower Street that the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed. Millais’s early Pre-Raphaelite work was reviled by the critics. Known for his boyish good looks and ease of manner, he later eschewed artistic controversy in favour of popular success. He is portrayed here as Dante, the Florentine poet (1265-1321).
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32. William Holman Hunt 1827-1910
Born in London, the son of a warehouse manager, Hunt was one of the original seven members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He met Millais (no. 31) in 1844 when they were both studying at the Royal Academy schools. During the early 1850s Hunt developed his use of typological symbolism, imbuing minutely-rendered objects with moral and religious meaning. He also sat to Julia Margaret Cameron who exhibited his portrait in 1864.
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33. Simeon Solomon 1840-1905
Born in Bishopsgate, London, Solomon was the son of a prominent member of the local Jewish community; his brother Abraham and sister Rebecca were also artists. His early works, executed mainly in watercolour or ink, were Pre-Raphaelite in manner but he quickly developed a unique style and range of subject manner. After his arrest in 1873 for homosexual ‘offences’ he was shunned by his family and friends and was forced to live in a workhouse.

34. William Holman Hunt 1827-1910
In 1854 Hunt visited the Holy Land. After his return to London in 1856 he exhibited works inspired by his travels. Making a second trip to the Middle East in 1866, his wife Fanny (nèe Waugh) died on an outward journey. A comparison of this portrait of Hunt in contemporary dress with that of him wearing Tudor costume (left) reveals him to be significantly older in this portrait. This suggests that Wynfield continued to photograph beyond the 1860s.

35. Edward Burne-Jones 1833-98
Born in Birmingham, Edward Jones (as he was then known) went to Exeter College, Oxford. Like his friend and fellow student, William Morris, he intended to enter the church but, inspired by the art of Rossetti, both men decided to become artists. During the 1860s Burne-Jones exhibited at the Old Watercolour Society. He resigned in 1870 after a complaint about his representation of male nudity.

36. Edward Burne-Jones
(See above caption)

37. William Frederick Yeames 1835-1918
In 1865 Yeames married Wynfield’s sister Anne (no. 38). This is not the only example of intermarriage within the clique: Calderon (no. 5) married Clara, the sister of Storye (no. 3). In 1866, the Yeamses, the Calderons and Wynfield hired Hever Castle in Kent for the summer. At the castle, Yeames painted A Visit to the Haunted Chamber and Wynfield attempted to photograph the ghost of Anne Boleyn.

38. Anna Yeames (née Winfield)
This is the only known portrait by Wynfield of a woman. It is of his sister Anne, known as Annie. After her marriage to Yeames (nos. 2 & 37) in 1865, Annie settled with her husband at no.4 Grove End Road, St John’s Wood. Soon afterwards, Wynfield and his mother moved into no. 14. This study of Annie holding a tray of apples is reminiscent of Titian.

39. Frederic Leighton 1830-1896
Leighton was immensely talented, polished and worldly. Satirised for his social and artistic pretensions by George Du Maurier (no. 50), who referred to him as ‘Cimbabue’, Leighton evidently identified with the thirteenth-century artist. This portrait shows him wearing a costume similar to that seen on the figure of Cimabue in his Cimabue’s Madonna of 1855.

40. Frederic Leighton 1830-1896
Wynfield’s repeated use of certain items of costume, such as the lawn shirt worn by Leighton in this portrait, suggests that he may have used the lending wardrobe operated by the Artist’s Society in Clipstone Street. Both the shirt and the doublet worn by Leighton in this portrait appear on the male figure in Leighton’s painting of 1864, Golden Hours.
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41. George Frederick Watts 1817-1904
Watts had little formal training as an artist. As a young man he was obliged to take up portraiture in order to support his father and two half-sisters. His extended visit to Italy between 1843 and 1847 strengthened his desire to make large-scale works in the grand manner. On his return to London, he briefly shared a studio with Charles Couzens which in 1850 became the meeting place for the Cosmopolitan Club of artists and writers.

42. George Frederick Watts 1817-1904
In 1851 Watts moved to Little Holland House, Kensington, the home of Sara and Thoby Prinsep (no. 61). He is likely to have met Wynfield, whose photographs he greatly admired, through the Prinseps’ son Valentine (no. 46). Watts, an intimate of Julia Margaret Cameron, held up Wynfield’s photographs to her as examples of the ‘perfection’ to which she should aspire with her photography.
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43. Alphonse Legros 1837-1911
Legros met Whistler in Paris and followed him to England where he stayed for the rest of his life. In London he taught etching at South Kensington School of Art. In 1867 Whistler and Legros fell out and the French artist moved closer to his English friends, in particular Calderon (no. 5) and Leslie (no. 4). In 1868 he acted as Edouard Manet’s guide in London. He later taught at the Slade.

44. Edouard Manet 1832-83
This penetrating portrait by Wynfield, which was only recently identified as of Manet, was probably made in August 1868. In a letter written after his two-day visit to London, Manet noted his intention to write ‘Mr Wynfield’ a thank-you note. The meeting of these two artists, the one courting popular success in London and the other the scourge of the establishment in Paris, symbolise the fertile artistic exchange between the two capitals in the 1860s.

45. William Wetmore Story 1819-95
Born in Massachussetts, William Wetmore Story is the only sculptor known to have been photographed by Wynfield. He trained as a lawyer but in 1856 left America for Europe where he practised as a sculptor in a neo-classical style. Like Legros and Manet, Story wears contemporary dress instead of a historical costume. This suggests that there was a patriotic element to Wynfield’s belief that artists were the equal of noblemen.

46. Valentine Cameron Prinsep 1838-1904
The son of Henry Thoby Prinsep (no. 61) and his wife Sara Pattle, ‘Val’ was born on St. Valentine’s Day, 1838. He was originally intended for a civil service career like his father but his enthusiasm for Pre-Raphaelite art convinced him to become a painter. In 1859 he worked in the atelier of Gleyre in Paris in 1859 alongside Whistler, Poynter and Du Maurier (no. 50). He was an honorary member of the St John’s Wood Clique.
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47. James Hayllar 1829-1920
Born in Chichester, Hayllar came to London in 1848 and studied at Carey’s and the Royal Academy schools. In the early 1850s he specialised in portraiture but at the end of the decade he came under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites and began to produce genre scenes in a highly-finished style. In the early to mid-1860s he turned to historic genre painting, by then a profitable pursuit, and broadened his technique.

48. Robert Braithwait Martineau 1826-69
Martineau, who was educated at University College, London, spent the mid-1840s articled to a solicitor. In 1848, the year in which the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed, he entered the Royal Academy schools. He later became the pupil of William Holman Hunt (nos. 32 & 34). His best-known work, The Last Day in the Old Home, was exhibited at the International Exhibition in London in 1862 and widely reproduced.

49. Charles Perugini 1839-1918
Born in Naples, Perugini came to London in 1863. A protégé of Frederic Leighton (nos. 39 & 40), he specialised in depictions of fashionable women in interior settings sometimes with, and sometimes without, an explicit subject. He became a member of the Arts Club in 1865 and later married the artist Kate Collins, the daughter of Charles Dickens.

50. George Du Maurier 1834-96
The son of a French father and an English mother, Du Maurier studied chemistry at University College, London, and painting in the atelier of Gleyre in Paris. He later used his experiences of the Latin Quarter for his novel Trilby (1894). He joined Punch in 1864 as a successor to John Leech and remained on the staff until his death. He is best known for his series of cartoons satirising middle-class ‘Aesthetic’ pretensions.

51. Charles Samuel Keene 1823-91
Keene (also no. 28) epitomised the respectable bohemian. Du Maurier (no. 50) said of him, ‘His bohemian world was mine – and I found it a very good world and very much to my taste – a clean, honest, wholesome, innocent, intellectual, and most industrious British bohemia, with lots of tobacco, lots of good music, plenty of talk about literature and art, and not too much victuals or drink.’
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52. John Dawson Watson 1832-92
Born in Yorkshire, Watson (also no. 53) studied first at the Manchester School of Design and then, in 1851-2, at the Royal Academy Schools. Like many artists of Wynfield’s generation, Watson was both a painter and an illustrator. As a painter he specialised in genre scenes, often of children, and as a graphic artist illustrated the Routledge editions of Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim’s Progress and Arabian Nights, amongst numerous other works.

53. John Dawson Watson 1832-92
In 1866 Watson moved close to his brother-in-law Birket Foster (no. 30) in Surrey. Henry Stacy Marks (no. 7) said of him (also no. 52) that, ‘In his later days, when his hair, moustache, and pointed beard were of a uniform grey, he looked as if he had stepped out of the frame of one of Van Dyck’s portraits’.

54. Frederick James Shields 1833-1911
Born in Hartlepool, Shields became a lithographer’s apprentice and a jobbing artist. He settled in Manchester and in 1857 visited the Art Treasures exhibition where he admired the works of the Pre-Raphaelites. He later became a close friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Devoutly religious and frequently impoverished, in the early 1860s he began to be recognised as a graphic artist of immense talent.

55. Frederick Walker 1840-75
Born in London, Walker (also no. 56) studied art at Leigh’s and the Royal Academy schools. Working for three years as an apprentice to a wood engraver, in 1860 he began to contribute works to the illustrated journals. He came to prominence the following year with his illustrations to Thackeray’s The Adventures of Philip. In 1863 he began to exhibit pastoral scenes in watercolour and, towards the end of the decade, social realist works in oils.

56. Frederick Walker 1840-75
Walker (also no. 55) was an honorary member of the St John’s Wood Clique. He was distinctive for his small stature and youthful looks, and he is thought to have been the model for ‘Little Billee’ in the novel Trilby by Du Maurier (no. 50). Wynfield, it is said, gave him his first paintbox. When he died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-four walker was mourned as a genius by friends and art-lovers alike.

57. Arthur Lewis 1824-1901
In the early 1860s Lewis has his chambers in Jermyn Street near Piccadilly and it was here that his brand of singers, composed of his friends, performed. After his move to Campden Hill in c. 1861, the group became known as the ‘Moray Minstrels.’ Lewis’s musical salons were attended by artists and the aristocracy alike. He was the first volunteer to sign the Muster Role of the Artists Rifles and was also a founding member of the Arts Club.

58. Edward King-Harman 1836-88
Educated at Eaton, King-Harman became an ensign in the 60 Rifles in 1855 and quickly rose to lieutenant. He was a founder member of the Arts Club but little else is known about his relation to the artists of the day. He later became an Irish MP and a colonel of the Roscommon militia. In this portrait he wears the velvet-edged cloak seen in many of Wynfield’s portraits.

59. James Anthony Froude 1818-94
Born near Totnes in Devon and educated at Oxford, Froude became a fellow of Exeter College in 1842. In 1849 his book The Nemesis of Faith was burnt by the sub-rector and Froude resigned his fellowship. A follower of Thomas Carlyle, between 1856-70 Froude published his account of the History of England during the sixteenth century. Wynfield used the historical writings of both Froude and Carlyle as sources for his paintings.

60. Coutts Lindsay 1824-1913
In 1850 Lindsay resigned his commission in the Grenadier Guards and turned his hand to poetry, writing plays and painting. He studied in Ary Scheffer’s atelier in Paris, became an accomplished photographer and exhibited his paintings at the Royal Academy. He was a member of the Little Holland House set and was photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron. The armour which he wears in this photograph may have come from his own collection.

61. Henry Thoby Prinsep 1792-1878
As a colonial servant in Calcutta, Thoby Prinsep rose to the position of Chief Secretary of the Government of India. In 1843 he retired and returned to London with his wife Sara and four children. He was an authority on Indian politics, history and culture and in 1858 was elected one of the seven directors of the newly formed Council of India.

62. Thomas Heatherley 1858-87
Heatherley, a painter of genre and figurative subjects, is better known as the successor of James Leigh at the art school in Newman Street. He entered the school as a student in 1850 and later became Leigh’s assistant, taking over when the director died in 1860. The school, which still thrives today, became known as Heatherley’s. This portrait captures the ghostlike presence of the director who was described as looking like a ‘medieval necromancer’.

63. Robert Herdman 1829-88
The son of a parish minister from Perthshire, Herdman was educated in theology at St Andrews. Having taken up painting, he made Edinburgh his home and began to exhibit at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1850. After a visit to Italy in 1854-6 he specialised in painting Italian scenes but in the early 1860s turned to Scottish history and song as his source of inspiration. He worked in both oil and watercolour.

64. Eyre Crowe 1824-1910
Crowe studied art in Paris under Delaroche and became a lifelong friend of Gèrôme. On his return to Britain he specialised in the genre historique associated with his master. He was a cousin of Thackeray’s, for whom he acted as secretary on his trip to America, and a relative of the Prinseps. In early 1859 he was elected to the Hogarth Club and in 1863 became a founding member of the Arts Club.

65. Frederick Richard Pickersgill 1829-1900
F.R. Pickersgill was the nephew of the portrait painter Henry William Pickersgill. He was also the son-in-law of Roger Fenton, the leading landscape photographer of the period, and a gifted photographer himself as well as a painter. An honorary member of the St John’s Wood Clique, Pickersgill may have been influential in Wynfield’s decision to take up photography.
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66. Unidentified Man
This portrait is a good example for examining Wynfield’s technique. His portraits are often described as ‘out-of-focus’ but this is not in fact the case. In this portrait he has focused his lens on the collar of the suit of armour which the sitter wears. Wynfield’s use of an extremely narrow depth-of-field means that all other elements in the portrait, including the sitter’s features, are thrown slightly out-of-focus.

67. Unidentified Man
The sitter was at one time identified as a railway porter; he also bears something of a resemblance to the architect George Edmund Street. It is possible that Wynfield, like Julia Margaret Cameron, sought models from the people he met in daily life. Unlike Cameron, Wynfield did not give titles to his portraits but instead affixed a photographic facsimile of the sitter’s autograph to a number of his works.

68. Unidentified Man
In this portrait the young sitter wears the floral tunic also seen in the portrait of William Swinden Barber (no. 13). He may be one of the young models of Mediterranean origin who were prized for their exotic looks.

69. Unidentified Man
The albumen process for producing photographic prints proved to be unstable. Nearly all of the photographs made by Wynfield have therefore faded. The portrait above is still in good condition; this one however has faded dramatically. The purplish-brown tones seen in the portrait above are the result of ‘gold-toning’ the albumen print after it was developed. Photographs made by the carbon process, (nos. 3, 28, 39, 41, 53 & 62) do not fade.

70. Unidentified Man
Wynfield’s photographs enjoyed a vogue amongst art students during the 1870s and 1880s and were reissued at least once, in 1887, the year of his death. This photograph is likely to be by one of his imitators.