Eric Adams on the Work of Francis Danby

Leormrdo, Vol. 9, pp. 41-42. Pergamon Press 1976. Printed in Great Britain ERIC ADAMS O N THE WORK OF FRANCIS DANBY Glenn B. Hamm* Into these latter days of McLuhan’s homogenized culture, when many artists are careful not to be caught in the ‘vulnerability of fervor’ has come Eric Adams’ sensitive and definitive study of the painter Francis Danby-a master of poetic landscape (Fig. 1) [E. Adams, Francis Danby: Varieties of Poetic Landscape, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1973. 309 pp., illus. $27.501. Adams deals with 19th-century ‘happenings’ such as Daguerre’s backlit flute-accompanied dioramic tableaux, the aftermaths of international conflict and the mesmerism of orator-agitators. The book abounds with pithy aesthetic issues such as: topographical vs historical vs provincial-poetic vs apocalyptic grand-manner vs mawkishly sentimental mutations of prevailing art forms and historicity in art vs the artist as historical participant. It contrasts disinterested aesthetic detachment with hysteria for novelties and reputation. It compares the inherent suggestiveness of poetry (the inspiration for much of Danby’s work) with the concreteness of representational painting: the relative powers of these two creative channels and the dangers that attend their mutual confusion. The book deals with the impact of photography, aswellas the archetypal potencies of, e.g. Poussin, Claude, Ruisdale, Turner, Blake, Martin and Constable. Equally interesting and problematical are questions of influence vs plagiarism, individuality vs ‘exressive pursuit of originality’ (the latter from a 19th-century critic), imitation of an artist as a currently viable idiom vs the conscious spirit of revivalism (stylistic prime, obsolescence, metamorphosis and renewals), critical prejudices and critic-artist relationships, classic draftsmanship compared with the ‘mystic whole‘ of enveloping light, Coleridge’s physical light and msntal imagination re: the metamorphosis of matter, Poe’s primacy of efect in conceptualizing, the relationship of symbolic modes to the illusion of reality, the inspiration quotient of various geographic locales, high key and low key poetic visual modes, the change from symbolic landscape to the decorative figure composition of the Pre-Raphaelites, the variance between the ‘establishment ’ and the general public in regard to satisfying the artist’s need for approval (with the Royal Academy of London as the focal point in Danby’s case) and the responsibility of a society to support its artists (in which the City of Bristol, England, it is inferred, was remiss). The lay reader may find more truth than poetry on initial impact with aspects of approach and format, to which the seasoned art historian is usually inured. The * Artist and teacher, Dept. of Creative Arts, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, U.S.A. (Received 19 Dec. 1974.) book preserves the tone of its origins in Adams’ doctoral thesis. With few exceptions, the plates are compacted, catalogue-style, at the end. At the outset, one is plunged into a thorough examination of the minutiae of Danby’s genesis. The work of Danby languished in limbo for at least half a century after his death in 1861 and his second debut into the art world might be expected to have little impact,if his charisma were not pumped up by Adams to full pressure. While Adams’ scholarly strategies are chronologically sound, some of the personal drama, formal properties, aesthetic portent or poetic interpretations that characterize this book once it ‘gets going’ might have been hinted at in the initial stages as an inducement for readers to persevere, for they will be well rewarded in the end. Adams’ thesis was being quoted as a major source on Danby even before its publication in revised form. He does not stress the Irishness of the artist’s resentment in the face of continual Royal Academy rebuffs as did Fig. 1. Christopher Moore, ‘Portrait of Francis Danby’, 1827. (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland.) (Reproduced with the permission of the Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., U.S.A.) 41 42 Glenn B. Hanini Cyril Barrett [I], nor does he utilize the nationalistic explanation of Danby’s recurring anguish, which is available in general terms throughout James White’s article [2]. The artist’s self-defeating introspection, his broken marriage and the loss of several children seemed cause enough for anguish...