Novel Paintings: Learning to Read Art through Joseph Highmore's Adventures of Pamela

Abstract

This essay examines Joseph Highmore’s Pamela paintings, possibly the first series of paintings derived from an English novel, in relation to evolving artistic and social practices in the first half of the eighteenth century. Despite the significance of Highmore’s work, the series has been evaluated primarily for its illustrative fidelity to Richardson’s novel. This essay analyzes the series as a production parallel to the novel that is responding to recent developments in the art market that prompted anxieties around issues of class and behavior as the audience for artworks expanded beyond the aristocracy. Drawing on his work in portraiture, a genre at the center of these anxieties, Highmore utilized the popularity of Pamela’s narrative to provide his audience with a lesson in the moral dimensions of spectatorship, depicting the dangers of improper viewing and the social benefits of a moral spectatorship, akin to Richardson’s text’s attention to the correct reading of character. Ultimately, Highmore’s paintings offer a moral pedagogy that makes the proper understanding of paintings a model for properly understanding people.

In 1744, the portrait painter Joseph Highmore announced the completion of a possibly unprecedented project: adapting a contemporary English novel into painting.¹ Highmore had transformed Samuel Richardson's Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded into a grand series of twelve oil paintings, subsequently reproduced in a series of engravings. Highmore's Adventures of Pamela series marks a significant moment in the development of literary-artistic relations.² Adapting a novel was itself novel. Though the field of history painting had long been centered on literary subjects such as religion, mythology, and classical poetry, English fiction was a newer, more controversial genre that artists had previously avoided.³ Highmore drew his subject matter from one of the most contentious and popular novels of the era. Pamela had attracted controversy from the moment of its publication in 1740 with its account of a virtuous servant first harassed and later married by her aristocratic employer, which awakened eighteenth-century anxieties about the growing bourgeoisie's challenge to traditional hierarchies, including those of morals, class, and art.⁴ With his adaptation, Highmore would draw upon this controversy to both bolster his own reputation and promote his own perspective on these changes.

Despite its originality, Highmore's project has received little attention in eighteenth-century scholarship. T. C. Duncan Eaves, the first scholar to examine visual representations of Pamela, argued that Highmore's paintings were true to the spirit of Richardson's novel and thus a worthy adaptation.⁵ Subsequent scholarship has shifted from questions of fidelity to the text to efforts to contextualize Highmore's paintings in the debates over class struggle and virtuous womanhood that surrounded the reception of the novel.⁶ This essay examines Highmore's Adventures of Pamela in relation to eighteenth-century debates about art and the development of visual culture. A critical engagement with Highmore's paintings in relation to, but not in service of, Richardson's Pamela reveals the paintings' engagement with issues of spectatorship in the era, when questions of who could properly claim to understand images and how one should assert that knowledge abounded. Rather than follow aristocratic claims for epistemological superiority based upon education, Highmore advocated for a distributed form of recognition based upon an experiential, responsive approach to spectatorship, a viewing practice that carried beyond artworks into the wider social sphere. Highmore's Adventures of Pamela series depicts spectatorship for its audience in order to argue for a form of viewership based upon interactive, sentimental responses to paintings as a means of better understanding people.

Picturing the Market

Both Richardson's text and Highmore's paintings were the products of broad cultural shifts underway in the era. In their study of the Pamela debates, Thomas Keymer and Peter Sabor assert that the controversy represents a "market phenomenon: … the product, agent, and uniquely visible trace of the new consumer culture that was taking hold, in which the novel genre was becoming an increasingly important commercial and literary mode and object of fashionable attention."⁷ Keymer and Sabor's argument is instructive for the way it situates Pamela and its progeny in a dynamic cultural context that allows the visual art based on Pamela to be analyzed in relation to the development of new commercial and cultural spheres, rather than as mere commentary on the novel. Pamela has long been understood as a milestone in the developing literary market.⁸ Highmore's paintings can be similarly seen as participating in the contemporary art market. They were a speculative enterprise, undertaken in the hope of commercial success. Highmore's decision to have the series engraved and advertised in newspapers demonstrates his use of the market's apparatuses to produce and market his works to a wide swathe of consumers.⁹ Although a response to Pamela, Highmore's paintings were created independently of Richardson, which allowed Highmore to exercise considerable agency over their subject matter and composition.¹⁰ In this respect, they differ from the twenty-nine engravings Richardson commissioned from Hubert Gravelot and Francis Hayman for the sixth edition of the novel, published in 1742. The latter engravings have been interpreted as Richardson's attempt to control the meaning of his novel.¹¹ In contrast, Highmore's status as an innovative, independent artist provides an opportunity for approaching these artworks not as a mere extension of the Pamela debates, but instead as evidence of the era's burgeoning discourses around art and spectatorship.

To understand Highmore's work, it is useful to consider the social anxieties associated with the eighteenth-century rise of consumer culture, particularly regarding the art market. The numbers are astounding. Over the course of the century, Britain imported nearly 50,000 paintings and half a million prints from the continent, especially Italy, France, and the Netherlands. Meanwhile its auction houses (themselves a new kind of business) transferred over 100,000 paintings to or between collectors.¹² Britain not only imported artworks but also artists. Painters, engravers, and sculptors flocked to London to take advantage of the expanding art market.¹³ Highmore was a product of this new market, working primarily as a portrait artist, the most popular genre of the era.¹⁴

This art market grew not only in the sheer number of art objects, but also in the availability of those objects to a broader array of middle-class consumers. Regarding this dissemination, Robert D. Hume persuasively claims that the principal cultural consumers were an elite audience of approximately three percent of the families in Britain.¹⁵ However, although these elites were the primary market for art, access to the market was not limited to them.¹⁶ Prints, for example, were affordable to a much wider range of buyers than paintings. Print prices averaged between one and two shillings, a price equivalent to two to four days of labor for the average worker, yet within reach for many consumers of "the middling sort."¹⁷ Selling prints by subscription allowed artists to fund projects outside of conventional patronage structures. Highmore took advantage of this strategy, selling his series by subscription for two guineas.¹⁸ Though expensive, these prints made the series far more available than any single painting and did so in a way that allowed the series's narrative to be preserved. Further, the subscription helped Highmore attract clients for his paintings, demonstrating how artists could utilize various levels of the market. Though much of this developing market was concentrated in a high social stratum, the market was not confined there, and this high stratum had its own internal divisions. Highmore himself could be classed among the "middling sort." His practice was successful enough to leave his family £550 at his death.¹⁹ Yet, Highmore almost certainly could not afford the £500 per annum Jacob Vanderlint gave as the cost to live as a gentleman.²⁰ The growing presence of men of Highmore's status not only changed the art market, but also ideas about how art should be understood.

Just as the rise of the novel provoked concerns among the literati, so too did the growth of the art market provoke concerns about the proper audience for and reception of art.²¹ These concerns inspired the development of the pedagogy of polite culture, which linked aesthetic taste to moral judgment.²² Aesthetic considerations typically operated on two levels. The first concerned a combination of artistic skill and an image's relation to "nature," however the latter was defined. The second level consisted of the moral lesson evoked by the art. A representation of a noble or heroic deed in painting, for example, was said to inspire audiences to behave in a similar manner.²³ The value of an object was not only a function of its appearance but also of its utility as an object of social education. A proper taste was as much a function of moral responsiveness as it was of a discerning eye.

The training of a discerning eye prompted its own debates, a topic provocatively explored by Peter de Bolla. Though de Bolla's work focuses on the 1760s, his comments are significant for the ways in which they highlight how differences in perception were linked to class affiliation, considerations evident in Highmore's writing from that same period. De Bolla argues that artistic discernments can be organized into roughly two camps: the "regime of the picture" and the "regime of the eye."²⁴ The first contended that discernment was based upon knowledge already possessed by the viewer. When viewers approached an image, they used knowledge they had already acquired in order to understand the image before them and make an aesthetic evaluation. This approach relied upon an understanding of history, mythology, religious doctrines, and artistic traditions gained from a strong educational foundation. As such, it was primarily associated with the aristocracy. The other camp, "the regime of the eye," proposed a method of viewership in which discernment was developed based upon the internal form and qualities of object(s) under study, rather than preexisting external knowledge. Daniel Webb, whose writing on aesthetics Highmore commended, proclaimed that "we have all within us the seeds of taste, and are capable, if we exercise our powers, of improving them into a sufficient knowledge of the polite arts."²⁵ Knowledge could come either through a form of liberal education, in which audiences might recognize and grasp the significance of the subject of a history painting, or from the image itself via a proper perception of the underlying principles of sight. These regimes were not mutually exclusive and found shared ground and shared difficulty in portraiture.²⁶

Portraiture constituted an aesthetic problem in the eighteenth century because its popularity did not accord with the conventional hierarchy of artistic genres, which established history painting—a category that included mythological and religious subjects—as the intellectual and moral ideal.²⁷ Where history paintings were said to promote universal ideals, portraits were regarded as documentary at best and risked being rejected as mere vanity.²⁸ While this hierarchy was not as influential in Britain as on the continent, it limited the value both of works of art and of artists themselves. Portraits could be classed as mere imitation, a craft carried out by artisans who might be skillful, but who were not on a level with the producers of true fine art. Though a few portrait artists, such as Anthony Van Dyck and Godfrey Kneller, attained wealth and social prominence, most portrait artists were relegated to lower stature, especially in the first half of the eighteenth century. Ambitious painters promoted history painting as a means of highlighting the intellectual status of their art. Highmore embodied this trend in his own career, transitioning to history painting in the 1740s after working as a portraitist for approximately twenty-five years.²⁹ This move helped Highmore raise his profile, expand his market, and demonstrate the relevancy of his work to a wider social sphere.³⁰

Highmore's attempts to elevate his practice coincided with the growth of the market for portraiture beyond its traditional, aristocratic audience. By the 1740s, sitters for portraits were increasingly members of the developing mercantile and professional classes.³¹ The earliest portrait of Samuel Richardson, for instance, dates to c. 1740–41.³² This clientele would constitute the primary market for the group portraits and conversation pieces painted in the 1740s and 1750s. During these decades, portrait artists were well positioned to observe the tensions associated with the depiction of modern figures, as members of "the middling sort" appropriated the tropes of aristocratic portraiture—to the consternation of the aristocracy. The interrelation of the aesthetic and the social in the portrait reflects its significance for polite culture and influenced the meaning of portraits for sitters, painters, and viewers.

Because portraits depicted members of society, they provided a notable window for analyzing both social deportment and painting's influence upon it.³³ Sitters demonstrated their status by a series of carefully codified gestures and poses intended to convey their good manners and polite sensibility.³⁴ This is especially true of the genre of painting known as the "conversation piece." Conversation pieces portray friends, families, clubs, and other social units in ways that highlight their group dynamics and demonstrate the good-natured relationships between the sitters. Though these poses might look stilted to modern audiences, they were crafted as a public performance of personal sentimentality. This inner/outer dynamic was one of the primary means of defending portraiture's status against its critics, foregrounding the idea that portraits could make visible an exemplary inner character that could provide a useful role model. The painter Jonathan Richardson, for instance, claimed that "upon the sight of a Portrait the Character, and Master-strokes of the History of the Person it represents, are apt to flow in upon the Mind and to be the Subject of Conversation" and that "Men are excited to imitate the Good Actions, and persuaded to shun the Vices of those whose Examples are thus set before them."³⁵ Understanding portraits required audiences to look beyond the surface level of resemblance in order to discern the character of the person before them. Richardson's use of the term "conversation" is notable for the way it reinforces the social dynamics inherent in viewing portraits. As Kate Retford explains, "conversation" in the eighteenth century involved much more than just talk; it was a proxy for one's social circle and one's social conduct.³⁶ Thus, portraits provided a means of reflecting on one's own character.³⁷ Portraits were a useful tool for apprehending the didactic possibilities of painting.

The interrelation of painting and knowledge is a primary theme of Highmore's essay, "Whether ARTISTS only are proper Judges of WORKS OF ART," which demonstrates his respect for the new audiences for art.³⁸ Highmore does not relegate proper judgment of art to artists, nor limit it to the aristocracy, but instead recognizes all viewers as capable of perceiving an artwork's value through their relation to the image under study. Highmore argued that "every man is a judge of the representation, in proportion as he is of the original subject; a sailor, for instance, is a better judge of the principal circumstances which enter into the composition of a sea-piece, than the best painter in the world, who was never at sea."³⁹ While artistic judgment is connected to knowledge, valuable knowledge is derived not only from a formal education but also from personal experience. The quality of a work of art is thus potentially subject to interpretation from a broad range of audiences.

Highmore utilizes the interpretive possibilities of painting to underscore its epistemic possibilities. According to Highmore, "a poet, historian, philosopher, or (in general) any man of genius and taste, will conceive of an extraordinary fact or event, just as a great painter would, and may have within him all the requisites of such painter, except the mere mechanical part; and therefore, must necessarily be a good judge of such a subject executed."⁴⁰ Highmore's arguments echo those of Jonathan Richardson, who contended that painters must possess the knowledge of these various spheres in order to execute their art and thereby should be afforded the same respect.⁴¹ Writing decades after Richardson, Highmore did not need to argue so strongly for the social status of painters. Rather, Highmore advocated for the intellectual status of paintings. Highmore's claim that these other practitioners can interpret art just as a painter can indicates that understanding a painting involves more than just the evaluation of its "mechanical" qualities. Understanding a painting might involve the skills of the poet or philosopher, demonstrating that paintings were interrelated with other, complementary disciplines and could serve as their own form of knowledge. The interrelation of these disciplines grants authors and artists equal status in providing insight into the subject under study.

Highmore's essay provides insight into his intellectual considerations during the composition of his Pamela paintings and suggests how he imagined his audience would interpret his visualizations. Rather than subordinating his series of paintings to Richardson's novel, Highmore considered his series as its own project, a chance to bring Pamela's story to life in a visual medium. Highmore himself made these ideas clear in his advertisement for the engraved version of the series, explaining that his work not only "endeavoured to comprehend her whole Story" but that it also would be accompanied by a "printed Account given to the Subscribers, wherein all the twelve Pictures are described and their respective Connexion shewn."⁴² Audiences viewing the images were thus prompted to consider the ways that Highmore's series constitutes its own narrative. While the audience for Highmore's series would likely have also read the novel, that prior knowledge was not the sole criterion for judging the art. Rather than simply treating the images as illustrations of the novel, viewers were prompted to use their knowledge of Pamela as a starting point to understand the inner nature of Highmore's images. This method is akin to the painterly ideas of character that Highmore endorsed in his essay. Highmore stated that the value of an image was not based on the "the mere effect of manual operation, or mechanical practice, but depend[s] on … general understanding, judgement, learning, and knowledge of the human heart."⁴³ Discernment of the value of a painting rests on an understanding of painting not as an exercise of technical skill, but as an appreciation of the representation of human character. Although Highmore's formulation may seem overly ambitious (who can truly possess knowledge of the human heart?), his belief reflects the era's idealization of both knowledge and sentimental connection. It also relates to his interest in Pamela as a subject, for the novel is nothing if not an exploration of its heroine's emotional core.

This is the background of Highmore's Adventures of Pamela. The series was a commercial enterprise in a growing art market that gave rise to new understandings of visual culture in general and painting in particular. Highmore's career followed these developments, and he participated in the new discourse revolving around modes of spectatorship for art. With this framing in mind, I now turn to the paintings themselves, analyzing the ways in which they participate in this conversation, educating their audience in the proper mode of viewing.

Mr. B. and Improper Spectatorship

Highmore's Adventures of Pamela presents its audience with a lesson in spectatorship. As a series of paintings of the fictional heroine, the paintings are akin to portraits of Pamela and her world. They transform the interiority of the novel into external appearances. Indeed, appearances and how they are received are a key theme of the series as a whole and of each painting, as Pamela is always being watched in some way or another. While the figures in the paintings never directly acknowledge the audience by breaking the fourth wall, they implicate viewers in their interrogations of viewing practices by placing Pamela at the center of a series of onlookers among whom viewers can take their places. By watching the watching of others, viewers may learn something about their own methods of spectatorship. These lessons are primarily focalized through the character of Mr. B., who changes from an improper spectator to a respectful, moral viewer over the course of the series. The Adventures of Pamela serves as a lesson in how to view both paintings and people.

Highmore drew on the power of earlier pictorial narrative to reinforce his series's conception of the moral possibilities of painting. William Hogarth had introduced this narrative structure to recent painting with A Harlot's Progress (1731–32) and A Rake's Progress (1734–35) and later bolstered its recognition through his Marriage A-La-Mode, in production at the same time as Highmore's series. Hogarth's work was an important influence on the series's conception and on aspects of its composition, as Jacqueline Riding has demonstrated.⁴⁴ For the purposes of this discussion, two points should be recognized. First, Hogarth's "modern moral subjects" prepared audiences to analyze Highmore's series as moral commentary, prompting viewers to analyze behavior and to look for signs of impropriety, thus engaging with Highmore's visual arguments about moral viewership. Second, and in contrast, Highmore's genteel stylings are operating far from Hogarth's caricature and social satire. Though it is possible to assess this difference as a polite diminishment of the violence of Richardson's narrative, as David Solkin suggests, I would argue that the significance here is that Highmore's stylings offer a redemptive possibility that Hogarth's works eschew.⁴⁵ Hogarth's characters are invariably bound to fall, their outward appearances proof of their moral failures. Highmore, in contrast, carefully plays with the distinction between inner character and outward appearance and attempts to use the moral improvement of Mr. B. as a model. Hogarth's paintings, like Richardson's novel, provided Highmore with a form he could adapt for his own purposes.

While Highmore's paintings call for comparisons with Richardson's novel, Highmore was not striving for imitation. Highmore distanced himself from Richardson with both visual and verbal cues. Regarding the former, Highmore's paintings are notably small, approximately 65 × 76 cm each. This small size made hanging the paintings together easier, allowing for a greater narrativity to develop between the works. This narrativity was enhanced in the engraved versions, each approximately 30 × 36 cm. These engravings might be displayed together on a wall, guiding the eye through the sequence, or, alternately, they might be pasted in an album, in which case the narrative would unfold on successive leaves, as if one were reading a novel. The presentation of the series as a narrative was further reinforced by the descriptions located at the bottom of each plate (see, for example, Figure 5). With these captions, Highmore provided his audience with an immediate alternative to Richardson's novel.⁴⁶ The first caption reinforces this point, stating that "Pamela is represented in this first Piece, writing in her late Lady's dressing room, her history being known only by her letters."⁴⁷ By making her supposedly real letters, rather than Richardson's novel, his source, Highmore develops the claim that this work is a distinct presentation of the story with its own concerns.

From the start of the series, Highmore makes the point that, while knowledge of the novel can be assumed, and in some cases might bolster the meaning of a painting, analyses should not stop there. The first painting in the series, Mr B. Finds Pamela Writing (see Figure 1), highlights the series's relation to the novel and to the larger concerns of pictorial representation that it will teach its audience to understand. Here, Pamela writes the first of the many letters that will comprise her story. This scene, the only one of the paintings that presents Pamela writing, plays with Highmore's conception of art's interpretive possibilities. The letters that constitute the novel are here displayed for the viewer, who then recognizes their new presentation in the painting. Highmore posits the imagined history that inspired the novel as the primary source for his own work, rather than the text published by Richardson. Janet Aikins, writing of the same scene in the Hayman/Gravelot engravings commissioned by Richardson, observes that viewing "the actual letter in its manifestation as a physical object … remind[s] us that the printer of the novel has served as intermediary between us and Pamela's words as they were hypothetically penned."⁴⁸ Highmore's work operates in this same manner. By calling to mind the mediation of Richardson's text, Highmore

Figure 1.

Joseph Highmore, Mr. B. Finds Pamela Writing, 1743–44, oil on canvas, 65.1 × 75.9 cm, Tate. Photo: Tate.

demonstrates the capacities of his own work, depicting what Richardson could only describe. Highmore illustrates this distinction in order to demonstrate the way his narrative will operate at a visual level. The audience is encouraged to view the series as a commentary on viewing, much as the novel concerned itself with the practice of reading.

In this opening scene, the importance of developing a careful viewing practice is personified by Pamela. As Highmore's caption on the engraved version informs the audience, Pamela "is here surprised by Mr B. who improves this occasion to further his designs."⁴⁹ This danger is not immediately apparent in the image, where Mr. B. appears with outstretched arm in an apparent display of generosity. Rather, Mr. B.'s deception is only apparent retrospectively, after viewers see his rakish behavior, prompting a reconsideration of this seeming generosity. In this way, viewers of the painting replicate the misreading of Mr. B's intention that Pamela makes in this scene. Readers of the novel would recognize the books on display as those of Pamela's former mistress, offered by Mr. B. as a sign of charity that is actually the first step of his seduction.⁵⁰ It is only after Pamela's parents question Mr. B.'s motives that she recognizes his deceptiveness (12). The viewer of the painting, likely cognizant of these later developments from having read the novel, recognizes this moment for what it is and reexamines the picture in light of this knowledge, much as Pamela does upon reading the admonitions of her parents. Perception is revealed as a continuous learning process, in which what one knows and what one sees combine to create new formations of knowledge and vision in a recursive cycle. It is a cycle that prompts a move from sight to insight, a mode of viewing that begins with surface appearances but extends to understand what lies beneath.

This form of spectatorship, in which one moves from outward appearances to inner recognition, is contrasted with Mr. B., who claims to know Pamela by her appearance as a waiting-maid. As the bulge in his breeches indicates, Mr. B. sees in Pamela the social type of a sexually available servant, rather than recognizing her virtuous interiority. As William Sale Jr. phrased it, Mr. B. views her "as part of his goods and chattels and exercises over her a conventional prerogative."⁵¹ As a wealthy, educated man, Mr. B. engages in a spectatorship in which what he believes he knows, the convention, takes precedent over the particularity of what he sees. While Pamela is writing her own story, Mr. B. thinks he already knows its end, the closed book beside him a metaphor for his closed perception. Mr. B.'s lustful gaze overrides all other views, rendering Pamela the object of vice it wishes to see. This is apparent in the composition of the painting. Pamela sits in a harmonious triangle, rising from the bottom corners to the top center. Mr. B.'s gaze breaks this triangle at an obtuse angle, disturbing this harmony in favor of his own view. Conflicting perceptions continue in their dress. Mr. B. believes Pamela's lowly outfit signifies an equally low morality, while sympathetic viewers recognize that her servant's clothing conceals her virtuous nature. Her appearance is an inversion of Mr. B.'s appearance as a respectably dressed rake. Each of these perspectives remains in play, however. To properly understand this scene, viewers cannot rely on the novel alone. The picture tells its own story in its own visual terms.

The conflict between these forms of viewing is reflected in the painting that hangs behind Pamela, which, as other critics have indicated, illustrates the story of the Good Samaritan.⁵² This painting within a painting creates a metapictorial moment that demonstrates the ability of painting-as-adaptation to go beyond the mere imitation of text.⁵³ Highmore's metapicture serves as commentary, interpreting the scene below. Warren Mild analyzes this image as a metaphor for Mr. B. and Pamela's relationship, viewing the Pharisee in the background as a reflection of Mr. B.'s inhumanity toward Pamela.⁵⁴ His contention is bolstered by the similarity of their poses, as each travel through the painting from left to right. Miriam Dick sees the inset painting rather differently, arguing that it represents Mr. B. as a good Samaritan come to improve the life of his servant.⁵⁵ Highmore's visual commentary thus opens new possibilities of interpretation for the audience. Placing these differing views alongside one another suggests the conversational possibilities of painting. The dialogue created by these readings produces yet another reading. At first, Mr. B. imitates the Pharisee by appearing as an ally, but acting with callousness. When Mr. B. comes to respect Pamela and recognize her for who she is, however, he becomes the good Samaritan. Viewers, like Mr. B., must dissuade themselves from relying on preordered, conventional views in order to achieve a more clear-eyed, virtuous point of view. The Good Samaritan story is an apt one, for despite the expectation the traveler had of the Samaritan, a judgment based upon his looks, he found in him an unlikely friend.

The dangers of improper spectatorship, whereby viewers wrongly assert a possessive knowledge of those they see, are apparent in several of the subsequent images in the series, such as the second painting, Pamela and Mr B. in the Summer House (in which Mr. B. grasps Pamela against her will, staring at her as she averts her gaze), or the fourth painting, Pamela Leaves Mr B.'s House in Bedfordshire, in which he spies on her as she attempts to leave him, knowing she is to be kidnapped and taken to his Lincolnshire estate (93–101).⁵⁶ This trajectory of improper looking culminates in the seventh painting in the series, Pamela in the Bedroom with Mrs. Jewkes and Mr B. (see Figure 2), which depicts his gaze in its most lustful, reprehensible form in order to teach the dangers of such viewing.⁵⁷ This painting presents the audience with a prurient scene of Pamela undressing. Viewers are invited to gaze on Pamela, their eyes drawn to her luminous figure from the darker space around it. Richardson, sensitive to any charges against Pamela's morality, would certainly have preferred Highmore to avoid this "warm scene," but Highmore's independence allowed him to fulfill Richardson's stated plan to "paint VICE in its proper Colours, to make it deservedly odious; and to set VIRTUE in its own amiable Light, to make it truly Lovely" (3). Although Pamela unknowingly captures the audience's initial attention, this focal point is balanced with another to convey the painting's moral. This is revealed when audiences shift their gaze to Mr. B., who is again engaged in an act of improper spectatorship. Unlike the first painting in the series, however, Mr. B. is now engaged in a surreptitious mode of viewing, hiding in the corner while staring at Pamela in a fit of lust, his body veiled under the clothes of another maidservant, leaving only his hands and face visible. Following Highmore's visual cues, the audience, for whom Pamela's body is much more directly visible than it is for Mr. B., is powerfully implicated in his act of voyeurism.

Figure 2.

Joseph Highmore, Pamela in the Bedroom with Mrs. Jewkes and Mr. B, 1743–44, oil on canvas, 62.7 × 75.7 cm, Tate. Photo: Tate.

The immorality of this voyeurism is not confined to viewing but also extends to the actions that follow this violation. As the plate explains, "Mr B. … is impatiently waiting for the execution of his plot."⁵⁸ Readers of the novel would know that this "plot" is the attempted rape of Pamela (187–88). Audiences could thus scrutinize this moment for its intimations of sexual violence. Viewers who looked at Pamela in the same manner as Mr. B. might realize they too are implicated in his behavior; they too were attempting to destroy Pamela's virtue by stripping her of an inner being in favor of a focus upon her outward form. Viewers must reconsider their actions and review the painting in order to recognize Pamela's luminosity not as an enticement, but rather a sign of her purity. This dynamic also offers a lesson to those who would dismiss the painting as mere lechery. Audiences who view the painting in this manner inadvertently repeat Mr. B.'s lustful gaze by concentrating solely on the image they claim to find offensive. As Riding argues, Highmore does not indicate that Mr. B.'s desire is inherently immoral, but the way he acts on that desire is.⁵⁹ Viewers must be cognizant of the nature of their perception and what that perception will lead to. Even an image that first appears immoral may have something to teach spectators, if they are willing to look beyond initial appearances.

The Moral Spectator

Thus far in the series, Highmore's paintings have engaged with the issue of improper spectatorship. Mr. B.'s gaze is shown as improper both in the sense of social impropriety and in the sense that he fails to see what is before him: not the caricature of a sexually available servant, but a living, feeling human being. In the eighth painting in the series, Pamela Greets Her Father (see Figure 3), Highmore shifts to depicting a moral spectatorship based on recognizing the relation between the viewer and the viewed. Rather than imposing meaning based on what they think they know, moral spectators learn from what they see and remain open to a sentimental affect that allows them to recognize the human interiority beneath surface appearances.

In this painting, Mr. B. represents this moral spectatorship for the audience. Readers of the novel would recognize that, in the intervening time between this painting and the last, Mr. B. has undergone a profound moral education, as Pamela's virtue inspired him to forsake his rakish behavior and to promise to marry her (242). Indeed, Mr. B.'s moral shift is underscored in Highmore's series by the ninth painting, which depicts their marriage.⁶⁰ Here in the eighth painting, we again see Mr. B. staring at Pamela, but his attitude is changed as he clutches his heart and looks on with a measure of surprise.⁶¹ The depicted scene, in which Pamela overturns the card table in rushing to greet her father, is certainly cause for surprise, but Mr. B.'s response is not the shock of the fashionable people behind him. Rather, Mr. B.'s attention is focused on the loving exchange before him, the first time in the series in which his eyes are not trained solely on Pamela. Here, Mr. B.'s viewership is not an instance of attempted control, but a sympathetic response to the scene before him. He is caught off-guard and must reassess what he believes he knows; Pamela can surprise him even now. In viewing the relationship between Pamela and her father, Mr. B. is overcome not by lustful passion, but by heartfelt sentiment.

Spectatorship does not merely occur on an individual level, however, but rather is an interaction among viewers. Viewing should not be a looking at but a looking into, as Pamela and her father demonstrate. Highmore chose as his subject the moment before Pamela and her father embrace, as they stare into one another's eyes. Their familial bond is presented as a relationship in which sight is a medium of social exchange. Pamela's visual exchange with her father is one of recognition: they know one another. But

Figure 3.

Joseph Highmore, Pamela Greets Her Father, 1743–44, oil on canvas, 63.5 × 76.2 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

it is also an exchange of responsiveness: they are surprised by each other's presence. Their gaze is like Mr. B.'s, but is also the cause of it because they connect emotionally to one another through sight. Highmore positions this exchange against a social backdrop created by the audience in the painting's background, which includes Parson Peters, the Darnford family (Simon, Lady, and Miss), and five other anonymous women.⁶² Pamela and her father are an object of study for these other viewers, who do not look upon them in the same way as Mr. B. does. They may appear curious and surprised, but they lack an empathetic response to the scene before them.⁶³ Pamela has upended the social conventions of the card table as well as those of class distinction; her actions disrupt the order they expect. Pamela will contend with such views from Mr. B.'s disapproving family later in the series, evidence of the difficulties surrounding her change in station.⁶⁴ Like Mr. B. earlier in the narrative, these figures assume that they know Pamela through their own superficial observation and so must reform their view of her.

In addition to depicting spectators, Highmore reinforces the social function of painting by showing more paintings within paintings, in this case, the portraits lining the wall. These portraits constitute a family gallery, a traditional mode of display that showed off a family's history and lineage.⁶⁵ The inclusion of the family gallery was a convention of conversation pieces, linking current and previous generations in a way that implied the approval of the sitters' forebears.⁶⁶ In placing Pamela in this context just before her wedding day, Highmore signals Pamela's social ascendance and the virtue of her marriage to Mr. B., whose spectatorial reform is sanctioned by his ancestors. The cross-generational conversation implied by this painting also connects to considerations of the relation of conversation to art. Three of the women in the background look not at Pamela or her father, but rather at a painting above them. Highmore underscores the social nature of viewing art, which brings these women together. Further, two of the women are engaged in discussion, one of them gesturing toward the painting. Highmore shows his audience how they should engage with the works before them, interpreting their meanings while conversing with companions. Perhaps the women are considering where Pamela will fit in this family history, conversing not only with each other but also with the portraits before them. Perception is here depicted as both socially mediated and socially bonding.

By staging Pamela's scene of familial bonding in the context of familial portraiture, Highmore points to a relation between viewing art and viewing people. Pamela and her father are portrayed in the painting for Highmore's audience, but they are also the living subjects of the viewers of Mr. B.'s social circle. Pamela and her father are like the portraits discussed earlier, paintings with a life of their own. But Highmore's series moves beyond static portraiture by painting the exhilarating life story of Pamela, her adventures provoking a multiplicity of emotions for both her and her viewers. The psychological realism attributed to Richardson's novel can thus be glimpsed in the paintings' narrative. How one views an artwork affects how one views other people. If viewers learn to see like Mr. B. (from this particular painting on), they can be sentimentally affected in the same manner that he is, or that Pamela and her father are. Highmore claimed that a proper judgment of painting required a proper understanding of the human heart, and here that understanding has been made visible.

The value of this new-formed understanding is evident in the next painting in the series, in which Mr. B. and Pamela are married, but it is most apparent in the series's final painting, Pamela Tells a Nursery Tale (see Figure 4). Here, the bed appears not as a site of terror, as it did in the painting of Mr. B.'s voyeurism, but rather a site of marriage and domestic bliss.⁶⁷ Pamela is again the center of attention, but now her viewers' faces are full of delight

Figure 4.

Joseph Highmore, Pamela Tells a Nursery Tale, c. 1744, oil on canvas, 62.9 × 74.7 cm, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Reproduction by permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

and wonder as she is surrounded by her children. Pamela's children watch her intently, their wide eyes signaling an openness to the lessons she will teach them as she weaves a tale anew.

Pamela's children are described by Highmore in the caption to the engraved version of this image as the "peaceable fruits of her Virtue long after having surmounted all the difficulties it had been exposed to."⁶⁸ Pamela's children, however, are more than her personal reward for virtue, for they symbolize societal progress as well. Children here represent the result of the bonds of a loving marriage and thus may be read as symbols of harmonious social interactions.⁶⁹ New ideas about the influence of motherhood on the development of children were tied to beliefs concerning women's supposed greater sentimentality. Women could pass on their intellectual and emotional responsiveness to future generations in the form of ingrained standards of behavior. This generational progress was likened to a national moral development, as each generation was imagined as improving upon the last. Pamela's children represent this moral improvement in their newly learned modes of viewing, seeing Pamela in a proper manner that will ideally be instilled in others of their generation.

The hope for this new generation is reinforced by the painting hanging over the fireplace, which is more visible in the engraved version (see Figure 5). The first metapicture of the series, the Good Samaritan, reinforced the moral considerations at stake by sending Mr. B. on the path to learn proper judgement. This final metapicture, on the other hand, depicts a naked babe held from behind by its mother, reaching out to touch another young child. This composition echoes images of the Madonna and Child with an infant St. John the Baptist. Highmore thus connects Pamela to Mary and her children to Jesus and St. John and the themes of innocence and virtuous motherhood that those paintings traditionally represented.⁷⁰ Portraitists often drew upon this iconography in paintings of mothers and children in order to universalize their subjects, demonstrating the moral possibilities of contemporary motherhood. Recognizing this classic iconography helps viewers understand how Highmore's painting are not just about Pamela, but also about the nature of people more generally. The virtue they aim to instill is one of a societal moral redemption. Societal progress is presented as an improvement of vision, each new iteration refining what viewers can see until they reach an understanding of the human heart.

Viewing Highmore and Richardson Anew

The Adventures of Pamela remained on display in Highmore's studio until his retirement to the country in 1762, when it was almost certainly sold at auction, along with the rest of Highmore's collection.⁷¹ In 1920, the set appeared at auction at Christies. It was subsequently donated to the National Gallery, London, and was divided between that institution, the Fitzwilliam Museum, and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.⁷² The dispersal of the series has undoubtedly contributed to its lack of recognition. Separated from one another, these paintings lose the coherence essential to their work as a pictorial equivalent of a novel. Viewing them as singular pieces or in small, random groupings reduces the paintings to scattered bits of Pamela ephemera and forces audiences to turn to Richardson's text to bind the pieces back together. This essay offers a way to understand this series without relying first and foremost on Richardson's novel.

However, this essay would be remiss if it did not return to Richardson one final time, for he was quite taken with Highmore's work and, as a result, the two became lifelong friends.⁷³ Ultimately, Highmore claimed Richardson as his closest friend and was with Richardson just before he died in 1761.⁷⁴

Figure 5.

Antoine Benoist after Joseph Highmore, Pamela Tells a Nursery Tale, 1745, engraving, 26.7 × 37.3 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

In the years before his passing, Highmore painted several portraits of Richardson, including one that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery (see Figure 6), which was commissioned by Richardson's friend and admirer, Lady Bradshaigh.⁷⁵ The social function of novels and paintings is on full display in Richardson's portrait. Highmore depicts Richardson with the signs of his professional accomplishments, pen and paper in hand, while behind him a bookshelf stands housing the results of those tools. Richardson's own virtue is here visible for all to see. Underneath the public aspect of this portrait, however, is a further personal meaning. Lady Bradshaigh, writing to Richardson, stated she "would chuse you drawn in your study, a table or desk by you, with pen, ink, and paper; one letter just sealed, which I shall fancy is to me."⁷⁶ Understood in this light, the painting juxtaposes Richardson as both the brilliant epistolary novelist and a faithful, personal friend.

There is one final touch that makes this portrait a monument to sociability: its collaborative composition. While Highmore was working on Lady Bradshaigh's commission, Richardson asked him to reproduce a painting of Lady Bradshaigh and her husband done by Edward Haytley. Richardson

Figure 6.

Joseph Highmore, Samuel Richardson, 1750, oil on canvas, 52.7 × 36.8 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London.

wanted more than a mere copy, however, and asked Highmore to make the work more personal. Highmore complied by dressing the two in the Van Dyck style and replacing Lord Bradshaigh's dog with Lady Bradshaigh's tame fawn, Fanny. When Highmore painted his portrait of Richardson, he inserted this image into the background, building on Richardson's ideas to add another level of intimate depth to this piece. Highmore's portrait of Richardson is thus layered with personal, sentimental meaning derived from both of these eighteenth-century masters. The accomplishment of this portrait derives from the same source that make Highmore's Adventures of Pamela such a success. It is a work made not in imitation, but in sympathy.