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Edward John Gregory caricature
Decorator: Barnard, Frederick
Square, white earthenware tile with over-glaze image painted in brown enamel.
Two painted figures stalk across the tile. On the left is a man with unkempt fair hair, a beard and an ill-fitting suit, carrying a muffled spear in his right hand; he is identified by the initials ‘EJG’ in the top left corner. In front of him is a tall, wiry man, with flowing dark hair, who wears a large pendant and carries a sword. To the right, a speech bubble: ‘ “Go on, I’ll follow thee” '. The tile is industrially produced from pressed dust; on the reverse is an impressed diamond pattern. It is fixed in a (later) wooden frame and stand.
History note: Bequeathed by Miss Dorothy Barnard, the artist’s daughter
Bequeathed by Miss Dorothy Barnard, the artist’s daughter
Height: 15.2 cm
Width: 15.2 cm
Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1949) by Barnard, Dorothy
19th Century, Late#
Production date:
circa
AD 1880
Fred(erick) Barnard (1846-96), the son of a silversmith, was an illustrator, caricaturist, genre painter and portraitist. After training in Paris, he contributed to journals, such as 'Punch', ‘Harper’s Weekly’ and the 'Illustrated London News' and became known as an illustrator of Dickens and Bunyan. He also showed large-scale canvasses at the Royal Academy which commented on urban social conditions; a reviewer greeted his ‘Saturday Night in the East End’, 1876, as amongst ‘the most remarkable illustrations of London low-life […] full of grime and flare, and of human uncouthness’. He settled for a time in Broadway, Gloucestershire, where John Singer Sargent painted his wife Alice Faraday (‘Mrs Frederick Barnard’, 1885), and his two daughters Polly and Dorothy (‘Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose’, 1885-86) [Tate, nos. N05901 and N01615] , and his neighbours included Henry James and Edmund Gosse, the latter recording him wearing an ‘enormous stage slouch hat’. The Fitzwilliam Museum also holds a portrait of Dorothy Barnard, the donor, painted by Sargent in 1889.
Irving is in costume as Hamlet, and the inscription ‘Go on, I’ll follow thee’ comes from Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4.
One of a series of seven tiles, each depicting a fellow contemporary artist, this design is a caricature of Edward John Gregory RA(1850-1909), with the actor Henry Irving (1838-1905), whom he admired. Gregory initially worked in the drawing office of the P. &; O. Steamship Company in Southampton, but in 1869 came to London to study art. Like Barnard, he was an illustrator, and from 1871 to 1875 worked for 'The Graphic'. From 1875 he exhibited genre paintings and portraits at the Royal Academy, and in 1898 was elected president of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour. A contemporary critic described him as a‘good-natured, thoughtful, capable, big burly blond’, with a pronounced stutter, which suggests the figure depicted here, and perhaps also his admiration for Irving, who was known for his mannerisms of voice.
Decoration composed of enamel ( brown) clear glaze
Dust pressing : Industrially produced, dust-pressed, white earthenware, lead-glazed, and painted with brown enamel
Accession number: C.5C-1949
Primary reference Number: 15284
Stable URI
Owner or interested party:
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department:
Applied Arts
This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:
The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "Edward John Gregory caricature" Web page available at: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/15284 Accessed: 2024-12-22 06:30:06
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{{cite web|url=https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/15284
|title=Edward John Gregory caricature
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-12-22 06:30:06|publisher=The
University of Cambridge}}
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