Image, Identity and John Wesley: A Study in Portraiture (Routledge Methodist Studies Series) [1 ed.] 1138207896, 9781138207899

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Image, Identity and John Wesley

The face of John Wesley (1703–91), the Methodist leader, became one of the most familiar images in the English-speaking and transatlantic worlds through the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After the dozen or so painted portraits made during his lifetime came numbers of posthumous portraits and moralising ‘scene paintings’, and hundreds of variations of prints. It was calculated that six million copies were produced of one print alone – an 1827 portrait by John Jackson R.A. as frontispiece for a hymn book. Illustrated by nearly one hundred images, many in colour, with a comprehensive appendix listing known Wesley images, this book offers a much-needed comprehensive and critical survey of one of the most influential religious and public figures of eighteenth-century Britain. Besides chapters on portraits from the life and after, scene paintings and prints, it explores aspects of Wesley’s (and Methodism’s) attitudes to art, and the personality cult which gathered around Wesley as Methodism expanded globally. It will be of interest to art historians as a treatment of an individual sitter and subject, as well as to scholars engaged in Wesley and Methodist studies. It is also significant for the field of material studies, given the spread and use of the image, on artefacts as well as on paper. Peter S. Forsaith is a historian of religion, culture and society in eighteenthcentury Britain. He is Research Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University, UK, and has written and lectured on many aspects of Methodist history. He gained his Ph.D. in 2003 for a scholarly edition of Rev. John Fletcher’s letters to Rev. Charles Wesley, later expanded and published as Unexampled Labours (2008). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Image, Identity and John Wesley represents the fruit of more than twenty years of scholarly research by the author, who is recognised as a foremost expert on Wesley iconography.

Routledge Methodist Studies Series Series Editor: William Gibson, Director of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University, UK

Editorial Board: Ted A. Campbell, Professor of Church History, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, USA David N. Hempton, Dean, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University, USA Priscilla Pope-Levison, Associate Dean, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, USA Martin Wellings, Superintendent Minister of Oxford Methodist Circuit and Past President of the World Methodist Historical Society, UK. Karen B. Westerfield Tucker, Professor of Worship, Boston University, USA Methodism remains one of the largest denominations in the USA and is growing in South America, Africa and Asia (especially in Korea and China). This series spans Methodist history and theology, exploring its success as a movement historically and in its global expansion. Books in the series will look particularly at features within Methodism which attract wide interest, including: the unique position of the Wesleys; the prominent role of women and minorities in Methodism; the interaction between Methodism and politics; the ‘Methodist conscience’ and its motivation for temperance and pacifist movements; the wide range of Pentecostal, holiness and evangelical movements; and the interaction of Methodism with different cultures.

Titles in the series: Methodism in Australia Edited by Glen O’Brien and Hilary M. Carey British Methodist Hymnody Theology, Heritage, and Experience Martin V. Clarke Image, Identity and John Wesley A Study in Portraiture Peter S. Forsaith

Collage of print heads of John Wesley surrounded by associates and preachers

Image, Identity and John Wesley A Study in Portraiture Peter S. Forsaith

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Peter S. Forsaith The right of Peter S. Forsaith to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Forsaith, Peter S., author. Title: Image, identity and John Wesley : a study in portraiture / Peter S. Forsaith. Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Routledge Methodist studies series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017012680 | ISBN 9781138207899 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315107905 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Wesley, John, 1703–1791—Portraits. Classification: LCC N7628.W46 F67 2017 | DDC 704.9/42—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017012680 ISBN: 978-1-138-20789-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-10790-5 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To Mark, who helped me to see.

Contents

List of figuresxi List of platesxii Preface and acknowledgementsxv List of abbreviationsxvii Introduction

1

  1 ‘A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua’: some issues and complexities around the portraiture

9

  2 ‘This melancholy employment’: portraits from the life to 1780

23

  3 ‘I yielded to importunity’: portraits from the life, 1781–91

33

  4 Prints and posthumous portraits: spreading and selling the image

41

  5 Scene paintings

56

  6 Pottery and sculpture: a note

66

  7 No striking likeness? Images and ambiguities

69

  8 ‘The Pious Preacher’: satire

75

  9 ‘Of pictures I do not pretend to be a judge’: John Wesley and art

83

x  Contents

10 Image, identity and institution: constructing a canon 11 Conclusions: visualising Mr Wesley

91 100

Plates103 Appendix A: iconography of principal paintings of John Wesley, with selected prints161 Appendix B: references in John Wesley’s journal and diaries to portraits and painters198 Bibliography201 Plate acknowledgements205 Index207

Figures

1.1 John Wesley, Journal, January 1789 1.2 Frontispiece and title page, John Wesley, Notes on the New Testament, 1755 2.1 Frontispiece and title page, John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament, c.1766 2.2 Excerpt from ‘Preface’, John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament, c.1766 4.1 [J.] Ridley: John Wesley prior to interment (stipple engr., 1791) 4.2 Anon.: frontispiece (with title page), The Arminian Magazine, January 1778 4.3 Anon.: frontispiece, The Arminian Magazine, [?] February 1783 4.4 J. Holloway: John Wesley (line and stipple engr. J. Holloway, 1791) 8.1 Miss D-ple and The Pious Preacher 8.2 The ‘new chapel’, City Road; The Arminian Magazine, 1781

10 17 26 28 42 49 50 52 78 80

Plates

I II IIIa IIIb IVa IVb V VI VII VIII IXa IXb X XIa XIb XIIa XIIb XIII XIVa XIVb XVa XVb XVIa XVIb XVII XVIII XIX XX

Anon.: John Wesley (anon. line engraving, 1741) J. M. Williams: John Wesley (c.1743) J. Faber: John Wesley (mezzotint, 1743) Attrib. J. M. Williams: John Wesley (early copy) Anon.: John Wesley (line engraving, G.Vertue, c.1742) After J. M. Williams: John Wesley (line engraving, G.Vertue, 1745) J. Harley (attrib.): John Wesley (n.d.) Thomas Bakewell: John Wesley (line engraving, c.1740s), with detail John Tinney: John Wesley (line engraving, c.1740s) Robert Hunter: John Wesley (o/c, 1765) After Robert Hunter: John Wesley (o/c, n.d.) Anon.: John Wesley (o/c, n.d.) Nathaniel Hone: John Wesley (o/c, 1765) After Nathaniel Hone: John Wesley (mezzotint, 1770) ‘Miss MACARONI and her GALLANT at a Print Shop’ (mezzotint, John Raphael Smith, 1773) After Nathaniel Hone [reversed]: John Wesley (mezzotint, John Greenwood, 1770) After Nathaniel Hone: John Wesley (Bland, c.1766) John Russell: John Wesley (o/c, c.1772) Anon.: ‘BUNG TRIUMPHANT’ (1756) Anon.: ‘The tree of life’ (c.1770) Anon: ‘A coat of arms for John Wesley’ (1778) Anon.: ‘Toothless, he draws the Teeth of all his Flocks’ (1778) (Thomas Rowlandson), ‘OLD CANTWELL CANVASSING FOR LORD JANUS’ (1788) (Isaac Cruikshank), ‘Self murder . . .’ (1791) Anon.: ‘John Wesley’ (mezzotint ‘droll’, publ. R. Sayer, 1791) Thomas Horsley: John Wesley (o/c, c.1784) Rev. Thomas Olave: John Wesley standing in a graveyard (o/c, 1783) William Hamilton: John Wesley (o/c, 1788)

103 104 105 105 106 106 107 108 109 110 111 111 112 113 113 114 114 115 116 116 117 117 118 118 119 120 121 122

Plates xiii

XXIa

After William Hamilton: John Wesley (line and stipple, engrv. James Fittler, 1788) Sylvester Harding: John Wesley (stipple, engr. XXIb J. Gardiner, 1788) George Romney: John Wesley (o/c, 1789) XXII XXIIIa After George Romney: John Wesley (mezzotint, engr. J. Spilsbury, 1789) XXIIIb After George Romney: John Wesley (mezzotint, engr. J. Ward, 1825) After Lewis Vaslet: John Wesley (mezzotint, engr. XXIVa Campbell and Gainsborough, 1789) XXIVb Henry Edridge: John Wesley (miniature, poss. watercolours on ivory, c.1790) XXV Anon.: John Wesley (oils on glass, c.1789) XXVI John Barry: John Wesley (miniature, oils on ivory, 1790) XXVIIa After John Barry: John Wesley (line engr., J. Fittler, 1791) XXVIIb After John Barry: John Wesley (stipple, J. Ridley, 1808) XXVIII Anon. John Kay: John Wesley (etching, 1790) XXIX J. Butterworth: John Wesley (ink on paper, 1791) XXXa Printing plate of John Wesley, inscribed ‘from the collection of the late Thomas Bewick’ (1791) XXXb William Bromley, in European Magazine, 1791 XXXI John Wesley, death mask (plaster cast, 1791) XXXII Enoch Wood: John Wesley (bust, 1784) XXXIII Anon.: John Wesley Coade stone (inscr. Coade London 1793) XXXIV John Renton: John Wesley (o/c, c.1824) XXXV Anon.: John Wesley (steel engraving, publ. Tomkinson and Dean, 1838) XXXVI John Jackson: John Wesley (o/c, c.1827) XXXVII Gluck Rosenthal after John Jackson (in script): John Wesley (steel engraving, 1850) with detail of start XXXVIII Maria Spilsbury-Taylor: John Wesley preaching in Ireland (o/c, 1815) XXXIX Henry Perlee Parker: ‘Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?’ (o/c, 1839–40) XL Marshall Claxton: The Death-Bed of the Rev. John Wesley (o/c, 1842) XLIa Marshall Claxton: John Wesley with his friends at Oxford (o/c, c.1858) XLIb Anon. (after Marshall Claxton): John Wesley in the Wednesbury riots (steel engraving) XLII W. O. Geller: John Wesley preaching to twenty-five thousand persons in the Gwennap Pit in its original state (o/c, 1845)

123 123 124 125 125 126 126 127 128 129 129 130 131 132 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 143 144

xiv  Plates

XLIII

John Martin: ‘Joshua commanding the sun to stand still over Gibeon’ (o/c, 1816) 145 XLIV George Washington Brownlow: ‘John Wesley preaching from his father’s tomb, Epworth’ (o/c, 1860) 146 [attrib.] Alfred Hunt, ‘John Wesley preaching from his XLV father’s tomb’ (o/c, c.1850) 147 XLVI John Adams-Acton: ‘I look upon all the world as my parish’ (marble relief, detail, 1876) 148 XLVII Thomas Whaley: ‘The triumph of religion . . .’ (o/c, c.1860) 149 XLVIII E. G. Lewes: John Wesley meets George Whitefield (o/c, c.1889) 150 XLIX William Hatherell: ‘John Wesley preaching from the steps of a market cross’ (o/c, 1909) 151 W.H.Y. Titcomb: ‘John Wesley preaching in Bristol’ L (watercolour, 1915) 152 W.H.Y. Titcomb: ‘John Wesley preaching before the Mayor LI and Corporation of the City of Bristol in the Mayor’s Chapel, 1788’ (o/c, c.1918) 153 LII Frank O. Salisbury: John Wesley (o/c, 1932) 154 LIIIa Frank O. Salisbury: John Wesley [‘The Ecclesiastical Statesman’] (o/c, c.1950s) 155 LIIIb Frank O. Salisbury: John Wesley [‘The Scholar’] (o/c, c.1950s)155 Richard Douglas: John Wesley mounting his LIV horse (o/c, 1992) 156 Kathy Priddis: John Wesley (o/c, 2010) 157 LV LVI [supposed] John Wesley as a boy (o/c, n.d., cf. p. 17) 158 LVIIa Display of busts of John Wesley, Museum of Methodism, London 159 LVIIb [supposed] miniature of John Wesley as a young man (watercolour on ivory?, n.d.) 159 LVIII Logo for ‘John Wesley 250’ (1988) 160

Preface and acknowledgements

In 1990 I was asked to ‘do something’ about the paintings in the store-room of the Museum of Methodism, London, which were neglected. The first task was to list them: as I did so it seemed that every other picture was of John Wesley, but all, in some way, different, some subtly, some significantly. I started trying to make sense of this bewildering range of images of him, so set out on a journey which, a quarter-century on, results in this book. It is impossible to list the many, many people who have helped, advised and facilitated my pursuit of Wesley images over these years, directly or indirectly. In thanking some specifically, I apologise now to all those whose names are not mentioned. Please be assured that I am no less grateful, nor is your help forgotten. First must come the dedicated staff, many volunteer, of historic Methodist sites in Britain (which hold the largest proportion of portraits of Wesley) who have given me access to them. Special mention should go to the minister of Wesley’s Chapel, London, Rev. Lord Leslie Griffiths, and the succession of curators of the Museum of Methodism, where their pictures are now kept in excellent order. Next are the librarians and archivists who have enabled me to look at prints and papers; in particular the invaluable Heinz archive of the National Portrait Gallery in London (and thanks to Jacob Simon, former Chief Curator of the Gallery, for his gentle encouragement). Leeds City Art Gallery’s library was my first recourse to reading around the subject. The Wesley Historical Society library at Oxford Brookes University is my place of work, and I have been unstintingly helped and supported by the honorary librarians, John Vickers and John Lenton. Staff at the John Rylands Library of the University of Manchester have found various items for me in the Methodist archives; Rachael Merrison at the National Gallery archives in London guided me through using Agnew’s records. The Sackler Library of the University of Oxford has been an indispensable source for material that was difficult to find elsewhere. My month as scholar in residence at Bridwell Library of the Southern Methodist University, Dallas, in 2002 enabled me to systematize my collections of notes, and prepare the first iteration of a ‘provisional iconography’ [now ‘Appendix A’]. This was the biggest single help along the way, and an immensely enjoyable one. Special thanks to Valerie Hotchkiss, then Bridwell’s

xvi  Preface and acknowledgements

Librarian, and Page Thomas, Director of the Wesley Centre, but also to all the staff who facilitated my study and then involved me in two subsequent exhibitions. My truncated time as a research fellow at Point Loma University, San Diego in 2014 enabled me to get the draft chapters into shape – that too was a considerable help, for which I must thank Mark Mann. Methodism does not have a monopoly on Mr Wesley – as this book should demonstrate, Wesley was a well-known figure with a public face. I am grateful to the galleries, museums and a number of private individuals who have let me view pictures which they hold. Collecting illustrations for the book was a bigger single task than I had anticipated, and I am grateful to institutions, businesses or individuals who have supplied images, many of which have not charged for their use, or their time in locating them. No work of scholarship can progress adequately without being tested along the way by conference or seminar papers, book chapters or articles, and the comments or critiques they generate. Colleagues, at Oxford and wider afield, have been supportive and informative, often suggesting angles I might not have considered. There are some individuals who should be singled out, in particular Henry Rack and John Walsh. Without their constant and continuing encouragement, advice and suggestions this study would never have got anywhere. Bob Glen and Anna Bonewitz helped me in navigating the unfamiliar reaches of satirical images of Methodists. I greatly regret that Susan Pellowe did not live to see this book: sourcing images for her Wesley Family Book of Days was a spur to my research and the start of our friendship, and her perennial interest and encouragement. I owe much to Dick Heitzenrater, whose Elusive Mr. Wesley was a turning point in my estimation of Wesley, and whose attention to images of Wesley has informed my own. He and Randy Maddox have enabled me to join two Wesley Summer Schools at Duke University, and use Frank Baker’s extensive papers. Bill Gibson has been unfailingly and immeasurably supportive as Director of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History; as Research Fellow my relationship with him has always been collegial, extending to his role as editor of the series in which this book appears. I am grateful for financial support to the Gibbs Family Trust, the Archives and History Commission of the United Methodist Church and Oxford Brookes University Department of History, Philosophy and Religion research funds. Mark Bickerstaff, who undertook the photography for the 1990 survey, has helped me to see not only the joys of art, but beauty in the world around us. A book dedication is the least of what I owe. And lastly thanks to my family who have at times looked on with bemused tolerance, which is the best support they could have given to make me keep the subject in proper perspective.

Abbreviations

diary  DMBI  f/l  h/l  h/s  Journal  JWJ JWL Magazine MARC MR NPG o/c OxDNB PWHS R.A. SPCW SPJW WJW

John Wesley’s personal diaries.The most comprehensive transcriptions are published in WJW 18–24 [Journals and Diaries I–VII]. ed. John A.Vickers, A Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland (London: Epworth Press, 2000). Online at wesleyhistoricalsociety. org.uk/dmbi Full-length. Half-length. Head and shoulders. John Wesley: Journal, published periodically during his lifetime and in many editions and selections since. That used here is WJW 18–24 [Journals and Diaries I–VII]. ed. Nehemiah Curnock, The Journal of John Wesley (‘Standard Edition’) in 8 vols. (London: Charles H. Kelly, 1909–16). ed. John Telford, The Letters of John Wesley (‘Standard Edition’) in 8 vols. (London: Epworth Press, 1931). As Arminian Magazine (1778–98), Methodist Magazine (1798– 1822), Wesleyan Methodist Magazine (1822–1932), Methodist Magazine (1932–69). Methodist Archive and Research Centre, John Rylands Library, University of Manchester. The Methodist Recorder, weekly newspaper from 1861. National Portrait Gallery, London. Oils on canvas. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online). Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society. Royal Academy of Arts, London. John Telford, Sayings and Portraits of Charles Wesley (London: Epworth Press, 1927). John Telford, Sayings and Portraits of John Wesley (London: Epworth Press, 1924). eds. Frank Baker, W. R. Ward, Richard P. Heitzenrater et al., The Works of John Wesley (‘Bicentennial Edition’) [Oxford: Oxford University Press and Nashville: Abingdon, 1974–].

Introduction

All art is at once surface and symbol . . . It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. —Oscar Wilde  – The Portrait of Dorian Gray

Any portrait must be a work of fiction. Aside from the obvious – that a twodimensional image is never the reality of a person who lives and laughs, cries and dies – portraits are created through the conventions within which the artist works and the viewer sees as well as using available techniques. An image in paint or on paper can never be more than a projection which serves as an aidememoire, one indicator of a personality which is also mediated through such channels as writings, artefacts or association. John Kerslake, then Director of the National Portrait Gallery, wrote forty years ago: ‘A detailed critical survey of the portraiture [of John Wesley] is overdue’.1 This study aims to reach beyond the descriptive to approach images of the progenitor of the Methodist religious movement by engaging with questions around their creation, production, reception and spread in his lifetime and after. The numbers of copies, versions or derivatives is such as to defy mapping their genealogy in any meaningful sense, so this does not claim to identify every known image, especially those in prints where one printer seems to have copied from another, perhaps incorporating some adjustments, as they recognized that here they had a profitable commodity. Nor does it investigate the variants on painted portraits, or those dubiously attributed to particular artists. Rather it aims to focus on those key works which became iconographically formative, setting them within their cultural context, and posing critical questions about them. Wesley’s face became one of the most widely circulated likenesses of the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the transatlantic and British imperial worlds at least. His visual popularity, well beyond the denomination, must be considered alongside those of monarchs and leading public figures such as the Duke of Wellington or the Emperor Napoleon, George Washington, and (later – in an age of photography) Queen Victoria or Abraham Lincoln. The relationship to those art and print cultures is important.

2  Introduction

Nor is this a biographical study of John Wesley: however, a brief introduction to the man whose images are under scrutiny may be useful. Often referred to as the ‘Founder of Methodism’, Wesley did not aim (or claim) to start a denomination. Yet the organisation he headed became arguably the largest Protestant movement since the Reformation: what began as a gaggle of Oxford undergraduates around 1730, was by the end of the twentieth century a global communion numbering some 100 million, which has additionally spawned a clutch of offspring (such as the Nazarene Church and the Salvation Army) and further influenced religious developments including Pentecostalism.2 As David Hempton put it, ‘the next Christendom, already under construction in the global south, would not look the same if Methodism had never existed’.3 It is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify John Wesley’s direct and indirect influence: it is easily underestimated. Added to that is the wider use of his brother Charles’s hymns which spread the Wesley name well beyond Protestantism. In the century after their deaths, with the international expansion of the movement, the circulation of prints made John Wesley’s face familiar to millions, and episodes of his life became the subject of moralistic scene paintings and prints, all of which became totemic for Methodists.Wesley’s mantra (recalling his childhood rescue from the fire which destroyed the family home) ‘is not this a brand plucked as from the burning?’ might – perhaps ­mischievously – become ‘is not this a brand?’4 A Wesleyan minister wrote in the 1920s: Wesley was quickly apotheosised by Methodists. His graven, molten, and carven images were innumerable. I have counted, in one collection, sixty different busts of Wesley, in every conceivable medium – plaster, wood, marble, china, &c. His portrait was not only seen on the walls of devout Methodists, but it was woven into their counterpanes and table-cloths, and burnt into their teapots and their crockery. The only conceivable thing which I have never seen it associated with was their carpets, presumably because they thought it disrespectful to tread on their idol.5 This study addresses two-dimensional works, essentially paintings and prints: busts, statues, ceramic representations and other material objects (mammalian vertebrae painted to depict ‘Wesley’ for instance) are a separate area for attention and part of wider studies of material culture.6 In his lifetime there were at least twelve original painted portraits taken: for some he sat formally, to noted artists including Nathaniel Hone, John Russell and George Romney; others were more opportunistic and by little-known painters. The first identified likeness in adulthood was apparently for a carving on the head of a stick; the last known images from the life seem to have both been taken in May 1790, a shadow profile while he breakfasted and a sketch while he was walking back from preaching.7

Introduction 3

Posthumous portraiture and scene paintings, which became more significant iconographically (and still continue to appear) bring the total to above fifty original works – disregarding numbers of versions or copies.8 Probably the more familiar images (from paintings by John Jackson, c.1827; and Frank Salisbury, 1932) are synthesised posthumous pictures, which inevitably owe much to assumptions and imagination. Near the end of the nineteenth century it was estimated that some six million prints of John Jackson’s synthesised portrait alone had been produced by the Wesleyan Book Room, the denominational publishers, as frontispiece to editions of Wesley’s Hymns.9 The Wesley ‘face’ became popularly stereotyped. Often it is visualised as an ageing, white haired clergyman – hardly surprising since some two-thirds of likenesses in his lifetime were taken during his last decade, when he was in his eighties, including the bust by Enoch Wood, generally considered by those who had known him as the best likeness. And this is entirely to leave aside the vast array of published prints and images in other media (such as ceramics, stained glass, murals) which proliferated particularly through the century and to disregard the caricature and satire typical of the period to which he was also subjected in his lifetime. So most challenging is the sheer quantity and variety of images of Wesley. Over a century ago, in articles in the Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, Joseph Wright, a layman and antiquarian, was the first person to attempt a serious comprehensive iconographical overview.10 He also collected over four hundred (mostly printed) images of Wesley, many examples of which he pasted into scrapbooks.11 Moreover, mythologizing influences have left a trail of false images: such as a ‘Wesley’ portrait in Cambridge claimed to be by Romney, or a painting supposedly by Francis Hayman of Wesley preaching in a London church before Dr Johnson.12 Neither can be credited as authentic. Similarly a picture supposedly of Wesley’s mother was first printed erroneously by the London publisher Thomas Tegg in 1836, but is of Lady Rudd, Charles Wesley’s sister-in-law.13 Problematically, such misleading images have a way of becoming indelibly fixed in the audience’s imagination. A further issue is the lack of provenance or historical authentication for nearly all painted portraits from his lifetime. Whether Wesley owned portraits of himself – or pictures at all – is unknown. If any were inherited through the family, that too is difficult to trace. The canvas assumed to be by Nathaniel Hone (c.1765) in the National Portrait Gallery, London, is traced back to Miss Wesley’s sale around 1861: no such auction is known. In short, the subject is labyrinthine and prolix. In undertaking the kind of ‘critical survey’ which John Kerslake called for, what is attempted here is not merely an approach which systematically identifies, catalogues and clarifies details around the portraits, scene paintings and more significant prints, but an appraisal which aims to set Wesley images into appropriate contexts of art history, painting and print culture, as well as connecting effectively with fields of Wesley studies and Methodist historiography.14

4  Introduction

John Wesley Wesley has not been short of biographers: reliable ones are a rarer breed. In recent years Henry Rack’s Reasonable Enthusiast and Richard Heitzenrater’s trio of books are indispensable.15 More generally, David Hempton has competently and articulately tackled ‘the disarmingly simple [problem] of accounting for the rise of Methodism from its unpromising origins . . . to a major international religious movement’.16 If nothing else is said about Wesley, the statistics of his career are impressive: travelling several thousand miles annually, mainly by horse or chaise, over fifty years, consistently preaching three times in a day (sometimes in the open air and to large crowds) and writing or editing some four hundred publications – aside from establishing his ‘connexion’ of Methodist societies. Born in 1703 to the Rector of Epworth parish in rural Lincolnshire, John Wesley (with his younger brother Charles, 1707–88) became focal leader in the Methodist movement, whose societies by his death in 1791 had some 70,000 members in Britain and Ireland, and a similar number in the newly independent U.S.A. A Church of England clergyman and Oxford don, he courted controversy by his extra-canonical practices, preaching outdoors and without parish incumbents’ permission, and although he maintained himself and the movement within the established church (in theory at least), they parted company after his death.17 Few writers have touched on the question of visual imagery beyond noting the narrative (or anecdotes) of when Wesley had his portrait taken or using them as illustrations – sometimes inaccurately. Most published treatments relating to the portraiture lie outside the biographies: the ‘Proceedings’ of the Wesley Historical Society has a number of informative and scholarly contributions including those by Wright, already noted. The work of the Wesleyan scholar John Telford, however strong otherwise, has not helped an objective study of the subject. His Sayings and Portraits of both John and Charles Wesley take an uncritical, devotional approach.18 Telford’s work was copied and extended by Samuel Rogal as the promising-sounding The Historical, Biographical, and Artistic Background of Extant Portrait Paintings and Engravings of John Wesley (1742–1951[sic]). However, Rogal tends to compound Telford’s shortcomings, adding further unreliable elements.19 In a descriptive, popular vein, John Pudney is generally comprehensive and reliable in both text and its many illustrations.20 The present author has tried to bring an art-historical and critical edge to approaches to the subject.21 Richard Heitzenrater’s An Exact Likeness was published as this text was finalized: a volume by another American scholar, Kenneth Kinghorn, is pending.22 John Wesley was a religious leader who became something of a national celebrity and curiosity (especially later in life) beyond the bounds of his own following.The creation and distribution of painted, print and other depictions in his own time developed his visual identity, which was amplified and modulated

Introduction 5

after his death, a trajectory which continues today.23 Pictures of Wesley became all but iconic not only for the identity of Methodists but beyond.

Art: the ‘English school’ John Wesley’s public evangelistic ministry coincided neatly with the ‘golden age of the English portrait’, most nearly with the active careers of Reynolds and Gainsborough: he sat to several leading portrait painters. While he was critical of some aspects of the culture of his time, Wesley neither explicitly repulsed nor deplored it. Indeed, there was a commonality in underlying principles and debates among evangelicals as between virtuosi. Among the many cross-currents and contradictions of cultural life in eighteenth-century Britain was the dilemma between the aspirational and the empirical: seeking to improve or accepting things as they are. Here Wesley seems to have been caught between his doctrinal tenets and aesthetic preferences. His ‘Arminian’ beliefs held that eternal salvation, indeed ‘Christian perfection’, was possible for all while he eschewed pictures which were not realistic.24 One reason for Wesley’s impact was that he not only lived through times of considerable change, but capitalized upon the opportunities this offered. In the wake of the ‘enlightenment’, his religious message bridged the age of reason and abiding popular beliefs. Improvements in transport and communications enabled a national structure to develop. Increasing literacy and print boosted his educational projects, and made his publishing activities profitable enough to fund other areas.25 With the increase of commerce and the British imperial project came a cultural upturn, and the development of the portrait business. Hitherto something of an elite choice, from around the 1740s having one’s picture painted became much more widespread, and portraiture continued to boom through the remainder of the century. Developments in printing aided this, as engraved images proliferated which could be bought or hired: the print-shop window was a visual parade of the movers and shakers of Georgian England. London was the centre of national culture, though the provinces were not always far behind. As much as anything it was Jacques Rouquet’s critical 1755 Etat des Arts en Angleterre which spurred artists to hold exhibitions, bringing art into an accessible public domain. The foundation of the Royal Academy in 1769 not only reinforced this, but moved painting from an artisanal practice to a structured discipline – most notably articulated through Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses. While ‘history painting’ of biblical or classical scenes was its most admired genre, the portrait was its ubiquitous occupation. Gainsborough might rather have painted ‘landskips’ but it was portraits which made him rich and famous.26 It may be regretted that Gainsborough, that ‘uniquely perceptive recorder of personality’, with his Dissenting roots, never painted Wesley. Of the many likenesses of him, in paint, print or other media, as will be explored, few are

6  Introduction

satisfactory, ‘true to nature and creditable to art’.27 The boundaries between portrait and caricature, always permeable, seem in Wesley’s case barely perceptible. His image and its identity present a complex of issues with which this study seeks to engage, aptly and humorously characterized in the following doggerel. (Anon.) verse found on rear of frame of painting of John Wesley by Rev. Thomas Olave,Vicar of Mucking, Essex. c.1783.28 Painter! here’s a subject will Tax thy pencil’s utmost skill; With divinity acquainted He should be divinely painted Of the world of rev’rends round P’raps he’s not the most profound But (the difference is slight) Lack of depth made up in height. Paint him – ‘twere a shame to pinch One like him of e’en an inch; Paint him, therefore, as is due, Six feet high without a shoe; Paint him old, though old yet green, Three and fore-score years between. Let his form be quite erect, Like a stripling’s growth unchecked; Let his well-combed locks of white Be like burnished silver bright; Let his cheeks with childhood’s glow Look like fire beneath that snow, Though his face be long and lean, Let it wear a gracious mien; Wooing one to comprehend How much he can condescend. From his person and his face Banish ailment’s lightest trace. Let the former be so long As to speak of nerves well strung; Let the latter be quite ruddy, Incompatible with study; Not a line of Clarke or care, Greek or grief, be written there. Let his clothes, from head to foot,29 Be, of course, as black as soot; But, his chin and vest between, Let a spot of white be seen; Cut his coat quite straight and plain,

Introduction 7

Nor his lower limbs profane; They have never, anyhow, sir, Come in contact with a trouser, Only then, from hip to knee Let their cloth-made covering be Lay not yet your brush aside, Something waits to be supplied. On his head a mitre put; Not a vulgar bishop’s, but Such as in the days of yore Primitive Apostles wore; In his hand a ponderous key, Thank thee, painter, that is he! X. X. X.

Notes 1 John Kerslake, Early Georgian Portraits (London: H.M.S.O., 1977), p. 301. 2 http://worldmethodistcouncil.org/about/, accessed July 2014. 3 David Hempton, Methodism, Empire of the Spirit (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 2005), p. 209. 4 A composite of two biblical texts, Amos 4:11, Zechariah 3:2. 5 J. Ernest Rattenbury, Wesley’s Legacy to the World (London: Epworth, 1928), p. 19. 6 See Roger Lee, Wesleyana and Methodist Pottery, a Short Guide (Weymouth: Sloane, 1988); Donald Ryan, The Horace Hird Collection of Wesleyana: Mount Zion Methodist Church and Heritage Centre, Per Lane, Ogden, Halifax (Methodist Church, Connexional Archives and History Committee, 2004), and similar catalogues. 7 Journal, 4 November 1774. (account of the death of John Downes). John Butterworth . . . A Silhouette of the Reverend John Wesley, (dated 1 May 1790) Bridwell Library, Dallas, TX, U.S.A. John Kay, Kay’s Edinburgh Portraits, Being Original Engravings of About Four Hundred Personages (Edinburgh: H. Paton, 1836). 8 Such as a synthesised portrait by Kathy Priddis painted for the Wesleyan Assurance Company, 2010, or recent scene paintings in some Methodist heritage centres. 9 William G. Beardmore, ‘Portraits of Our Founder’ in Magazine, 1896, p. 23. First published in 1780, added to and edited, Wesley’s Hymns remained the Wesleyan Methodists’ hymn book into the twentieth century. 10 Joseph Wright, ‘Notes on Some Portraits of John Wesley’, in PWHS, iii (1902), p. 185. See Thomas Brigden, ‘A Wesleyan Methodist Connoisseur, Mr. Joseph Green Wright, J.P.’ in Magazine, 1911, pp. 64–7. Wright’s scrapbooks survive in MARC. 11 In MARC. 12 See Peter Forsaith, ‘The Romney Portrait of John Wesley’ in Methodist History XLII/4 (July 2004), pp. 249–255. The latter picture hangs in Dr Johnson’s House, Gough Sq., London. Used as illustration in Simon Jenkins, A Short History of England (London: Profile, 2011), p. 230. 13 See also Peter Forsaith, ‘The Curious Incident of Susanna Wesley’s Rosebud Lips’ in Sheila Himsworth (ed.), Angels and Impudent Women: Women in Methodism (Loughborough: Wesley Historical Society Publications, 2008), pp. 31–51. 14 Busts, statuary, ceramics and other memorabilia are generally excluded from this study, although treated briefly in Chapter 6.

8  Introduction 15 Henry D. Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (London: Epworth, 1989). Richard P. Heitzenrater, The Elusive Mr. Wesley (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984, 2 vols.); Mirror and Memory (Nashville: Kingswood, 1995); Wesley and the People Called Methodists (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984). 16 Hempton, Methodism, Empire of the Spirit, p. 2. 17 See Jeremy Gregory,‘In the Church I Will Live and Die . . .’, in William Gibson and Robert Ingram (eds.), Religious Identities in Britain 1660–1832 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). 18 John Telford, Sayings and Portraits of John Wesley (London: Epworth, 1924); Sayings and Portraits of Charles Wesley (London: Epworth, 1927). 19 Samuel J. Rogal, The Historical, Biographical, and Artistic Background of Extant Portrait Paintings and Engravings of John Wesley (1742–1951) (Lewiston and Queenstown: Lampeter, 2003). 20 John Pudney, John Wesley and his world (London: Thames & Hudson, 1978). 21 See Peter S. Forsaith, ‘A Brand from the Burning’, John Wesley, Religious Hero? (Oxford: Applied Theology Press, 2004), originally given as a lecture at the National Portrait Gallery, London, also Forsaith, 2004, 2008 (op. cit.); ‘Methodism and Its Images’ in Charles Yrigoyen Jr. (ed.), T&T Clark Companion to Methodism (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2010), pp. 350–368; ‘Pictorial Precocity, John Russell’s Portraits of Charles and Samuel Wesley’ in The British Art Journal, X/3 (Winter/Spring 2009/2010), pp. 98–103. 22 Richard P. Heitzenrater, An Exact Likeness, The Portraits of John Wesley (Nashville: Abingdon, 2016). Kenneth C. Kinghorn, John Wesley: An Album of Portraits and Engravings (Lexington KY: Emeth Press, 2017). 23 For example, the angular ‘John Wesley 250th’ logo for the 1988 celebrations of Wesley’s 1738 Aldersgate religious experience, or a portrait commissioned in 2010 for Wesleyan Assurance. 24 See Bruce Hindmarsh, ‘The Inner Life of Doctrine: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Calvinist-Arminian Debate Among Methodists’, in Church History, 83:2 (June 2014), p. 377. 25 See Clive Norris, The Financing of John Wesley’s Methodism, c. 1740–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 26 See Amal Asfour and Paul Williamson, Gainsborough’s Vision (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000). 27 William Vaughan, Gainsborough (London: Thames & Hudson, 2002), p. 9. See J.B.B. Clarke, An Account of the Infancy, Religious and Literary Life of Adam Clarke (London: T. S. Clarke, 1833), vol. iii, pp. 250–253. 28 W.T.A. Barber, ‘A Picture and a Query’, in MR, 9 August 1923, p. 10. The references to [Adam?] ‘Clarke’ and ‘trouser’ may indicate a later doggerel composition. 29 The printed source reads ‘feet’.

1 ‘A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua’: some issues and complexities around the portraiture1

A disparaging comment in John Wesley’s Journal about Joshua Reynolds (1723– 92) the leading portrait artist of the eighteenth century and the influential founding President of the Royal Academy, has fuelled recurrent speculation about whether, and when, Reynolds painted Wesley and, if so, what has become of the portrait – and why no prints are known. In his published Journal for 5 January 1789, sitting to George Romney, Wesley wrote: At the earnest desire of Mrs. T[ighe], I once more sat for my picture. Mr. Romney is a painter indeed. He struck off an exact likeness at once, and did more in one hour than Sir Joshua did in ten.2 Nearly two decades earlier, in 1771, Wesley had written to Henry Brooke (1738–1806), a Methodist and artist in Dublin: Mr. Williams (a man unknown) is a far greater Genius than Sr. Joshua. He took a better Likeness of me in Ten Minutes than the other did in Twenty Hours.3 In both of these two ill-disposed references,Wesley inferred that he was painted by Joshua Reynolds; that Reynolds’s work was slow and thus he failed to capture a reasonable likeness. This chapter seeks to suggest a plausible solution to the whole matter and set it within the context of the eighteenth-century portrait business. Since the route to doing so leads into considerations of the nature of artistic practice at the time as well as of the processes behind some of the written sources, it also serves as a useful introduction to some of the issues and complexities around a serious iconographical evaluation of John Wesley. Wesley’s Journal, on which much immediate evidence hinges, was published in his lifetime, although as we shall see, it is far from being a straightforward account of his day-to-day life.The question of a Reynolds portrait seems first to have arisen in 1840 in a letter to Jabez Bunting about the possible purchase of some Wesley family portraits, including ‘Rev. J. Wesley, by Sir Joshua Reynolds,

10  ‘A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua’

Figure 1.1 John Wesley, Journal, January 1789

half-length, life size, age about 40’.4 However, after some time it was recognised that the ‘Reynolds’ was in fact a copy of the Williams, by Harley. Down the years, time and energy continued to be expended at various points and by a number of people on this question. At the 1899 Wesleyan Conference (the annual national gathering of the largest British Methodist denomination) a portrait was publicly exhibited in some triumph as the long-lost Reynolds picture, only for that to be fairly rapidly challenged and re-identified as in fact a painting of John Cennick (1718–55), one of Wesley’s young preachers and later a Moravian minister.5 Joseph Wright, characteristically, dealt with the matter sympathetically but objectively, concluding that, had such a picture ever existed (for which there was little evidence), it was probably destroyed in a fire at Dangan Castle, Ireland, the former home of a branch of the Wellesley family.6 The Wesleys were related to the Wellesley family: the Duke of Wellington was Arthur Wesley but altered his surname while serving in India.7 Ellis Waterhouse, following Graves and Cronin,8 noted a picture thought to be of Wesley by Reynolds, but also identified as Garret Wesley (1735–84), 1st Earl of Mornington.9 Another suggestion was that Reynolds had produced a secret picture of Wesley in 1789, around the same time as Romney’s portrait, which had been used after his death as the ‘official likeness’ and from which John Barry had taken a miniature. The portrait, it posited, had been kept hidden for nearly a century and a half. The convoluted reasoning behind this intriguing theory makes for curious reading, attempting as it does to explain away the lack (or peripheral survival) of almost all evidence as indicative of its success. In 1935 Wesley’s 1771 letter to Brooke was published, which by its date disposes of this fanciful theory.10 On Reynolds’s side are seven entries in his ‘Pocket Book’ for 1755 (the earliest to survive) for a ‘Mr. Westly’:11 Sat. 8th March, 10 Tue. 11th March, 9

‘A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua’ 11

Thur. 13th March, 9 Sat. 15th March, 9 Wed. 19th March, 9 (cancelled) Mon. 30 June, 9 Mon. 7 July, 9 Yet no painted canvas has ever been traced which can plausibly be attributed to Reynolds, nor a related print. At face value the documentary sources may seem, if not conclusive, strongly indicative that Wesley did sit to Reynolds. Studio practice might usually involve the sitter having an initial appointment to determine matters such as the size of portrait, the pose, costume to be worn and dates for subsequent appointments, followed by four sittings of (usually) two hours to paint the head in the first, followed by clothing, drapery or scenery.12 In 1777, Reynolds stated that ‘three sittings of an hour and a half are usually necessary’, although by that period his studio practice may have changed. Subsequently there would be an interval for the picture to dry, be varnished and framed, before it was ready for delivery.13 Reynolds’s dates indicate that pattern.14 Reynolds offered five sizes from a ‘head’ (24½” x 18½”) to a ‘whole length’ (94” x 58”), at ‘12 guineas for a head, 24 for a half-length and 48 for a fulllength’ in the mid-1750s.15 Wesley seldom seems to have had less than a halflength portrait taken so it might be surmised that several sittings would be required, possibly involving Reynolds’s assistant painters to deal with costume, drapery or scenery. Entirely conjecturally, a compositional comparison might be made with another clerical portrait by Reynolds: of his uncle John Reynolds (1757), who is shown three-quarter length, seated.16 It is less likely of Laurence Sterne (1760) which is only recorded as taking four sessions, but the intensity of the figure is emphasised by a relatively plain background so it may be that the scenery painting was minimised – Reynolds was evidently keen to get an engraving on sale while Sterne was the talk of the town.17 David Mannings has drawn attention to some of the ambiguities and complexities surrounding Reynolds’s ‘Pocket Books’.These pre-printed notebooks, The New Memorandum Book Improv’d: or, the Gentleman and Tradesman’s Daily Pocket Journal, combined the functions of a diary and account book. They were apparently used by Reynolds for a multiplicity of purposes; to list sitters, callers or other appointments or as reminders of tasks to be done. Moreover, comparison with other sources such as contemporary correspondence, including Reynolds’s own, shows that they are neither comprehensive nor always accurate. The student of Reynolds’s pocket books must try to distinguish between timed entries, memoranda, lists and apparently random jottings, paying attention to the evidence provided by times of the day and how entries are arranged on the page, and try to relate this material to appropriate external factors such as the framing and hanging of pictures.18

12  ‘A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua’

Further, entries for a ‘Mr. Westly’ may not refer to John Wesley at all, and it should be noted that there are no known paintings in the Reynolds canon of identified works for either spelling of the name.19 The Wesley family was larger than the progeny of the Epworth household.20 Like Reynolds, they emanated from the West of England, and the Wesley forebears’ name was at times spelt ‘Westly’ or ‘Westley’.21 So in an age of variant spellings, Reynolds may simply have jotted down a more familiar wording. Wesley’s published Journal, his diaries, ‘sermon register’ and letters generally form key sources not only for his life, but also, since they are considerable and wide-ranging, for a host of other contemporary matters. However, neither are these as straightforward as might be assumed. His correspondence varied from terse, mundane, personal communications to lengthy disquisitions which might appear in the press while his sermon register was simply his own record of when and where he had preached, and the texts he had taken. His diaries and Journal are less straightforward. From being a young man at Oxford, John Wesley started to keep a regular diary (as well as his personal monetary accounts), noting in detail his daily activities. These were written in his own adaptation of John Byrom’s shorthand which defied full reading until Prof. Richard Heitzenrater was able to decrypt them in the 1970s. Although a number of scholars can now decode the shorthand, there continues to remain an element of uncertainty about the absolute accuracy of some readings.22 Then from the late 1730s Wesley commenced publication of what he titled ‘Extracts from [his] Journal’.This was for two key reasons: to establish and maintain his good name in the public eye and to promote his religious activities, and he continued to publish volumes about every five years for the remainder of his life.23 While the Journal entries were derived from the brief notes of a busy life contained in the diaries, they were significantly edited, extended and embellished for publication: in effect transformed from succinct personal memoranda to publicly readable text. There was thus a two-stage process between his daily notes and the published text. Wesley generally wrote up the Journal narrative annually during the winter when travel was difficult and he was based in London. Coincidentally on the day of the 1789 Journal entry for his sitting to Romney, quoted above, this writing up was another one of his activities. But the diary for the first part of that day does not elaborate on what he might have thought of Romney’s painterly technique. It simply reads: [Monday 5 January 1789] 4. Prayed, I Cor xiii. 3, communion, select society, tea, prayer, visited; 9 painter; 11.30 Chapel, writ narrative. . .’ . Moreover, this sitting which appeared in the published Journal was in fact the second of four morning sittings noted in the diary, on consecutive Mondays (29 December 1788, 5, 12, 19 January 1789).24 To return to the early months of 1755, when Reynolds’s ‘Pocket Book’ records ‘Mr. Westly’, the critical – and frustrating – issue is that there is a rare

‘A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua’ 13

hiatus in the sequence of the Journal and Wesley’s diaries do not survive. Besides a single oblique entry for 16 February, the published Journal omits the months of November 1754 to March 1755 entirely. Although many, especially earlier, diaries are not now known, this complete lacuna suggests that the diaries were lost prior to that section of the Journal being written up for publication in 1761. Surviving letters between these dates are also few, while those which do survive from spring or summer 1755, or later, contain no references to Reynolds or to a portrait. Nor are Wesley’s accounts known to survive for that period. One reason suggested by Nehemiah Curnock, in his ‘Standard Edition’ of Wesley’s Journal, for those missing months, was the pressure of other business, specifically ‘studying and criticizing the earlier portion of Hervey’s Theron and Aspasio’.25 While this might not be thought entirely persuasive since Wesley was always pressed, he was also particularly preoccupied at this time since it was a critical point in the Methodist movement’s relations with the established church. Further, he was also busy with the publication that year of his Notes upon the New Testament, a work which became one of Methodism’s doctrinal standards.26 As a prominent Wesleyan, Curnock may have preferred to omit that in 1755 came a decisive breach between John Wesley and his wife, although their final separation was not for another twenty years. One reason for their marital disharmony was, according to Wesley, her propensity to read (and sometimes remove or destroy) his private letters and papers. Wesley wrote to a preacher, Samuel Furly, on 30 January 1755: ‘I have been looking over my old papers this morning . . . but they are taken out of the parcels where I used to put them’.27 In 1774 he wrote to his wife: ‘. . . Sunday, February 25, 1758, you went into my study, opened my bureau and took many of my letters and papers . . . restoring most of them two days after . . .’ .28 However, Wesley’s ‘sermon register’ for 1755, taken together with the few known letters, indicates that he was preaching in London in mid-March but was in Bristol by the 20th.29 During 1755 relations with his brother, who lived in Bristol, were strained, partly because of John Wesley’s wife’s attitude to him but also because Charles seems to have suspected that his brother was moving the Methodists towards separation from the Church of England which, as a staunch high-church clergyman, appalled him. Charles wrote to the London merchant Samuel Lloyd around Saturday 15 March (which Lloyd received on 17th) ‘If my brother is kept from Bristol, I shall be in no haste to return to London. . .’ .30 But John Wesley was in Bristol by that Wednesday (when he too wrote to Lloyd), while Charles was staying at Lloyd’s house in London by the end of the month. From Bristol John Wesley set out on his annual planned itinerary around the country, although starting from there rather than London. He travelled through the Midlands and into Yorkshire where his annual conference met in May.31 At the 1755 Leeds conference the pressures which had been building among some, especially the preachers, for Wesley’s ‘connexion’ to separate from the Church of England came to a head. Although neither John nor Charles Wesley would

14  ‘A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua’

countenance separation, and the decision was taken that the movement should remain in the Church, their reasons and attitudes were different, and this year also marked a cooling of relations between John and his brother; this was the point at which Charles ceased his travelling preaching.32 Together these would suggest a hurried journey to Bristol, necessitating cancelling an appointment with Reynolds which he was not able to reinstate until June. Wesley then remained in and around London during July until setting off in mid-August for Cornwall and the west country, returning to London at the end of October.This kind of itinerant life was his usual pattern. So his schedule in the spring and early summer of 1755 would account for there being three and a half months between appointments with Reynolds. As to the later dates, on 30 June ‘I set out for Norwich, and came thither the next evening’, which might allow time for business in London before leaving. He returned from Norwich on 5 July following which Monday 7 July ‘was our first day of solemn thanksgiving for the numberless spiritual blessings we have received’.33 So it would seem that Reynolds’s dates coincide very neatly, indeed convincingly, with those when Wesley was in London and might be available for appointments. This can be tabulated: Reynolds’ Pocket Book, 1755 March Sat. 8th March, 10 Tue. 11th March, 9 Thur. 13th March 9 Sat. 15th March, 9 Wed. 19th March, 9 June/July

Mon. 30 June, 9

Mon. 7 July, 9

Wesley (various sources)

‘Sun 9, Snowsfields’ [Sermon Register]. ‘Sat 15, Foundery’ [Sermon Register]. ‘Sun 16, Spitalfields, Foundery’ [Sermon Register]. Thurs 20 March Bristol [Sermon Register], wrote to Samuel Lloyd from Bristol [Letters]. Mon 16 – Thurs 19 [sic] June, Nottingham [Sermon Register]. ‘On Thursday afternoon [20 June], reached London’ [Journal]. (Saturday) 28 June, Wrote to Charles Wesley and Richard Tompson from London [Letters]. Mon 30 [June] ‘I set out for Norwich’ [Journal]. Tues 1 July, Norwich [Sermon Register]. ‘Friday, July 4, took horse again . . . reached . . . London the next [night]’ [Journal]. ‘Monday the 7th was our first day of solemn thanksgiving . . .’ [Journal].

The ‘sermon register’ does not record Wesley at the ‘Chapel’ (West Street) in these entries, although that was near Reynolds’s studio. One feature to note, which is dealt with later, is the days of the week, and times of day, on which

‘A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua’ 15

it seems Wesley generally sat for portraits. Most often, at least in the later years of his life, this seems to have been early morning on Mondays (as was the case for Romney), and also Saturdays. In 1755, 8 and 15 March were Saturdays, 11 and 13 March the Tuesday and Thursday of the intervening week; then both 30 June and 7 July were Mondays. All appointments recorded by Reynolds were for 9.00am, except the first at 10.00am, and all seem to have been two-hour appointments. The inference seems to be that Wesley tried to relegate sitting for portraits away from his main working days and before daily business. These appointments fall into that pattern. Wesley’s 1789 Journal reference relies on the memory of a man in his mideighties, recalling something which happened over thirty years previously, and while in his 1771 letter to Brooke he cited sitting to Reynolds for twenty hours, in the 1789 Journal he stated that it was only for ten. If the first appointment was, as was customary for portrait practice, mainly to establish terms of business, and should be disregarded for actual painting, the remaining five appointments of two hours each would total ten. There was also a disparity as to how much Reynolds had achieved in what length of time. While Wesley was a man of exact mind and what evidence we have suggests that his memory remained sharp, it may not have always been entirely precise.Wesley’s comment suggests that – assuming that he did sit to Reynolds – it was the painting of the ‘likeness’ (the face) which, for whatever reason, occupied an inordinate amount of time. And ‘Reynolds was known to have difficulty in getting a likeness’.34 Wesley was a man jealous of his time, who would fill every moment.35 One plausible difficulty for an artist might be that Wesley insisted in continuing to work, rather than maintaining a pose. The potter Enoch Wood, in 1781, found him difficult to model since he was ‘generally engaged in writing while sitting to me’.36 If Wesley simply expected the portraitist to take a likeness of the face, while he occupied himself with other business, his actual experience of Reynolds’s studio might have been very different. A major element in Reynolds’s success was his amiability, or ‘complacency’ (in a Johnsonian sense)37 and in the studio he sought to charm, amuse and entertain his sitters. Sitting to artists could be a social occasion: Reynolds would engage in social interaction to enable him to uncover the sitter’s inner character, which was to be expressed through the canvas. The two men had much in common. It might be said of Wesley’s childhood as much as of Reynolds ‘the household was bookish, pious and always short of money’.38 Both were driven by ambition, Reynolds to be ‘the best painter of his time when he arrived at the age of thirty years’ and thereby the arbiter of much of the social, business and academic world of the painter in polite society.39 Wesley’s purpose was to ‘spread scriptural holiness through the land’, reforming the church and nation, and building a ‘connexion’ of societies to achieve this end. If Reynolds had a ‘profound commitment to a life of hard work, experimentation and improvement’,40 Wesley instructed his preachers to ‘never be triflingly employed’.41 In their respective organisations, the Royal Academy and the Methodist ‘connexion’, both were equally treated with a kind of reverence

16  ‘A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua’

as well as being accused of being dictatorial. And both were ‘deeply politic’, taking care to avoid causing offence and always having one eye upon posterity.42 Yet they were also poles apart. Although Reynolds’s father was a clergyman, Reynolds had little time for religion and worked on Sundays. Wesley abhorred the kind of cultural and artistic life which revolved around studio and stage in London. Samuel Johnson, who was Reynolds’s close friend, commented that ‘John Wesley’s conversation is good, but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have his talk out, as I do’.43 In contrast, though Reynolds was equally busy he set considerable store by the social relationships which not only sustained his portrait practice but enabled him to attain the rank and influence in society which he had. Reynolds’s practice, Wendorf argues, was based on a transactional approach to the portrait. ‘Reynolds worked closely with his sitters, carefully determining the most appropriate setting and pose before rehearsing and building the scene he was to capture’.44 This was vital to his strategy, although challenged by his busyness while building his career: ‘his productivity in London in the 1750s was extraordinary . . . his practice was in fact at its most lucrative around 1758 . . . ’ .45 As well, he was prone to continue to paint beyond a point where a picture might be finished, so many a portrait ‘was better at some stage during its progress, than when he left off ’.46 Reynolds also came to insist upon payment of half of the price at the initial sitting, although whether he had initiated this by 1755 is unclear.47 Given his ‘difficulty in getting a likeness’,48 Reynolds’s disinclination to leave a canvas alone, and that other painters seem not to find depicting Wesley easy, it seems reasonable to suggest that the eventual outcome was a painting in an incomplete state, unsatisfactory to artist or sitter, or both. Reynolds may have been left with a half-finished canvas, which he could well have re-used. Ultimately, however, to posit any reason for a portrait not being completed, or if completed, unacceptable and not paid for, however plausible, would not be safe. It may be significant that the 1789 Journal entry relates to the second sitting to Romney which, in much contemporary studio practice, would be the occasion when the painter himself would take the likeness of the face. Following the artist’s ‘limning’ of the face, at subsequent sessions the body and background would be painted in (sometimes by other artists) to be followed by the completion of the picture and any final adjustments. Generally one might expect a much closer interval between the last sitting and the completion of a picture, so the two appointments in late June and early July might have been additional sittings to take the face better, which had not proved possible in March. It would seem unusual to have two final appointments if the picture was in fact finished, or nearly so. Besides the question of whether Reynolds might have painted Wesley is the perhaps more puzzling issue of why Wesley might have sat to him. While Reynolds’s Whiggism and cultural elitism would seem to contrast with Wesley’s views, and (as will be seen) for later portraits Wesley generally sat to rival painters, in 1755 Reynolds was then the coming artist in the rising tide of the London portrait world. Following his return from Rome three years previously,

‘A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua’ 17

he was beginning to establish himself and had already painted a full-length of Commodore Keppel, ‘the picture that made Reynolds’s name’.49 Wesley too was becoming recognised across the country as a leader of the growing Methodist movement. Although he appeared reticent, publicly at least, about having his portrait taken, several reasons might be suggested for his sitting to an artist like Reynolds. The first is simply commercial. Reynolds may have looked to boost his reputation from such a portrait, as well as the sales potential of prints. However, given his ambitions as a society artist, who was already attracting elite clientele, and the comparative rarity of clergy portraits by him, that seems improbable. The second is that it was at the request of one of his wealthy evangelical supporters – such as Lady Huntingdon, whose children sat to Reynolds, or the Earl of Dartmouth, of whom he painted a ‘curiously dull portrait’ in 1757.50 In 1789, Romney’s portrait of Wesley was taken at the behest of Mrs Tighe, for which there is evidence in Wesley’s Journal and letters, as well as the provenance of the painting. There is no such evidence here. A third seems to offer a stronger case. Mention has already been made of the 1755 publication of Wesley’s Notes upon the New Testament. This single volume carried a frontispiece print of the author’s portrait by J. M. Williams. Although unsigned, Wesley later stated that it was engraved by one of his preachers, John Downes.51 Each of the three volumes of Wesley’s Notes on the Old Testament which appeared ten years later carried a print of the portrait by Nathaniel Hone. Might it be that for these landmark publications (in quarto, unusually for Wesley), his only works in which a print of the author appeared, he wanted an image by a publicly recognised artist?

Figure 1.2 Frontispiece and title page, John Wesley, Notes on the New Testament, 1755

18  ‘A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua’

The previous year, in 1754, Wesley had been ill and taken the waters at Bristol Hotwells, where he had probably been in close company with Lady Huntingdon, who had made her home there.52 She may have suggested Reynolds, but also in the Countess’s circle in Bristol at the time was the Methodist clergyman and schoolmaster James Rouquet.53 If, as would seem not inconceivable, he was related to the miniaturist Jacques-Andre· Rouquet, author of Etat des arts en Angleterre, this suggests another plausible link.54 Although at the time it was entirely usual for someone in the public eye periodically to have their portrait taken, and engraved, Wesley seems to have expressed an aversion to this, as well as to the expense. But if in 1755 the commissioned painting by Reynolds failed to materialise for use in the Notes, Wesley may have had to fall back on getting one of his preachers to engrave a picture which was already over a decade old, and of which prints were already in circulation.55 If he had been dissatisfied with Reynolds, a decade later his choice may have deliberately fallen upon Hone who was one of Reynolds’s rivals (and later critics). It raises the whole question of Wesley’s use of the visual likeness (in paint, print or sculpture) to promote his public image, but suffice it here to note that it has already been shown that his Journal and other publications were largely intended to vindicate his views and actions. To some extent this was reasonably transparent; however, Wesley was a complex character. At times his attitudes verged on the duplicitous, as his critics were not slow to point out. In the case of having his portrait taken, the entries in the diaries and Journal give a clear impression that he was averse to the vanity and assumption of social standing implicit in this. He played down the significance of being painted by Romney, who was by then probably the leading portrait artist in London. Any sittings to Hone were not noted. An important consideration is that it is almost unthinkable that, if a painting was ever completed by Reynolds, it would not have been engraved. The sale of an engraving was an integral and profitable part of the portrait business – as were painted copies.56 Indeed, had the initiative for a portrait come from the artist, revenue from copies or engravings might well have been central to his purpose (and this was particularly true for Reynolds).57 Further, one strategic avenue in attributing a portrait, to artist or sitter, is through inscriptions on engravings – as is the case for Williams’s or Hone’s portraits of Wesley. Yet among the myriad prints of Wesley are none which can even tentatively seem to be linked to a portrait by Reynolds. However much leading Methodists in the movement’s heyday may have wanted to discover the painting of their founding father by the first President of the Royal Academy, solid evidence that such a portrait ever existed is entirely lacking. Portraits of some other early Methodists were also ambitiously attributed to leading artists.58 Joseph Wright concluded over a century ago, ‘Careful search and enquiry seem almost to justify the belief that Reynolds never completed a portrait of Wesley’.59 This slightly qualified judgment was followed later by the suggestion

‘A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua’ 19

that such a portrait may have perished in a fire at Dangan Castle. But even that is not supported by any listing in such a collection and if it was (as Wright then suggested) the property of the Wellesley family, it is likely to have been commissioned by Lord Mornington, for which, again, there is no evidence.60 The main conclusion to be drawn, albeit tentatively, from the above discussion is that the dates in Reynolds’s ‘Pocket Book’ for 1755 correspond remarkably closely with what can be determined of Wesley’s schedule as to put his sitting to Reynolds beyond reasonable doubt. Beyond that, how far a portrait ever progressed between the ‘limning’ of the face and some degree of completion may only be guessed at. Since in the intervening two and a half centuries, no corresponding painting or print has come to light, it must be presumed that no such work exists, though it would be unwise to assert that one never existed.61 What happened? Broadly, there seem to be several tenable explanations. One is that, whatever state the canvas reached, either artist or sitter found it unacceptable although Wesley’s sense of a good likeness is questionable. His (approved) engraved portrait in the 1778 Arminian Magazine provoked howls of (understandable) protest over its awfulness. Another is that there was a misunderstanding or dispute over payment. Many artists had a stack of canvases for which payment had not been forthcoming. For Wesley, even 12 guineas for a ‘head’ would have represented a significant sum. Both men were parsimonious entrepreneurs who would rather see someone else’s purse opened than their own, and built their operations shrewdly. Then again, there may have been a dispute about prints. Reynolds may not have entirely understood Wesley’s intention (if this was the case) to have it engraved for his Notes, by someone of his own choosing, and maybe just a selfskilled Methodist preacher.62 From this he may have recoiled. His reputation was immortalized by McArdell’s prints63 (from which he would have made financial gain) and he may have tried to insist on using him – to which Wesley would have objected. However, given Wesley’s comments which suggest that Reynolds’s protracted efforts failed to get a likeness, plus the fact that there were six sittings (surely matters such as payment or print issues would have surfaced by then), the probability must be that the first is most likely. But these are hypothetical. In the end we are left with no real idea why the project stalled. Reynolds was probably left with a dissatisfied customer and a part-finished canvas which he might have re-used, and Wesley with a sour taste in his mouth, yet on which he did not go public until Reynolds’s career (and his own) was in effect over. We might wonder whether Wesley was not prepared to go to his grave, nor let Reynolds go to his, without airing a grudge he had borne for thirty-five years – especially in the context of the portrait by Romney, who had challenged Reynolds’s supremacy. Modern x-ray techniques make it beguiling, though entirely speculative, to wonder whether behind a finished canvas might one day be detected another

20  ‘A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua’

image: of an eighteenth-century cleric. However tempting, such counter-factual theorising is inadvisable. The whole matter serves as an example of how some issues must be considered around a critical study of the Wesley image.

Notes 1 A version of this chapter was published as ‘ “A far greater genius than Sir Joshua”: Did Joshua Reynolds (1723–89) paint John Wesley (1703–91)?’ in The British Art Journal, XVI/3 (Winter 2015/2016), pp. 103–9. 2 Journal, Mon. 5 January 1789. 3 J.  M. Williams painted Wesley’s portrait in c.1742, also that of Wesley’s mother, Mrs Susanna Wesley, in 1738. J. Wesley – Henry Brooke, 15 October 1771 in PWHS, xx (1935), p. 51. 4 G. F. Urling was a businessman and member of the Wesleyan London Committee. Rev. Jabez Bunting (1779–1858) was the leading figure in Wesleyan Methodism in the first half of the nineteenth century, often characterised as autocratic (DMBI). Baker ms., Duke University, see p. 95–6. 5 Museum of Methodism, London (LDWMM/1993/1624) attributed to Abraham Louis Brandt or J. Jenkins, ‘Wesley Portraits’ in PWHS, ii (1899), pp. 49–51. See also MR 20 July 1890, p. 10. 6 Ibid. and PWHS iii, pp. 191–2. 7 Norman Gash, ‘Wellesley [formerly Wesley], Arthur, first duke of Wellington (1769– 1852)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2011 www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/29001, accessed 16 March 2016. 8 Algernon Graves and William Vine Cronin, A history of the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. (London: H. Graves, 1899–1901). 9 Ellis K. Waterhouse, ‘Reynolds’s “Sitter Book” for 1755’ in Walpole Society, Volume 44, 1966–1968 (Glasgow: Maclehose, University of Glasgow, 1968), p. 162. 10 A. H. Carr, The True Likeness of John Wesley (London: privately printed, 1930). 11 Joshua Reynolds ‘Pocket Book’ for 1755, in Cottonian Collection, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery. This was known to Charles Leslie and Tom Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds, (London: John Murray, 1861), but overlooked by Algernon Graves and William Vine Cronin, Works of Reynolds (Ellis Waterhouse, ‘Reynolds’s “Sitter Book’’, p. 112). 12 Nicholas Penny, Reynolds (London: Royal Academy,Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1986), p. 67. 13 Richard Wendorf, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter In Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 96. 14 William Vaughan, British Painting: The Golden Age (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999), pp. 43–4; see also Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 41–52. 15 Ellis Waterhouse, Reynolds (London: Phaidon, 1973), p. 40, see also Penny, Reynolds, p. 58. 16 Eton College collection. See Penny, Reynolds, p. 18. 17 Joshua Reynolds, ‘Laurence Sterne’ (NPG 5019). Penny, Reynolds, p. 18. 18 David Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 2000), Text volume, p. 2. 19 Ibid. 20 See George J. Stevenson, Memorials of the Wesley Family (London: Partridge, 1876) although this hagiographic work should be treated with some caution. 21 John and Charles Wesley’s grandfather’s name is usually rendered ‘Westley’ and a 1781 print of Charles Wesley, in John Wesley’s, Arminian Magazine, spells it so (copy in W.H.S. Library, Oxford).

‘A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua’ 21 22 Richard P. Heitzenrater, John Wesley and the Oxford Methodists, 1725–35 (unpubl. Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1972). 23 See Henry D. Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast (London: Epworth, 1992, second edition), p. 113ff.; Richard P. Heitzenrater, The Elusive Mr. Wesley (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984), vol. I, p. 22ff.; W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, ‘The Nature of Wesley’s Journal’ in WJW, 18 (Journals and Diaries I, 1735–38), pp. 37–61. 24 See Alex Kidson, George Romney: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 2015, 2 vols.), vol. 2, pp. 623–4. 25 JWJ, vol. iv, p. 103 n.1. 26 John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament (London: Bowyer, 1755).The precise date of publication is unknown but probably late 1755. See John Wesley – Charles Wesley, 20 June 1755: ‘I have no time to write anything more till I have finished the Notes’, also John Wesley – Richard Tompson, 28 June 1755: ‘. . . I was just revising my notes on the fifth chapter to the Romans . . .’ . On 23 September 1755 Wesley ‘had now a little leisure to sit still, and finish the Notes on the New Testament’ [Journal]. 27 John Wesley – Samuel Furly, 30 January 1755, in WJW, 26 (Letters II), p. 529. 28 John Wesley – Mrs Wesley, 15 July 1774, in JWL, vol. vi, p. 100. Wesley’s Journal between February 1755 to June 1758 was published by William Pine, Bristol, in 1761. See John Wesley – Samuel Furly, 30 January 1755: ‘I have been looking over my old papers this morning . . . but they are taken out of the parcels where I used to put them’. John Wesley to his wife, 15 July 1774: ‘. . . Sunday, February 25, 1758, you went into my study, opened my bureau and took many of my letters and papers. But on your restoring most of them two days after. . .’ in JWL, vi, p. 100. [My italics]. 29 Sermon Register in JWJ, viii, pp. 211–13. 30 CW-Samuel Lloyd, [15 March 1755], in Kenneth G. C. Newport and Gareth Lloyd, (eds.) The Letters of Charles Wesley vol. I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 363. 31 The actual date is unclear, see Henry D. Rack (ed.), The Methodist Societies, the Minutes of Conference, in WJW, 10 (2011), pp. 270–6. 32 Gareth Lloyd, Charles Wesley and the Struggle for Methodist Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 127ff. 33 Journal, Monday 7 July 1755. 34 See Michael Rosenthal, The Art of Thomas Gainsborough (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 59–62. 35 John Wesley: Sermon ‘On Redeeming the Time’, in WJW, 3 (Sermons III), pp. 322–32. 36 Enoch Wood to Adam Clarke, 6 October 1830 (ms. in United Library, Garrett Theological Seminary, Evanston, IL., U.S.A.) & pp. 66–7. 37 Wendorf, Sir Joshua Reynolds, p. 13. 38 Waterhouse, Reynolds, p. 13. 39 Quoted Wendorf, Sir Joshua Reynolds, p. 95. 40 Ibid., p. 19 41 John Wesley ‘Twelve Rules for a Helper’, 1744. Quoted Rupert E. Davies, A. Raymond George, E. Gordon Rupp, A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 1965–88, 4 vols.) Vol 4, p. 116. 42 Quoted Wendorf, Sir Joshua Reynolds, p. 62. 43 G. B. Hill and L. F. Powell (eds.), Boswell’s Life of Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934–50, 3 vols.), vol. iii, p. 230. 44 Wendorf, Sir Joshua Reynolds, p. 6. 45 Ibid., p. 95. 46 Ibid., p. 89. 47 Ibid., p. 100. 48 Rosenthal, Gainsborough, p. 32. 49 Penny, Reynolds, p. 181.

22  ‘A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua’ 50 Waterhouse, Reynolds, p. 19. Lady Huntingdon’s son, Theophilus Hastings (1729–89, 10th Earl) sat to Reynolds in 1754; her daughter Selina (1741–63) in 1759 (Mannings, Reynolds, A Complete Catalogue vol. I, pp. 246–7). William (1731–1801) and Frances (1733–1805) Legge, Earl and Countess of Dartmouth in 1756–7 (Ibid., vol. I, p. 302). 51 Journal 4 November 1774: ‘I suppose he was by nature full as great a genius as Sir Isaac Newton. . .’ . John Downes (c.1723–74) became one of Wesley’s itinerant preachers from 1743 but from about 1748 was Wesley’s printer, mostly in London. 52 Edwin Welch, Spiritual Pilgrim (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1995), pp. 79ff. 53 A. Barrett Sackett, James Rouquet and his part in early Methodism (Chester: Wesley Historical Society, 1972), pp. 4–5. 54 Jacques-Andre· Rouquet, Etat des arts en Angleterre (The State of the Arts in England) (London: J. Nourse, 1755). 55 The ledgers of William Bowyer survive, the printer of Notes on the New Testament, but do not indicate any payment for a print. I am grateful to Clive Norris for his assistance with this. 56 There are ‘at least 179 versions’ of Alan Ramsay’s Coronation portrait of George III (Jeremy Black, George III [New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 2006], p. 166). 57 See Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 41ff.; Ellen G. D’Oench, “Copper into Gold”, Prints by John Raphael Smith 1751–1812 (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1999). 58 See Anon. (Sharp, Alfred), Catalogue of Wesleyana (London: Methodist Publishing House, 1921), pp. 45–6, which includes, for instance, ‘Griffith, Mrs., . . . by Gainsborough’, an attribution long discredited. 59 Joseph Wright, ‘Notes on Some Portraits of John Wesley’, in PWHS, iii (1902), pp. 185–92. 60 Joseph Wright, ‘Wesley Portraits’, in PWHS, ii (1899), p. 49. 61 Wesley in all probability sat to Reynolds . . . any portrait did not progress beyond the limning of the face . . . no portrait [by Reynolds] has ever been known . . . so my surmise is that such a portrait probably never came near completion’. ‘I came to exactly the same conclusions’ [email exchange between the author and Prof. David Mannings, 5 December 2011]. 62 See Penny, Reynolds, p. 36. 63 Waterhouse, Reynolds, p. 20.

2 ‘This melancholy employment’: portraits from the life to 1780

Wesley’s antipathy towards having his portrait taken was repeatedly rehearsed in the Journal. Sitting to the evangelical painter John Russell in 1771 he described it as ‘This melancholy employment’ while for a miniature two decades later, ‘I yielded to importunity . . .’ (22 February 1790): ‘the painter’ was rarely welcomed, it seems. Against this, however, Wesley was a man with a keen sense of his own public profile and it may not be easy to accept that he entirely eschewed opportunities for visual promotion. What little can be gleaned about his actual engagement with the creation and use of the visual image, whatever his published Journal might indicate, suggests that this reticence to sit for his portrait, and unconcern about the circulation of resulting engravings is not wholly convincing. It was not until around the mid-1760s, more than twenty-five years into his public travelling evangelistic career (and almost its midway point, as it happened) that not only were portraits of Wesley more frequently taken, but he started to record in his Journal when he sat for his portrait. Prior to that, to Williams, Hone, and probably (as already explored), Reynolds, there was neither public nor private indication of any sittings. Even the diary entries for Vertue in 1741 are opaque.1 It would be easy to attribute this silence to dissimulation on Wesley’s part. However, two other factors need to be considered. The first is that through the earlier part of his ministry he was particularly subject to criticism and accusations of misdemeanour or worse. Pride and ambition were among the usual brickbats, as was financial improbity.2 Public acknowledgement of funds raised from his Societies then spent on ‘the painter’ might simply play to his critics. But, second, around the 1760s the portrait business became more widespread, and acceptable, a matter which influenced how Wesley was painted during his career. Victory in the Seven Years War (1756–63) was a watershed in establishing Britain as a major commercial and cultural power, bringing with it increased prosperity and security as the nation moved from a ‘client’ to a ‘market’ economy. More people had money to spend upon having their picture painted from mid-century: more well-heeled young men undertook the ‘grand tour’, to Italy in particular, bringing back not only cultural souvenirs but heightened taste

24  ‘This melancholy employment’

for the arts and architecture, which percolated down to other strata of society. This was coupled with the establishment of numbers of artists, particularly in London but also Bath, Edinburgh and Dublin, of whom Reynolds and Gainsborough were the most prominent. The artistic marketplace beckoning to an aspiring young painter in the fourth and fifth decades of the century was in the throes of a slow but powerful transformation that reflected even more sweeping changes in the economy of the nation as a whole.3 The Society of Artists of Great Britain (from 1761) and the Free Society of Artists aimed to hold annual public exhibitions – something previously practised in continental Europe, particularly in Paris, but not Britain. They signalled an end to art being the preserve of a wealthy patronage, bought and viewed by the few, and artists a species of guild tradesmen, to an era of a more open market and painting as a profession. Then – with prestigious (although contentious) monarchical patronage – came the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768.4 In the year 1755, when Romney began his apprenticeship, the translation was published in London of J.-A. Rouquet’s State of the Arts in England, a trenchant analysis of the paucity of the British scene. . . . Forty years later in 1795, when Romney was working on his last major painting, . . . the British art world had changed out of all recognition.5 This transformation of the British art world was just part of a range of cultural, political and economic shifts in society through the latter part of the eighteenth century. The hold of rational, ‘enlightenment’ thought, more democratic government, increased literacy, the impact of industrial and agricultural developments (which affected transport, for instance) changed how life was lived. John Wesley’s career coincided with, and to some extent owed its success to, these factors. Images of him, how and when they were made, and then reproduced, distributed or viewed, are part and parcel of that story. This brief background serves to introduce a critical consideration of painted portraits of John Wesley made during his lifetime, taken in chronological order. While prints from painted works are integral to this – indeed, it is a false division to separate them – it makes more sense here to deal with those in more detail in a later chapter. Ignoring, for now, two putative early likenesses,6 the first definite portrait is that by John Michael Williams (1710–c.80). Little seems to be known of Williams; he was evidently influenced by (and possibly a pupil of) Jonathan Richardson whose influential 1715 Essay on the Theory of Painting held that a portrait artist should understand the intellectual framework and implications of his art.Williams is known to have been active in Bristol and the south-west, maybe Oxford, as well as in London.7 He also painted Susanna Wesley (1669–1742) in 1738:8 she was widowed in 1735 and spent the following five years living with several of her children

‘This melancholy employment’ 25

before John made provision to accommodate her at ‘the Foundery’, a derelict munitions factory in Moorfields, London which he leased and adapted as a Methodist preaching house with living quarters. Between 1737–9, Mrs Wesley was living with her daughter Martha and son-in-law Westley Hall, a clergyman, first at Wootton Rivers, near Marlborough then Fisherton near Salisbury. If Williams was then peripatetic between Bristol, Bath and London, he might have stayed some time in Marlborough or Salisbury to pick up business, and there painted her portrait. The London Evening Post for 8–10 September 1743 announced: This Day is publish’d A Metzotinto Print of John Wesley, M.A. Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. Done by Mr. FABER, after a Picture by Mr John WILLIAMS, from the Life. To be sold by J. Williams, at the front Hous: in Dogwell-Court, Whit-Fryars, where the original Picture will continue about a Month, and may be seen, if desir’d.9 It is unlikely, though not impossible, that Williams painted John Wesley contemporaneously with his mother but that the portrait was not engraved for five years. Mrs Wesley died in July 1742: perhaps John hankered after a picture by the same artist who had painted her. And Charles Wesley’s enigmatic comment to his brother ‘You shall have your picture drawn!’10 could as well relate to this portrait as to Vertue’s – ‘drawn’ had a more universal meaning than today. If the family connection had any bearing, Williams anyway seems to have ‘signalled his arrival [in the capital] as a painter’ with this canvas of Wesley.11The choice of a Methodist clergyman, already attracting some public opprobrium, begs questions, although a hint of notoriety might well boost interest. Around the previous year another artist, John Wollaston, may equally have launched his career with a picture of the more controversial Methodist preacher George Whitefield.12 Faber’s print appeared in 1743 and by it this portrait became the dominant likeness for at least the following two decades, capturing as it does ‘the early tense and ascetic Wesley’ and so the most characteristic portrait of John Wesley in his prime.13 What may be significant is that, at a time when the embryonic Methodist movement was coming under suspicion and attack, so preachers such as Wesley were encountering riots, Wesley was depicted as a scholarly Oxford don, in his academic and clerical dress and surrounded by books – a visual corollary with a portrait of Bishop Compton of London (1632–1713) might or might not have been intended. There are no portraits known during the following twenty years (discounting Reynolds). That changed in the 1760s as the Methodist movement became more settled and the portraits business grew. Horace Walpole heard Wesley preach in Bath in 1766 and described his appearance: ‘a lean elderly man, fresh coloured, his hair smoothly combed; but with a soupçon of a curl at the ends, wondrous clean, but as evidently an actor as Garrick’.14

26  ‘This melancholy employment’

John Wesley made twenty-one visits to Ireland, spending a significant proportion of his ministry there. In Dublin in 1765 he sat to Robert Hunter ‘at the earnest desire of a friend’ (possibly Hunter’s fellow artist Henry Brooke, although he was then in London).15 Hunter (fl. c.1750–c.90) was ‘the establishment portrait painter in Dublin for the second half of the eighteenth century’.16 According to the Journal, Wesley only sat between 10.00am–1.30pm, rather than the usual pattern (already described) of several sittings of one to two hours, but ‘in that time he began and ended the face, and with a most striking likeness’.17 It would be consistent with artistic practice that the remainder of the portrait was completed later, the result being a rather straightforward head-and-shoulders, in which the head seems somewhat disconnected from the body. By 1765 Hunter was using a style in which the sitter is ‘often set in a well-observed and painted landscape’ but Wesley was simply shown against an entirely plain background, unlike the full-length by Hunter’s fellow Irish artist, Nathaniel Hone.18 If Wesley selected who might produce his portrait for the frontispieces to Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, the choice of Nathaniel Hone (1718– 84), might be thought puzzling. His Irish birth and connections may have commended him, and Hone was largely self-taught as an artist which may have appealed to Wesley’s bias towards self-reliance. Hone already placed himself as a rival to Reynolds: in 1765, he hung a painting of the ‘London beauty and courtesan’, ‘Kitty’ Fisher, at the Society of Artists exhibition. ‘Reynolds painted her several times, most notably as Cleopatra, and this was surely Hone’s riposte’.19 Curiously, some similarities might be detected in Hone’s painting of the heads

Figure 2.1 Frontispiece and title page, John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament, c.1766

‘This melancholy employment’ 27

of ‘Kitty’ Fisher and Wesley, though whether (if correct) this might be Hone’s sense of fun or a visual satire is another question. By 1742, when he married in York Minster, Hone was living in England and painting miniatures as well as canvases. In the 1760s, in London and active in the Society of Artists,20 he ‘gradually relinquished working on miniatures to concentrate on easel painting’.21 He exhibited a portrait of George Whitefield at the Society of Artists Exhibition, 1768.22 That year also he became one of two Irish founder members of the Royal Academy, but ‘he developed a reputation for irreverence, submitting to the Royal Academy in 1770 a picture of Francis Grose and Theodosius Forrest masquerading as Capuchin monks . . .’ .23 Perhaps the most noted, and notorious, episode in Hone’s career was when, in 1775, he submitted ‘The Pictorial Conjuror’ to the R.A.24 Initially selected, it soon became clear that this was a satirical lampooning of the President, criticising his formulaic use of poses from classical sources as models for his pictures. Not only did it suggest Reynolds was a charlatan, but further imagery implied that he was in an immoral relationship with another artist, Angelica Kauffmann.25 Although Hone repainted offending parts of the picture, it was not hung. Several months later Hone mounted one of the first known singleartist exhibitions, where ‘The Pictorial Conjuror’ formed the main exhibit.26 An interesting and not insignificant artist, Hone deserves more attention than he has received.27 If, as explored in the previous chapter, Wesley was soured by his experience of Reynolds, it may be that, wanting a portrait as frontispiece to his Notes upon the Old Testament, following the 1755 Notes upon the New Testament, he deliberately sought a painter who was not only in competition with Reynolds, but also critical of him. Through the 1760s there was growing suspicion among artists about Reynolds’s ambitions, with a sense that his painterly abilities were lacking in some respects. So, ten years before ‘The Pictorial Conjuror’, it is difficult to be clear whether Hone then held such sentiments, or whether these developed in response to Reynolds’s annual Presidential discourses to the Academy, from 1769. The dating of the Hone portrait is not straightforward.The title page of Notes upon the Old Testament states a publication date of 1765. However, the inscription to the frontispiece print gives Wesley as ‘Ætatis [aged] 63’ whereas Wesley was (to quote the Preface, dated ‘Edinburgh, April 25, 1765’) only ‘entering the sixty-third year’ of his age in June 1765.28 Although bound in three volumes, it actually appeared in monthly installments by subscription, and their publication was delayed and protracted. A printed letter from Wesley ‘To the subscribers’, dated ‘June 20, 1766’ states that ‘the work would be considerably longer than I expected’, with a note from the printer adding that: it cannot be exactly ascertained in how many Numbers the Work will be completed. . . . And as the Work unavoidably exceeds what was at first intended, the Subscribers shall receive GRATIS, A Print of Mr.Wesley, with each of the volumes, to serve as a Frontispiece.29

28 ‘This melancholy employment’

Figure 2.2 Excerpt from ‘Preface’, John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament, c.1766

So in June 1766 the print – and possibly also the portrait – was not yet in existence. Given the lack of any definite evidence, a dating of between November 1765 and February 1766, while Wesley was spending the winter months in London, would seem tenable, but far from conclusive. If Nathaniel Hone probably had little empathy with the Methodists, John Russell (1745–1806) was the reverse.The son of an established Guildford family, his father was a printer and became mayor of the town, some 30 miles southwest of London. Russell showed some skills at drawing at an early age and was apprenticed to a leading London portrait artist, Francis Cotes, from about age 15. By 1767 he was working on his own but along the way, in 1764, had experienced a Methodist evangelical conversion. His new-found religious zeal knew few bounds: he alienated one élite sitter’s family, household and neighbourhood when painting at Cowdray House (Midhurst, Sussex), and thought the people of his home town of Guildford would throw him in the river.30 Unsurprisingly, despite his considerable abilities, establishing a successful London portrait business proved an uphill struggle and Russell tended in his early years to depend on supportive evangelical clients including painting Martin Madan (under whose preaching he had been converted) and his wife (1771), and Lady Huntingdon (1773). From 1769 he exhibited regularly at the R.A., his first entry being a double portrait of ‘Micoc and her son Tootac, Esquimaux Indians’, who had been brought to Britain through Moravian missions. He also painted the future evangelical M.P. and slavery abolitionist William Wilberforce aged eleven in 1770.31

‘This melancholy employment’ 29

Russell’s chief fame rests on his skills with ‘crayons’ (pastels), although these portraits tend to be less durable so have not survived so well. Here he followed Cotes: in 1772 he published Elements of Painting with Crayons which became an influential treatise on the subject.32 Nevertheless, Russell continued to experience poverty, being unable to afford shoes for his children in 1773 and was threatened with debtors prison the following year. His portrait business improved from the mid-1770s, and in 1781 a cousin left him a small estate, both of which increased his financial security (and professional standing). He was elected R.A. in 1788 and later appointed ‘Painter to the King’. Russell was also fascinated by the moon; from both scientific curiosity and as symbolic of his evangelical religion. Feeling depressed in 1766, he had found himself observing and meditating on the moon, which, he stated, ‘Enliven’d my faith’. As the moon reflected the light of the sun to a dark world, so – he held – should the church reflect the glory of God. He bought a telescope and observed the moon nightly for some sixteen years making lunar pastel ‘portraits’, as well as patenting a ‘selenographia’ to model its aspects.33 The ‘Romantic movement’ was in its infancy, as was modern science, then termed ‘natural theology’: both then were far from antithetical to faith. Russell painted Charles Wesley and his family around the time of their 1771 removal to London, and it was ‘at (his) brothers request’ that John Wesley sat to Russell.34 His and Hone’s, both somewhat hesitant, portraits show Wesley preaching, although evidently in studio poses, with a painted-in landscape background. A further portrait from this period, known only in a 1779 print, shows Wesley preaching in a pulpit: however, elements of visual similarity with Russell’s likeness suggest that it is a derived work. Although much of Wesley’s fame rested upon his public preaching ministry, it was acknowledged that his was not the most fluent oratory and that others were more persuasive than he.35 It was George Whitefield who was the greatest preacher of the time, with an appeal which even Benjamin Franklin found unable to resist.36 By contrast with other clergy, almost all images of Whitefield show him preaching, and seem to depict this more actively than those of Wesley. Whitefield’s death in 1770 left John Wesley as Britain’s most obvious evangelical leader. His less than eulogistic funeral sermon for Whitefield, together with his dogmatic Arminianism, largely separated his ‘connexion’ from other evangelicals over the course of the ensuing decade. Moreover, the maintenance of his Methodist connexion’s presence in America through the revolution, and his capitalising of the situation of the newly independent country, ensured that his Methodists had a stronger, distinctive and near-independent existence by the mid-1780s. That existence was personified by its octogenarian leader, whose identity was reinforced through the visual image. So, in his 1771 Journal entry describing sitting to Russell as ‘this melancholy employment’, he added the final couplet of a longer poem:  . . . Behold what frailty we in man may see, Whose shadow is less given to change than he!37

30  ‘This melancholy employment’

Approaching his ‘threescore years and ten’ Wesley might well have seemed diffident about being painted but he would have been well aware of the importance of the visual image in an increasingly public portrait culture to maintain his profile, as the most prominent Methodist leader in the eyes of his followers and the larger public alike. In the remaining two decades of his life, portraits and prints would multiply as Wesley’s reputation moved from being controversial to curiosity and even celebrity.

Notes 1 See Appendix B for Wesley’s Journal and diary entries relating to portraits. 2 John Wesley to Rev.Vincent Perronet, 1748 (see section XV). JWL, II, pp. 309–11. 3 Richard Wendorf, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 88. 4 See William Vaughan, British Painting: The Golden Age (London: Thames & Hudson, 1999); John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination (London: Harper Collins, 1997), esp. Ch. 5; also David Piper, The English Face (London: NPG, 1978), pp. 141–63; Matthew Hargraves, Candidates for Fame: the Society of Artists of Great Britain, 1760–91 (New Haven and London:Yale University Press [for Paul Mellon Centre], 2005). 5 Alex Kidson, George Romney 1734–1802 (London: N.P.G., 2002), p. 1. 6 [Supposedly] John Wesley when a gownboy at the Charterhouse (Old John St Methodist Church, New York). Miniature pair, John and Charles Wesley (Museum of Methodism, London LDWMM2006/10418/1–2). 7 Williams painted the architect James Gibbs, physician James Monro, the actor/singer John Beard (exhib. Society of Artists 1755 [Hargraves, Candidates for Fame, p. 24] and clergy such as the writer James Hervey and a Dorset parish incumbent, John Rhudde (Vicar of Portesham and Weymouth). See www.artuk.org and www.npg.org.uk, accessed December 2013. 8 Formerly at Wesley College, Bristol. See Peter Forsaith, ‘The Curious Incident of Susanna Wesley’s Rosebud Lips’, in Norma Virgoe (ed.) Angels and Impudent Women (Loughborough: for Wesley Historical Society, 2007), pp. 31–51. 9 London Evening Post, 8–10 September 1743. 10 CW-JW, 16 December 1742 ‘You shall have your picture drawn! I am delighted with it above measure. Such a scarecrow let them make of me when I consent to make my appearance in black and white.Yet they say that comely face of yours may be taken out, and a less puritancial one put in’. In (eds.) Kenneth G. C. Newport and Gareth Lloyd, The Letters of Charles Wesley vol. I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 100–1. 11 Timothy Clayton, The English Print, 1688–1802 (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1997) p. 60. 12 NPG 131 (oil on canvas 32 5/8 in. x 26 in. [829 mm. x 660 mm.]). 13 Henry D. Rack, letter to the author, May 2014. 14 (ed.) W. S. Lewis, The Letters of Horace Walpole (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1973), vol. XXXV; p. 119. 15 Journal 31 July 1765. 16 L. H. Cust,‘Hunter, Robert (d. after 1803)’, rev. Anne Crookshank, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes. idm.oclc.org/view/article/14229, accessed 1 July 2016. 17 Journal 31 July 1765. 18 Cust, ‘Hunter, Robert’, OxDNB. 19 Adrian Le Harivel, Nathaniel Hone the elder, 1718–1784 (Dublin:Town House in association with the National Gallery of Ireland, 1992), p. 19.

‘This melancholy employment’ 31 20 The Society of Artists of Great Britain, founded 1761, dissolved 1791. See Hargraves, Candidates for Fame, p. 206. 21 Brendan Rooney,‘Hone, Nathaniel (1718–1784)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2008 www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/13658, accessed 16 March 2016. 22 Presumed destroyed when Whitefield’s Tabernacle in Tottenham Court Road, London, was bombed in March 1943. 23 Rooney, ‘Hone, Nathaniel’, OxDNB. 24 Now in the National Gallery of Ireland. Dublin (NGI. 1790). 25 John Newman, ‘The Conjuror’ Unmasked’, in Nicholas Penny (ed.), Reynolds (London: Royal Academy, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1986), pp. 344–54. 26 Nathaniel Hone, The exhibition of pictures, by Nathaniel Hone, R.A. mostly the works of his leisure, and many of them in his own possession (London, 1775). 27 See Le Harivel, Nathaniel Hone. 28 John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (Bristol: William Pine, 1765, 3 vols.), vol. I, p. iv. 29 Ibid., p. xi. 30 R.J.B. Walker, ‘Russell, John (1745–1806)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2015 www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/24321, accessed 16 March 2016; Iris C. Rhodes, John Russell R.A (Guildford: Guildford Borough Council, 1986); Antje Steinhofel/Matthews, John Russell, (1745–1806) and the Impact of Evangelicalism and Natural Theology on Artistic Practice (Ph.D. thesis, University of Leicester, 2005). 31 Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: a complete dictionary of contributors and their work from its foundation in 1769 to 1904 (‘Royal Academy exhibitors’) (London: Graves, Bell, 1905–06, 3 vols.), vol. iii, p. 390. 32 John Russell, Elements of Painting with Crayons (London, 1772, revised and enlarged 1777). 33 Quoted Steinhofel/Matthews, John Russell, p. 133. 34 See Peter Forsaith, ‘Pictorial Precocity’ in British Art Journal, X/3 (Winter/Spring 2009/10), pp. 98–103. Journal 30 December 1771. 35 See L. E. Elliott-Binns, The Early Evangelicals (London: Lutterworth, 1953), pp. 366ff. 36 ‘I happened soon after to attend one of his Sermons, in the Course of which I perceived he intended to finish with a Collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my Pocket a Handful of Copper Money, three or four silver Dollars, and five Pistoles [Spanish coins] in Gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the Coppers. Another Stroke of his Oratory made me asham’d of that, and determin’d me to give the Silver; and he finish’d so admirably, that I emptied my Pocket wholly into the Collector’s Dish, Gold and all’. Journal of Benjamin Franklin, 1739. 37 ‘Upon His Picture’, by Thomas Randolph (1605–35). When age hath made me what I am not now, And every wrinkle tells me where the plow Of time hath furrowed; when an ice shall flow Through every vein, and all my head wear snow; When death displays his coldness in my cheek, And I myself in my own picture seek, Not finding what I am, but what I was, In doubt which to believe, this or my glass: Yet though I alter, this remains the same As it was drawn, retains the primitive frame And first complexion; here will still be seen Blood on the cheek, and down upon the chin;

32  ‘This melancholy employment’ Here the smooth brow will stay, the lively eye, The ruddy lip, and hair of youthful dye. Behold what frailty we in man may see, Whose shadow is less given to change than he!

3 ‘I yielded to importunity’: portraits from the life, 1781–91

The majority of likenesses of Wesley ‘from the life’ – around two-thirds – were taken in his last decade, including the bust by Enoch Wood, then a young and little known Staffordshire potter, which was generally considered one of the best resemblances by those who knew Wesley in his later years.1 Those who remembered him into the nineteenth century would only have known of him as an old man, which became the image bequeathed to posterity. This imbalance is hardly surprising: at over 80 years of age, and still actively travelling and preaching, and despite having been satirized through the 1770s, he had become something of a legend in his own lifetime. On his final visit to Cornwall, in August 1789, when he was 86 and had only eighteen months of life remaining, he visited Falmouth: When I was here, about forty years ago, I was taken prisoner by an immense mob, gaping and roaring like lions. But how is the tide turned, high and low now lined the street from one end of the town to the other, out of stark love and kindness, as if the King were going by.2 Not only did crowds turn out to see him, but artists were keen to paint him. Whereas portraits already considered were mostly by artists of standing, numbers of these later ones were by painters whose identity it is now difficult to trace. Some were local jobbing hacks, others amateur: sometimes Wesley noted a sitting in his journal, others were apparently opportune. Wesley recorded sitting for his portrait in Dublin in April 1783 and Manchester in April 1786: it is not known what pictures – if any – resulted. As the print sales business grew during the last quarter of the century, part of the reason must also be that pictures of such a well-known figure were potentially profitable. But of all paintings in his lifetime, perhaps the most curious is a full-length of Wesley apparently conducting a burial, before an open grave, with a church as backdrop. Painted in 1783 by the Rev. Thomas Olave (c.1748–99),3 vicar of Mucking, Essex from 1782 to his death, the picture was not necessarily set in his churchyard. An amateur artist, apparently he sold the picture later when impoverished.4 Apart from its curiosity as a macabre large canvas, it is odd that Wesley does not wear a surplice, indicating, perhaps, that he was not officiating,

34  ‘I yielded to importunity’

but only speaking at the graveside.5 There is no record of Wesley visiting Mucking, nor knowing Olave (nor of links with the Pullen family, whose graves are shown), and the church does not resemble Mucking, so it seems likely that this was an imagined – possibly even satirical – composition placing Wesley into a funereal scene. In Sunderland in 1784, during a busy two-week visit to the north-east of England, Wesley sat for two hours for his picture. This corresponds with a portrait by local artist Thomas Horsley (b. c.1764), one of an extensive north-east family, a number of whom were artists. The result – apparently, from that single sitting, contrary to general practice – was a straightforward head-and-shoulders, though copies (of which there are a number) were later ‘improved’, particularly with a background window reveal showing the City Road Chapel, though some have a curtain and books. On 22 December 1787 Wesley ‘yielded to the importunity of a painter, and sat an hour and a half, in all, for my picture. . .’ .6 Two further sittings were noted in the diary for 25 and 26 February, 1788, when the phrasing suggests he went to the studio. The December sitting has generally been associated with the portrait by William Hamilton,7 but without clear reason. It seems unlikely that an artist would allow two months between sittings, unless this was unavoidable. Since Wesley was resident in London during that time, these probably relate to different portraits. Prints from paintings by Sylvester Harding as well as Hamilton were published in March and November 1788 respectively. Sylvester Harding (1745– 1809) was from Staffordshire, but was in London from an early age, as was his brother Edward (1755–1840) with whom he set up as book and printsellers in Fleet Street in 1786. Sylvester enrolled at the R.A. Schools and exhibited paintings at the Academy, which were engraved by the likes of Bartolozzi and Gardiner, while Edward oversaw the publication. It was a busy and successful enterprise, in a hyperactive market: Bartolozzi’s ‘studio was perpetually at full stretch, working for other printsellers’.8 The Wesley portrait, early on in the business, was probably made for its commercial potential, so it seems that Wesley’s sittings of late February relate to Harding’s work. Against this, on 25 February 1788 it would be more consistent for Wesley to visit Hamilton’s studio at 63 Dean Street, Soho, since he was on his way towards Charles Wesley’s home at Marylebone,9 rather than the Hardings’ premises in Clerkenwell, nearer City Road. The portrait by Harding has been linked to a supposed painting bearing the signature ‘Zaffanij pinxit’, apparently in the possession of the Rev. Marmaduke Riggal in the late nineteenth century.10 Its whereabouts is now unknown; nor would this be the first time a ‘signature’ has been mis-identified. Johann Zoffany came to Britain in 1760, having established himself as a history painter in continental Europe. He found himself reduced to taking work as a background ‘journey-man’ in Benjamin Wilson’s studio before finding more successful opportunities in portraits. In 1762 he worked for Garrick, which effectively launched his British career. It is conceivable that Zoffany painted Wesley at

‘I yielded to importunity’ 35

some point, from which Harding made a copy for engraving – which might account for a recorded but unidentified sitting in 1787–88. However Zoffany was in India 1783–89, which rules out any immediate connection with Harding, so a Zoffany portrait must remain putative and if one was made, unlikely though that may seem, it is a poor example of his work for ‘Mr Zaffanij is peculiarly happy at taking Likenesses. . .’ .11 William Hamilton (1751–1801) was not principally a portrait artist.12 He worked first for his fellow Scot, Robert Adam, on decorated panels for Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, where his portrait of the Hon. Henry Curzon still hangs.13 He then moved to history paintings, exhibiting at the R.A. from 1774 – from 1780–89 he showed portraits. He was strongly connected with the theatre, depicting scenes from Shakespeare. It is possible that Hamilton took Wesley’s face in the single sitting of December 1787, when Wesley’s diary entry suggests he was also occupied with papers: ‘11 The Painter; letters, 1.15. . .’ . If Hamilton waited in vain for a further sitting but had to be content with observing Wesley in the pulpit for the remainder, this might account for the time lapse between sitting and print, as well as the background seeming to relate more to a stage flat than either a church or a Methodist preaching house (and certainly not to the City Road chapel pulpit). Like the compositions by Hone and Russell, Hamilton’s too is in a preaching pose, though in a pulpit and not the open air and – again – far from convincing. The Methodist movement has been compared to the theatre; while it would vigorously oppose play-going, the two shared many commonalities.14 The resulting print, engraved by Fittler, was published by James Milbourne, a carver, gilder and picture framer, and a member of Wesley’s London Society. If Milbourne also commissioned the picture, it seems likely to have been partly for commercial reasons, but also as a tribute to Wesley. Given by the Milburn family to the National Portrait Gallery, this is the only Wesley portrait from the life with a clear provenance. The inclusion on the print of, purportedly, the Wesley family armorial bearings, at least suggests an element of endorsement by Wesley, although the whole matter of a Wesley coat-of-arms is an intriguing side-issue.15 Wesley was a man constantly in motion: ‘leisure and I have taken leave of each other: I propose to be busy as long as I live’.16 As already noted, Dr. Johnson found Wesley sociable but unable to fold his legs and have a conversation out.17 If so many likenesses seem inadequate, it may simply be that for John Wesley to sit for his portrait represents something of an oxymoron. It would have required a talented painter who worked rapidly to capture the active spirit of the man. And such an artist was George Romney (1734–1802), to whom Wesley sat in the winter of 1788–9. Romney’s small, vigorous oils of head and shoulders is arguably the most satisfactory of later Wesley portraits. The picture carries the impression of a busy man whose activities have been briefly arrested for a momentary gaze, characterising Romney’s ‘approach to portraiture that centered on an immediacy or spontaneity of response to the sitter’.18 ‘A picture should appear like

36  ‘I yielded to importunity’

one momentary impulse or impression in the Mind . . . where everything falls together by accident or chance’.19 As Romney’s son put it:  . . . I beheld his hand Dash on the canvas with creative might Visions of fancy, as by magic wand.20 Romney’s rapidity of working was in part the result of his artistic practice, in endeavouring to capture the moment; in part designed to impress his clients, for the visit to the artist’s studio was a dramatised experience; and in part a strategic policy to enable him to maximise his output.21 During the 1780s particularly, he had very high numbers of sitters compared with his rivals, since he pitched his prices below those of Reynolds and Gainsborough – his key competitors – but above those of other artists. To facilitate this, he developed a technique which ‘preferred the pronounced surface texture of a twill canvas . . . he also employed relatively coarse bristle brushes . . . often loaded with pigment. . .’ .22 In common with Wesley, Romney drove himself to overwork and also had a broken marriage. Yet Romney was hardly sympathetic to evangelicals. His liaisons with Emma Hart and ‘a French dancing girl, Thelassie, who came to live at Cavendish Square in the late 1780s’ would hardly have met with Wesley’s moral acquiescence.23 Further, some of his works suggest that physical beauty, to which he was so alive, prompted a pederastic interest in the boys and young men who sat to him, such as William Beckford24 and William ‘Kitty’ Courtenay,25 or another, probably misattributed as the young William Pitt.26 While Romney avoided political allegiance, partly not to alienate clients, he was inclined to radicalism, especially after the French Revolution later in 1789, although like many he reverted to monarchism later. Carr’s suggestion that Romney, who was then producing images for Boydell’s ‘Shakespeare Gallery’, modelled this small, elderly clergyman after Falstaff seems extraordinary, although the original canvas does hint at a larger body which has been overpainted.27 Moreover, during the late 1780s, with the absence of Emma Hart in Naples and struggling with the Shakespeare project, Romney was working ‘in more slapdash fashion’.28 His portrait of Wesley was commissioned by Mrs Tighe, a wealthy Irish supporter, who also had Romney paint members of her family. Jonathan Spilsbury, who engraved the picture, acted as agent, paying Romney £30 for the picture and frame. He did not send it to Ireland until 19 July, after Wesley had visited Mrs Tighe’s home at Rosanna, Co. Wicklow on 25 June and preached in the hall. The portrait remained there until sold in 1815.29 There is ambiguity about how Wesley was involved in the production of the resulting print: it would seem that he distanced himself from the process but evidently was pleased with the result, writing: It is thought to be a good likeness, and many of my friends have desired an engraving taken from it.30

‘I yielded to importunity’ 37

It is important to dwell upon Romney, as his image of Wesley was to prove formative, both in its composition and as a key recognised likeness of the Methodist leader at the end of his life, while retaining much of his vitality and that youthful appearance which so long remained with him. Moreover, Romney’s portrait, being well documented and within the context of the œuvre of a leading artist, also gives greater insight into the interaction between Wesley and those who painted him. Romney’s was the last regular portrait known. Although Wesley had noted the decline of old age in August 1789, this picture depicted a man still apparently in the prime of life, active and alert.31 A year later a finely detailed miniature shows an old man, his facial structure starting to collapse and although he has his finger upon a bible open in front of him, whether he could see to read it is doubtful. Assumed to be that painted 22 February 1790 – again, on a Monday morning – the kind of critical questions which lurk around so many portraits of Wesley from the life also dog this. The miniature is signed, but hardly legibly, so a long-held attribution to the minor painter Richard Arnold seems unwise. A print was issued a year later, following Wesley’s death, corresponding with the miniature though of only head and shoulders, inscribed – though ambiguously – ‘Done from a Miniature of the same size/Painted by J. Barry’. John Barry, a miniaturist, exhibited ‘Portrait of a Clergyman (Rev. John Westley)’ at the 1790 Academy.32 A finely detailed copy by Ridley appeared as frontispiece to the 1809 edition of Wesley’s Works, although does not name an artist.The relationship between paint and print and which informs each is not always clear. An attribution to John Barry for this miniature seems reasonable. A misunderstanding that an ‘original oil painting of J. Wesley’ by the betterknown James Barry hung in the ‘large room of the Society of Arts’ has muddied the pool further, implying that Barry, whose painting œuvre was far from miniature, included Wesley in one of his monumental mural canvasses ‘The Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture’, perhaps in ‘Elysium’.33 However, Barry listed the likenesses: Wesley was not included. Although the images of Pascal or Bossuet in that work might to a fanciful eye seem like Wesley, Barry’s increased shift from Protestant radicalism to his native Irish Catholicism, especially after the French Revolution (adding Bossuet in 1801) renders this untenable.34 Thus far it has been possible to maintain some distinction, however artificial, between paintings and prints. At this point such a divide starts to collapse, the ‘Barry’ image being a case in point.Towards the end of his life, a left-side profile head and shoulders of Wesley while preaching seems to have been taken by Henry Edridge (1769–1821). These seem to have been the source images for a proliferation of prints and painted copies which appeared immediately after Wesley’s death and beyond. Neither painting nor print, in Leeds on Mayday 1790, marking the coming of summer, a silhouette profile was taken that Saturday morning before Wesley left the town. John Butterworth (before 1760–c.1820) was from a local engraving and printing family.35 The profile shows a head little changed from decades before as the ageing Wesley made his last evangelistic tour of the north of England and Scotland.

38  ‘I yielded to importunity’

The latter part of the eighteenth century saw increasing scientific interest, especially with the influence of Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820). One anthropological area was phrenology: (supposed) links between the shape of the skull, and human personality and intelligence. This theory, by the Swiss minister and writer Johann Kaspar Lavater, was influential throughout Europe and later translated into English with illustrations by Thomas Holloway, who produced a profile print of Wesley after his death.36 Portrait artists started to paint more profile views of their sitters: a side-view painting on glass of Wesley survives, apparently from the 1780s: a number of similar prints claim to have been taken from sketches as he preached. The two last known images, by Butterworth and Kay, are both in profile. John Wesley long retained something of the physical and mental vigour of youth, but if there can be said to be a stereotypical image of him, it is of an ageing clergyman. In Edinburgh in mid-May John Kay (1742–1826), barber turned portrait etcher and miniaturist, took the last known likeness.37 This, a full-length profile, shows Wesley returning from preaching at Castle Hill, supported on the arms of Joseph Cole, the Methodist ‘assistant’ then stationed in the city, and physician Dr James Hamilton (who had recently removed to Leeds). Inscribed, inaccurately, ‘NINTY FOUR [sic] YEARS; HAVE I SOJOURNED UPON THIS EARTH ENDEAVOURING TO DO GOOD’, it would have been sold from his shop in Parliament Close, possibly alongside a small oval print of Wesley which may have been taken at the same time although its similarity to the Williams portrait suggests it was in part derived.38 By their exaggerated features Kay’s etchings straddle portraiture and caricature. Although his political views are unknown, his prints of known liberals, and those who sympathized with the French revolution, suggest an English Tory clergyman would be a subject for satire. Nonetheless his etching of Wesley was copied and prints sold throughout Britain and beyond, finding a wide circulation. Wesley’s death far from curtailed the sale of prints, and there continued to be paintings of him: indeed the two were more inter-related, which forms the subject of the following chapter.

Notes 1 ‘. . . [T]he only proper likeness of that illustrious man’. [Adam Clarke to Enoch Wood, 13 October 1830, in Frank Falkner, The Wood Family of Burslem (London: Chapman & Hall, 1912), p. 50]. 2 Journal 18 August 1789. 3 Thomas Olave (or Olive), matric. Magdalen Hall, Oxford 10 September 1773 aged 25, ordained 1779 also domestic chaplain to the Earl of Portmore from 1785 www.theclergydatabase.org.uk, accessed 27 December 2013. 4 See C. Ryder Smith,The ‘Olave’ portrait of Wesley’, in Magazine, May 1925, pp. 310–12; also (anon.) ‘A Picture and a Query’ in MR, 9 (August 1923), p. 10. 5 Surplices would generally be worn by the officiant at a burial (for which ‘surplice fees’ were paid), although this was probably not universal in the eighteenth century. See W. M. Jacob, The Clerical Profession in the Long Eighteenth Century 1680–1840 (Oxford: Oxford

‘I yielded to importunity’ 39 University Press, 2007), pp. 200–1, also Janet Mayo, The History of Ecclesiastical Dress (London: Batsford, 1984), (‘The Surplice’), p. 88. 6 Journal, 22 December 1787. 7 Joseph Wright, ‘Notes on Some Portraits of John Wesley’, in PWHS, iii (1902), pp. 188–9; SPJW, p. 122. 8 Timothy Clayton, The English Print, 1688–1802 (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1997), p. 210. 9 Wesley, diary, 25, 26 February 1788. Charles Wesley was then in his final illness. 10 Riggall (1851–1927) was an antiquarian and Wesleyan minister, who seems to have owned several portraits claimed, some dubiously, to be of Wesley, SPJW, p. 87. 11 Quoted Kate Retford, ‘ “Peculiarly happy at taking Likenesses”: Zoffany & British Portraiture’ in Martin Postle (ed.), Johan Zoffany RA, Society Observed (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 2011), p. 101. 12 R. E. Graves, ‘Hamilton,William (1751–1801)’, rev. Deborah Graham-Vernon, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) www.oxforddnb.com. oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/12141, accessed 16 March 2016. 13 William Hamilton, ‘The Hon. later Admiral, Henry Curzon (1765–1846)’, 1787 (National Trust, Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, NT108766). 14 See Misty G. Anderson, Imagining Methodism in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Maryland: John Hopkins University Press, 2012). 15 See PWHS, I (1897), pp. 96–100 and 35 (1966), pp. 110–12. 16 JW – Samuel Wesley jnr., c.22 May 1727, (in JWL, i, 36 as 5 Dec 1726); WJW 25 (Letters I), p. 220. 17 Boswell’s Life of Johnson, quoted Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, p. 535. 18 Alex Kidson, George Romney 1734–1802 (London: N.P.G., 2002), p. 12. 19 George Romney, sketchbook c.1790, quoted Kidson, George Romney, p. 12. 20 Quoted David A. Cross, A Striking Likeness, the Life of George Romney (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), p. 84. 21 Kidson, George Romney, pp. 26, 66. 22 Cross, A Striking Likeness, p. 8. 23 Kidson, George Romney, p. 12. 24 George Romney, ‘William Beckford’ (National Trust, Upton House, Oxfordshire, NTPL 40626). 25 George Romney, ‘William Courtenay’ (Nemours Foundation, Wilmington, Delaware). 26 ‘. . .[O]ne of the most sensual of all Romney’s portraits of epicene young men’ Kidson, George Romney, pp. 156. 27 A. H. Carr, Iconographic Notes [John Wesley 2/4] in Heinz Archive, N.P.G., see also Peter Forsaith, ‘The Romney Portrait of John Wesley’ in Methodist History XLII/4 (July 2004), pp. 249–55. 28 Alex Kidson, George Romney, a Complete Catalogue of His Paintings (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 2015, 3 vols.), vol. i, p. 16. 29 John Kerslake, Early Georgian Portraits (London: H.M.S.O., 1977), p. 299. 30 John Wesley – Mrs Tighe, 7 February 1789. 31 ‘For above eighty-six years I found none of the infirmities of old age. . . . But last August I found almost a sudden change’ (  Journal, 28 June 1790). 32 RA, 1790, 336. See also Christies, London, sale of Miniature Portraits, 2 May 1901, lot 124, from which Kerslake identified this as John Barry (Kerslake, Early Georgian Portraits, pp. 301, 304). 33 Letter from G. J. Stevenson, MR, 21 May 1877, p. 169. 34 See William L. Pressly, The Life and Art of James Barry (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981); Tom Dunne and William L. Pressly (eds.), James Barry, 1741–1806: History Painter (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), especially Daniel R. Guernsey, ‘Barry’s Bossuet in Elysium: Catholicism and counter-Revolution in the 1790s’, pp. 211–31.

40  ‘I yielded to importunity’ 35 Sue McKechnie, British Silhouette Artists and their Work 1760–1860 (London: Sotheby’s, 1979), pp. 380–1. 36 J. K. Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy, published in German [Physiognomischen Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe] 1775–78, and quickly influential throughout Europe; English translation 1789–98. 37 Wesley was in Edinburgh 13–16 May 1790 for the annual conference, his last [Diary – there is a break in the Journal in this period]. 38 Lucy Dixon, ‘Kay, John (1742–1826)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/ 15195, accessed 28 Feb 2016; Donald H. Ryan,‘The Edinburgh Wesley Portraits’ in PWHS, 55/1 (February 2005), pp. 1–13.

4 Prints and posthumous portraits: spreading and selling the image

John Wesley died on 2 March 1791. A death mask was taken, and as he ‘lay in state’ at the City Road chapel a young engraver, William Ridley, sketched a likeness, which he then published as a print. Within a few months other prints had appeared (including that by John Barry), such as one by the leading London print house of Robert Sayer of a sombre Wesley borne heavenwards by two mischievous cherubic figures. Wesley’s face was evidently lifted from Romney’s portrait and the composition as a whole might be thought to form a dutiful apotheosis image to a respected public figure. However, it was among a series of several hundred humorous ‘drolls’ by Sayer. The ambiguity of the image – was it in homage to Wesley, or mildly satirical? – is unclear, but demonstrates both the tenor of many prints and printers’ abilities to appeal to multiple markets including grieving Methodists. This period was the zenith of the English visual print, and London was its epicentre. ‘By the last quarter of the eighteenth century a great number of print shops and engraver’s studios were spread across London and the suburbs’.1 Gattrell estimates that ‘between 1770 and 1830, in the golden age of graphic satire’ some ‘20,000 satirical and humorous prints . . . were published in London’'; moreover these formed only a proportion of the total output.2 Alongside the growing popularity of portraits from the 1750s went the proliferation of prints. Both increasing demand for consumer goods and technical improvements fuelled the boom in print production. Demand mostly drove the market, although more ready supply helped, and the public appetite for straightforward likenesses as well as humorous subjects (some of which could be bawdily outrageous, even libellous), seems to have been insatiable. On becoming king in 1820, George IV in effect bribed the chief satirists, such as Gillray and Cruickshank, to cease the mockery to which he had been mercilessly subjected over four decades. But then the print’s ‘cultural purchase was already being challenged by the rise of new sensibilities and of a new pietism’.3 Three decades after Wesley’s death, with the Napoleonic wars and economic hardship following, the backwash of eighteenth-century religious evangelicalism was starting to have a national impact. As will be seen, this also marked the advent of moralising scene-paintings, including those depicting Wesley, and the

42

Prints and posthumous portraits

Figure 4.1 [ J.] Ridley: John Wesley prior to interment (stipple engr., 1791)

marketing of those prints. In dealing with portrait prints of Wesley during his lifetime and into the early nineteenth century, such background is crucial. The print-making process could vary. Artists might paint or sketch noted figures solely or mainly for the anticipated profit from engraved prints. Alternately, a portrait might be commissioned by the sitter or a patron, who would then have the income from any print sales. Romney’s portrait of Wesley was arranged by Mrs Tighe, to whom Wesley wrote the month after the sittings: I have sat four times to Mr. Romney, and he has finished the picture. It is thought to be a good likeness, and many of my friends have desired an engraving taken from it. But I answer, ‘The picture was not mine but yours. Therefore I can do no thing without your consent.’ But if you have no objection, then I will employ an engraver that I am assured will do it justice.4 The extent to which Wesley was involved in the production of the resulting print is unclear. If he was pleased with the result, not everyone thought it ‘a

Prints and posthumous portraits 43

good likeness’.5 That summer of 1789,Wesley gave a ‘fine large print of himself ’, hardly other than Spilsbury’s of the Romney portrait, to Adam Clarke’s wife, Mary: ‘I value it much, as the gift of my revered father, but I cannot esteem it as bearing a strong resemblance to himself, it is by no means a striking likeness’.6 Spilsbury engraved for a number of artists, achieving moderate success, but was also drawn to evangelicalism, becoming a Moravian from 1781, while remaining sympathetic to the broader Methodist movement. The print was published that June by his brother John Spilsbury, and sold through Robert Wilkinson in Cornhill: a central London outlet was vital and Wilkinson was one of the leading print sellers.7 A generation later, in 1825 another London engraver, William Ward, whose brother James may at least have had Methodist leanings, issued a mezzotint and etching of the Romney image, with some subtle differences.8 While most obvious is a vignette, below the engraving, of Epworth parish church (where Wesley’s father had been rector), a slightly longer body was shown, the face seems less sharp and a fur scarf was added, maybe a borrowing from renaissance paintings and connoting pilgrimage or St John the evangelist. Since by then Romney’s actual canvas was probably in the possession of Joseph Butterworth, and access limited for artists to copy, this print may have become the precursor of a proliferation of painted ‘copies’ of the Romney portrait. Many seem to date from the nineteenth century, since they are closer to Ward’s face and feature the fur scarf. In 1817 James Ward’s daughter Maria had married the Wesleyan Methodist artist John Jackson R.A. (1778–1831), whose first wife had died the previous year: Ward’s print was prepared under Jackson’s ‘immediate superintendence’.9 Friend and contemporary of John Constable (1776–1837), Jackson was a prolific and popular portraitist in his time. For nearly twenty years he also provided images for portrait prints as frontispieces to the monthly Methodist Magazine. Moreover, he was an accomplished copyist who ‘astounded observers with the speed and skill with which he worked copying Titian’s “Sacred and Profane Love” in four days’ in Rome in 1818. His work (much of which was in watercolours) was by no means limited to portraiture and he produced a copy of Correggio’s ‘Agony in the Garden’ (Gethsemane being a popular evangelical subject) for the [Anglican] parish church in his home village of Lastingham, Yorkshire.10 Jackson had neither the originality nor the career ambition of the likes of Constable or another contemporary, the R.A. President and leading portrait artist Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830). Moreover, at a time when Wesleyan Methodism was pulling away from the established church, his staunch faith and kindly nature (Constable wrote that Jackson ‘never did harm to any living creature’) probably told against him in a competitive environment.11 While he possessed real technical skill, he was temperamentally easy-going and readily (and, apparently, often) diverted, so his paintings rarely achieved the quality which they might. Mainly in consequence, and perhaps in part owing to his Methodist allegiance, his reputation did not last and his work has rarely attracted critical attention.

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In creating likenesses for Cadell and Davies’s British Gallery of Contemporary Portraits, Jackson had used a synthesis of existing images of individuals whose prints were to appear.12 His Wesley portrait was similarly projected, based on ‘the portrait in the possession of Mr. Townsend . . . and other portraits with which he will be furnished’.13 Jackson also apparently drew considerably on the original bust by Wood, which the sculptor had presented to Adam Clarke (who had a brass cast made to preserve it in its exactness).14 Planned to be the ‘standard portrait’ of Wesley, it became the most influential image, engraved as a frontispiece for a new edition of Wesley’s Hymns, published in 1827. Despite this preaching pose being quickly adjudged to be an unsatisfactory likeness, vast numbers of prints were produced in the subsequent century so it became the face of Wesley known to Methodists worldwide through the movement’s main period of expansion.15 Whether, as with Romney, the numbers of copies were derived from the prototype canvas or from prints, is impossible to say. But despite contemporary claims that it was ‘a likeness of Mr. Wesley, more perfect, and therefore better adapted to convey to posterity a vivid impression of the mind and heart, as well as of the features’, ‘it is safe to say that it does not represent Wesley at any period of his life’.16 Jackson also painted a similarly synthesised portrait of the Wesleys’ associate Rev. John Fletcher, which seems even more removed from known likenesses, but was also influential through popular prints.17 Slightly earlier, in 1824, a print was published by William Thomas Fry (1789–1843), of Wesley, again in preaching pose, ‘from the original picture’ by John Renton (1774–c.1841). The compositional similarity with Jackson’s portrait might indicate that the one was to some extent modeled on the other – Heitzenrater suggests that this was intended as a frontispiece for Wesley’s Hymns, but rejected.18 Renton, when young, could have actually seen Wesley since ‘he resided in Hoxton, and had therefore many opportunities of seeing and hearing the great preacher’.19 Beardmore thought that though ‘it has a powerful and somewhat heavy lower face . . . no picture of Wesley has a greater air of reality and naturalness’.20 The synthetic nature of these pictures increased: evident adjustments to the Romney likeness in Ward’s print were only a start. Examples such as an engraving ‘from a bust model by Enoch Wood Esq. of Burslem’ of 1838, another by Zobel of 1866 show the evolution of what could be described as a popular visual characterisation of the ‘founder of Methodism’, which prevailed through the Victorian era.21 Stereotypically this represented an older man with a larger physical presence than Wesley seems to have had, longer white hair, prominent nose, half to three-quarter length and in preaching pose, often in a pulpit. Such an image would have resonated in an age of pulpit and political rhetoric, of Spurgeon and Gladstone: as a visualization of Wesley’s career and character it was more emblematic than actual. A further aspect of these pictures is their masculinity. Paintings and prints from Wesley’s life of this petite and fastidious clergyman, ‘his hair smoothly combed; but with a soupçon of a curl at the ends, wondrous clean . . .’ might by the 1820s

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have seemed effete.22 The Napoleonic wars had shifted public perceptions of soldiers and sailors towards embodying military manliness, while the publications of Lavater and Winkelman adjusted ideas of male beauty as more muscular. Much might be said around considering differences in the Wesley image over time in terms of gendered representation; it is merely noted here that Wesley’s increased bulk and look of authority (‘a powerful and somewhat heavy lower face’) which become evident in nineteenth-century pictures suggest adjustments in line with ideas of (Christian) manliness.23 It is perhaps seen most emphatically in AdamsActon’s relief for the memorial in Westminster Abbey of the 1870s. In the twenty-five years following Jackson’s painting, many changes happened. In art and culture, Victorian gothic was the ruling architecture and the Pre-Raphaelites were emerging. In 1850 a lithographer, Glück Rosenthal, issued one of the most singular of Wesley prints composed of his biography in around 20,000 words, placing Jackson’s Wesley into a medieval border. Aside from being from beyond the expected religious orbit, by a Jewish printer, it ‘had occupied [Rosenthal] three years in its execution, and he hoped to make a small fortune by it but in this he was greatly disappointed’.24 At face value a novelty picture which demonstrates the widespread popularity of the Wesley image and its perceived commercial potential, a more incisive understanding may be to consider it within then prevailing preoccupations about the interplay of image and text. If Pugin or the Pre-Raphaelites interwove writing with picture or symbol, here word and art are not merely combined but fused: Wesley’s likeness is his biography: his biography is his likeness. Moreover, Rosenthal imposed additional texts within the decorative gothic surround: ‘the best of all, God is with us’ at the sides and ‘the world is my parish’ at its base stressed Wesley’s spirituality and universality. While lithographers generally used stone, around the 1830s printing with etched steel plates was superseding copper: whereas a copper plate might only be good for hundreds of copies, steel lasted for thousands. Other processes, such as colour lithography, and the development of larger presses, meant that prints became bigger, more elaborate, popular – and cheaper.Yet something was lost. ‘All the commercial innovations of the nineteenth century improved output at the expense of both quality and lingering artistic expression’.25 The popularization of ‘scene paintings’, including those featuring Wesley, owed much to these developments, and a wider range of portrait prints also became available. A series of (commercially more successful) Wesley engravings was also made by S. Lipschitz, based between London and Hamburg, but these seem to have been simply pastiche versions of popular scenes, often roughly modelled on other scene paintings, many of which were produced in the middle years of the nineteenth century and circulated as prints. Into the twentieth century, around a hundred years after Jackson, in an age of mechanical colour printing, picture postcards and film stars, Frank Salisbury’s images presented another aspect of portrayals of Wesley. He painted three: ‘the Founder’, ‘the Ecclesiastical Statesman’ and ‘the Scholar’, although it was the first which was most widely circulated in print form.

46  Prints and posthumous portraits

Frank Salisbury (1874–1962), ‘Painter Laureate’, had a prosperously successful career, claiming that he had painted portraits of six Presidents of the U.S.A., which ‘requires a little fine-tuning’.26 He painted British royalty and the pageantry of state occasions, but his grand style of life was entirely out of kilter with the modernist art world following World War 1. Between his mansion in Hampstead and the squares of Bloomsbury existed a gulf of mistrust. If he had any inclination towards impressionism, he could be scathing about trends such as cubism or abstraction. His pictures flattered by their exaggerated photo-realism. His lifelong nonconformist faith resulted in a number of pictures related to his beliefs, such as a colourful series of Old Testament prophets for the Bible Society.27 Like Jackson a century earlier, Salisbury’s was a synthesised likeness, again derived particularly from the Wood bust, although in this case apparently a small version ‘that Mrs. Salisbury had found in a storeroom in the Victoria and Albert Museum’.28 A longer pose than Jackson’s, Salisbury required a model for the portrait, and approached a friend, the architect Charles Voysey, who, like himself, was a staunch traditionalist thoroughly opposed to the Bauhaus and brutalist buildings of the concrete age. Salisbury thought Voysey bore some physical resemblance to Wesley but was, by his own account, amazed to discover that Voysey’s middle name was Annesley, and that he was descended from John Wesley’s sister Sukey (Susanna).29 This, in Salisbury’s eyes, legitimated his claim that his three Wesley portraits were as lifelike as if Wesley had sat to him in person. Such a claim pits their statuesque appearance against the difficulty contemporary artists seem to have had in catching a likeness of Wesley. Salisbury’s instinct for publicity ensured that the image would be well circulated; he linked it to British Methodist Union (1932) but although it is labeled as ‘. . . presented to H.M. King George V and Queen Mary’, there seems no evidence of that.30 Presenting the later version to the World Methodist Council helped to bring this image to a growing global Methodism.The pose is redolent of a poster of a cinematic hero but its traditional approach in the age of colour printing and (later) mass-media appealed to a church whose membership tended to be suspicious of the left-wing leanings of many artists of the time, and with that, their art. There is no known Wesley image by another traditionalist Wesleyan portraitist, Arthur T. Nowell, although a Canadian artist, J.W.L. Forster, around 1900, made a full-length posthumous preaching pose. It was the popular mass circulation of the three portraits above – Ward from Romney, Jackson’s (engraved by Thomson in Britain and Longacre in the U.S.A.) and Salisbury’s (initially by Raeburn), together with prints of scene paintings, which provided formative images of Wesley as the Methodist movement spread worldwide. But it is necessary now to backtrack two centuries to the earliest print images.

***

Prints and posthumous portraits 47

John Wesley started his outdoors traveling preaching ministry, and formed his first ‘Methodist’ religious society in 1739, attracting general attention and criticism from the outset. As a public figure, visual representations were not long in appearing. The first known, somewhat primitive, print of Wesley was dated 1741.31 It would be tempting to link this with an engraving apparently taken and published by one of his early lay preachers, John Downes (1722–74), on whose death Wesley wrote: Thirty years ago, while I was shaving, he was whittling the top of a stick, I asked, ‘What are you doing?’ He answered, ‘I am taking your face, which I intend to engrave on a copper plate.’ Accordingly, without any instruction, he first made himself tools and then engraved the plate.32 While Wesley’s sidelong, upward look in this print is redolent of a male shaving, there is a discrepancy of dates which makes this link seem untenable. The first known references to Downes in Wesley’s Journal were for July 1743 when, on his second preaching visit to north-east England, he seems to have recruited him as a preacher. Downes then travelled with Wesley over the next few months, making it probable that it was during that period that the whittling incident took place, but two years after the print was dated.33 In the 1740s, prints of the Williams portrait of John Wesley were made by two key London engravers, Johann Faber and George Vertue, which presents a number of complexities. As noted elsewhere, there are three close copies of the Williams painting, none with a substantial provenance, plus a further of head and shoulders in a painted oval, attributed to a ‘John Harley’, who is otherwise unknown. There were also multiple derived and later prints, but only those by Vertue and Faber will be considered here. John Wesley had dealings with leading printmaker, George Vertue (1683– 1756), over plates for his father’s Commentary on Job, and Vertue may have been responsible for its curious frontispiece.34 Wesley’s diary indicates visits to Vertue in April 1741 and two sittings in June which probably resulted in an engraving published 1742, of a bust within a plain oval – typical of Vertue’s work.35 The head seems to bear but a slender physiognomic comparison with other Wesley portraits or prints although some similarities with the Puritan and poet John Milton (1608–74),36 of whom Vertue had issued prints,37 may be construed, which might suggest that either Vertue or Wesley was not averse to linking their identities. The inclusion of a vignette of a burning house with the text ‘Is not this a Brand pluck’d out of the Fire?’ was surely Wesley’s instigation. Johann Faber (junior) was probably the foremost London engraver of the time, and Vertue’s business rival. Vertue noted in 1742, ‘no sooner is a picture painted by any painter of any remarkable person but presently [Faber] has it out in print’.38 As already discussed, a press notice in September 1743 announced the publication of Faber’s print and a showing of Williams’s portrait.39 Clayton suggests that although Faber engraved and printed the portrait, since Williams

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was evidently responsible for marketing and distribution, he was the moving force rather than the printer.40 Fewer of Faber’s prints of Wesley seem to survive, perhaps because finely detailed mezzotint copper plates had a short life. The lengthy legal declaration ‘Publish’d according to Act of Parliament. . .’ across the base of Faber’s print implies that he would contest any other printer’s attempt at making and marketing copies: copyright law was in its infancy, and plagiarism among printers was rife. The Engraving Copyright Act (‘Hogarth’s Act’) of 1735 only afforded some limited protection.41 Yet two years later Vertue issued a revised line engraving, again of a plain head and shoulders within an oval, and inscribed ‘J. Williams pinx’. A third version is clearly the result of the plate being scraped and re-engraved. It is a matter of technical curiosity that the first two prints are very evidently from the same plate, although the bust areas show no signs of being re-worked. The greater question is the relationship of the prints to the paintings: Faber’s mezzotint is directly related to Williams’s picture, while Vertue’s second print is all but identical with the canvas now attributed to ‘J. Harley’. Edward Harley, second Earl of Oxford (1689–1741) had been Vertue’s close friend and patron. His death affected Vertue’s work adversely, causing him to abandon his history of British art.42 It is not inconceivable that the Harley attribution is linked to the Earl of Oxford’s family, and may have been a strategy to circumvent Faber’s copyright. An engraving by Tinney though undated, would seem to mimic Vertue’s third print, so may well be another printer’s piracy of Vertue’s versions of Faber’s work.43 If nothing else, the multiplicity of prints indicates a market for images of Wesley at the outset of his evangelistic career. Faber and Vertue were together the main engravers of portraits until midcentury. Around 1770, the introduction of stipple facilitated the production of cheaper prints yet with more subtlety of gradation. This is clearly evident in comparing Bland’s (c.1766) and Carington Bowles’s (1770) engravings of Hone’s portrait. The identity of ‘Bland’ presents a conundrum, for this, and a print from the portrait by John Russell, are among the few known instances of such an engraver.44 As the prints market moved into overdrive, competition became fierce. Bowles had taken over the family print-shop from his uncle Thomas in 1762, and rode the tide of rising demand. He issued mezzotints of the Williams portrait on 26 November 1770, and of the Hone ten days later. However, probably at some previous date he had already issued one (of the Williams engraved by Houston) which is less finished. Richard Houston had arrived in London in 1746 from Dublin, with the leading engraver James Macardell – another Irish connection. To market his wares, Carington Bowles produced and sold prints of his shop front in St Paul’s Churchyard which were both humorous and promotional. All three, ‘Miss Macaroni and her Gallant at a Print-Shop’ (1773), ‘Spectators at a Print-Shop in St. Paul’s Church Yard’ (1774) and ‘A real scene in St. Paul’s Church Yard, on a windy day’ (1784) were engraved by John Raphael Smith and show Carington Bowles’s shop window with prints of evangelical clergy in the upper rows. John Wesley (and George Whitefield – both by Hone) feature

Prints and posthumous portraits

49

in all three.45 Images in the window were arranged by levels which reflected the ranks of society, with scenes from the stage at lower levels, many humourous, some to the point of bawdiness. Evangelicals were not always taken with the seriousness they might hope. In 1778,Wesley launched his Arminian Magazine, with a portrait print of himself as frontispiece to the first issue, by a minor engraver Anthony Bodlidge.46 It is difficult to take this crude engraving seriously, or to imagine that anyone around him thought it close to a recognisable likeness. Three portrait prints were issued in the magazine’s first year, but It was objected, ‘There are no Pictures.’This objection is now removed; but it is not removed to my satisfaction: far, very far from it. I am utterly dissatisfied with the Engravings, for October, November, and December. And I will have better, whatever they cost.47 Evidently the issue rumbled on as in 1780 Wesley had ‘the satisfaction to observe, That the Engravings this year are far better executed than the last. Many of the Likenesses are really striking . . .’48 yet in 1781 ‘Many of the Portraits are not such as I desire. I will have better, or none at all . . .’ .49

Figure 4.2 Anon.: frontispiece (with title page), The Arminian Magazine, January 1778

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Figure 4.3 Anon.: frontispiece, The Arminian Magazine, [?] February 1783

How the portrait print of him issued in the 1783 Magazine might have been considered an improvement on that of 1778, or anywhere near a striking likeness, is hard to conceive.50 The portrait prints did improve, significantly, but largely after Wesley’s death, suggesting that his editorial hand was strong in this area, but (as will be explored later) his aesthetic judgment was poor.51 There was a great gulf of quality and price between the work of the top London engravers and prints issued with the Magazine or run off by jobbing printers in provincial towns. But as the market grew and developed the gap lessened, so an engraver like Ridley (who engraved the body of Wesley ‘as he lay previous to interment’) injected quality to the Magazine in the early nineteenth century.

Prints and posthumous portraits 51

In parallel Thomas Bewick’s renowned nature engravings brought new life to the all but obsolescent woodblock.52 Bewick owned a printing plate of a profile head-and-shoulders engraving of Wesley, generally attributed to Nasmyth, which was among a number of varied side views in that or half-length which date from the final years of his life (although mostly published after his death). These remained popular through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, both as published images and even appearing as a stereoscopic print in the 1870s. They also formed a succinct ‘trademark’ for church letterheads or national bodies and reached a sad apogee as the grim-faced logo for the 1988 ‘John Wesley 250th’, marking a quarter-millennium from his Aldersgate religious experience. One such image, painted on glass, claims to have been taken of Wesley aged 86 ‘as he usually preached in John Street Chapel, Spitalfields, London, where the first Wesleyan conference was held by him’.53 But the St John St chapel was not Methodist: Wesley had a former Huguenot church in Grey Eagle St from 1750. He probably preached in John Street in 1769, perhaps subsequently: it may too have been ‘the old Wilderness Row chapel, occupied by the Wesleyans till 1849 when they removed . . . to St John Square’.54 Moreover the identities of Mr Bestow and Phoebe Francis are not obvious – in a movement noted for its, sometimes almost obsessive, documentation. Even what seems a clear identification is often fraught with issues. A similar print by Thomas Holloway was one of several which appeared posthumously. A pastellist and engraver, Holloway’s family was linked to evangelicals and his brother ‘was a close friend of [Thomas] Coke in the last few years of his life’.55 John Russell may have been an artistic influence. But more significantly, Holloway’s ‘largest project . . . was [illustrating] the English edition of J.C. Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy’, for which he produced some 300 of around 800 plates. He would thus have been more than familiar with both theory and artistic practice of profile heads. The relationship between painter, engraver and printer was a dynamic one which inevitably varied with the personalities involved and changed over the course of time, some of the major evolution being during the span of Wesley’s public ministry. A critical aspect was whether engravers were considered as artists: while they were included in the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce in 1754, and then the Society of Artists of Great Britain from 1761, they were excluded from the Royal Academy in 1769 – Holloway, for instance, exhibited at both the latter. The Academy, less democratic than its predecessors and dependent on monarchical patronage, came into being at the height of the ‘Wilkes and liberty’ agitation. The tussle between the Society of Artists and the new Academy was thus also polarised as engravers fought their corner and were anxious to demonstrate their worth – both artistically and commercially. A surge in the publication and promotion of engravings around this time may be part of the print trade’s defence of its importance. Prints of portraits from the life by Hunter and Russell (to judge by survivals) seem not to have achieved a wide circulation, although those by Harding and

52  Prints and posthumous portraits

Figure 4.4 J. Holloway: John Wesley (line and stipple engr. J. Holloway, 1791)

Hamilton probably had a reasonable market – Harding’s was the product of a vigorous commercial enterprise, while Hamilton’s was associated with Wesley’s London ‘Society’ so could have appealed to the faithful. Spilsbury’s single mezzotint of Romney’s picture came too late in Wesley’s life to make a considerable impact in his time. And it was the print, not the painted portrait, which the vast majority of people saw and which formed the image in their minds. Prints were framed to hang on the walls of homes, or pasted into ‘grangerised’ albums.56

Prints and posthumous portraits 53

Most of all, they were affordable to a range of pockets, particularly the ‘middling sorts’ who not only formed a significant part of the print-buying public, but were the backbone of the emerging Wesleyan connexion. For local lay leadership in the Methodist movement, a print of Wesley hanging in the home, or a ceramic representation, was a token of allegiance. An agricultural worker who was a preacher might buy a penny print in the local town when he went to market; a society steward who had his own shop might afford a stipple print in a home-made frame. A mezzotint in a professionally made frame was for the better off. For Methodists, the monthly Arminian/ Methodist Magazine included a print with every issue, bringing an image of (usually) more eminent preachers into the home, to be displayed or kept. An example of the central place which Wesley occupied in the Methodist mind is a montage of over 350 prints of his associates and preachers, carefully cut from the Magazine; mounted and framed. All look inwards, towards Wesley as the centre of their world.57 In time, as will be seen next, the coming of scene paintings brought larger moralising pictures, steel engravings of which were hung in Victorian parlours and Methodist chapels.

Notes 1 Timothy Clayton, The English Print 1688–1802 (New Haven and London:Yale University Press [for Y.C.B.A.], 1997), p. 209. 2 Vic Gattrell, City of Laughter, Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London (London: Atlantic, 2006), p. 9. 3 Ibid., pp. 530–7, 575. 4 John Wesley – Mrs Tighe, 7 February 1789. 5 See p. 69. 6 Mrs Mary Clarke to Miss Cottle, 11 August 1789, in Mrs. Adam Clarke, Her Character and Correspondence (London: Partridge & Oakey, 1851), p. 244. 7 Clayton, The English Print, p. 223. 8 Sarah Hyde, ‘Ward, William (1766–1826)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/ view/article/28711, accessed 16 March 2016. ‘[Thomas] Gosse, a vegetarian, teetoaller, and frequenter of Methodist services (with James Ward). . .’ . Ellen G. D’Oench, “Copper into Gold”, Prints by John Raphael Smith 1751–1812 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press [for Y.C.B.A. & R.A.], 1999), p. 92. 9 Magazine, 1825, p. 704. 10 Hugh Honour, ‘John Jackson, R.A.’, in H. G. Fell, (ed.), The Connoisseur Year Book. (London: The Connoisseur, 1957). 11 Ibid., pp. 91–5. 12 The British Gallery of Contemporary Portraits, being a Series of Engravings of The Most Eminent Persons Now Living or Lately Deceased, in Great Britain and Ireland (London: T. Cadell, 1809–22). 13 Minutes of the Wesleyan Book Room Committee, 14 June 1827, in MARC [MAW MS 642]. 14 See J.B.B. Clarke, An account of the infancy, religious and literary life of Adam Clarke (London: T. S. Clarke, 1833), vol. iii, p. 252. 15 Richard P Heitzenrater, The Elusive Mr Wesley (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984), vol. ii, p. 180. 16 Magazine, 1828, p. 700. Joseph Wright, ‘Notes on Some Portraits of John Wesley’ in PWHS, iii (1902), p. 102.

54  Prints and posthumous portraits 17 Rev. John W. Fletcher [Jean de la Fléchère] (1729–85), vicar of Madeley, Shropshire 1760–85. See Peter S. Forsaith, ‘Portraits of John Fletcher of Madeley and their Artists’, in PWHS, xlvii/5 (1990), pp. 187–201. 18 Richard P. Heitzenrater, An Exact Likeness (Nashville: Abingdon, 2016), p. 74. 19 W. G. Beardmore, ‘Portraits of our Founder’, in Magazine, 1898, p. 344. 20 Ibid. 21 ‘Published by Tomkinson & Dean, July 10th 1838’. See DMBI for non-Wesleyan Methodist groups. 22 (ed.) W. S. Lewis, The Letters of Horace Walpole. (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1973), vol. XXXV, p. 119. 23 Beardmore,‘Portraits of our Founder’, p. 344.There is considerable literature on this subject, such as Tim Hitchcock and Michele Cohen (eds.), English Masculinities 1660–1800 (London: Longman, 1999); George L. Mosse, The Image of Man (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 24 Anna Onstott, Biographical Portraiture of John Wesley (in microscopic script) by Glück Rosenthal, (1850) (Typescript, 1933), p. 5. 25 Clayton, The English Print, 284. 26 Nigel McMurray, Frank O. Salisbury “Painter Laureate” (2003, 1st Books), p. 12. 27 Now at Wesley’s Chapel, City Road, London. 28 Frank O. Salisbury, Portrait and Pageant (London: John Murray, 1944), pp. 98–100; McMurray, Frank O. Salisbury, p. 237. 29 Wendy Hitchmough, C. F. A.Voysey (London: Phaidon, 1995), p. 53. 30 The amalgamation of the main British Methodist denominations. 31 Inscribed ‘Publish’d according to act of Parliament Oct. 7 1741’. 32 Journal 4 November 1744. 33 Journal 18 July 1743. Downes was with Wesley in Cornwall in autumn 1743 [Journal, 16 April 1744]. He was born at Horsley, some 10 miles west of Newcastle upon Tyne, near the 1753 birthplace of the noted engraver Thomas Bewick. 34 Samuel Wesley – John Wesley, 27 August 1734 ‘I’ve likewise just had a letter from Mr. Vertue, that he’s going on with Job’s Phiz, and that ‘twill be ready by the time the work is fit for it’. [WJW, vol. 25 (Letters I), p. 394]. Vertue was engraver to the University of Oxford Press. 35 Diary [Saturday] 11 April; [Wednesday] 3 June (’9 At Mr.Vertue’s 12 At home. . .); [Friday] 5 June (8.45 At Mr. Vertue’s 11 At Mrs MacCune. . .). Print inscr. ‘G. Vertue del & sculp. 1742’. 36 Milton’s religious poetry was a foremost influence on eighteenth-century English religious verse, including the Wesleys’ hymns. Milton was also a republican and radical, opposed to an established church, who suffered after the 1660 Restoration. 37 Example at NPG, London (1720) [NPG D23543]. See also drawing (pen, black and brown wash on paper mounted on canvas) c.1725 in The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA [60.6A]. 38 Sheila O’Connell, ‘Faber, John (c.1695–1756)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/ view/article/9053, accessed 16 March 2016 39 See p. 25. 40 Clayton, The English Print, p. 60. 41 Ibid., pp. 85–7. 42 Martin Myrone, ‘Vertue, George (1684–1756)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2008 www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/28252, accessed 5 July 2016 43 Clayton, The English Print, p. 114. 44 ‘Bland’, in Benezit Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs, et Graveurs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

Prints and posthumous portraits 55 45 ‘The Reverend Mr. George Whitefield, A.M.,/Chaplain to the Countess of Huntingdon/ N[athaniel] Hone pinx., J[ohn] Greenwood delin.’. Mezzotint published by Carington Bowles, 1 July 1769. 46 National Archives holds a will for ‘Anthony Bodlidge, Engraver of Saint Mary Aldermary, City of London, 5 October 1782’ [PROB 11/1095/384]. 47 Magazine 1779, p. vi. 48 Ibid., 1780, p. iv. 49 Ibid., 1781, p. vi. 50 John Lenton, John Wesley’s Preachers (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009), p. 149. 51 See Richard P. Heitzenrater, The Elusive Mr.Wesley (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984), pp. i, 14, 25, 197. 52 See Jenny Uglow, Nature’s Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick (London: Faber & Faber, 2007). A surviving printing plate of Wesley in profile is inscribed ‘from the collection of the late Thomas Bewick’ [WHS Library, Oxford]. 53 WHS Collection [WHS/1], Oxford Brookes University. 54 Edward H. Sugden, John Wesley’s London (London: Epworth, 1932), p. 133. See also J. Henry Martin, John Wesley’s London Chapels (London: Epworth, 1946). 55 PWHS xxxviii (1972), pp. 189–90. Not father: John Holloway was a lecturer in animal magnetism’. Also Peter Tomory, ‘Holloway, Thomas (1748–1827)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes. idm.oclc.org/view/article/13576, accessed 16 March 2016. 56 Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 53ff. 57 See frontispiece (Westminster College collection, Oxford Brookes University).

5 Scene paintings

It can hardly be doubted that John Wesley’s capacity for succinct and graphic descriptive writing, chiefly in his Journal, readily generated images and scenarios in the minds of his readers. Some of these lent themselves particularly to imagined scenes on canvas and in print, especially those which conveyed aspects of symbolic narrative and meaning. Jonathan Spilsbury had engraved Romney’s portrait: his daughter Maria was an artist and under Mrs Tighe’s patronage. In 1815 she painted ‘John Wesley Preaching in Ireland’ showing Wesley preaching at Rosanna, Mrs Tighe’s home, in 1789 although setting it out of doors (he had preached in the hall) and peopling it with her family members and local Methodists. In giving Wesley Romney’s face she paid tribute to both Mrs Tighe and her own father. 1815 was also the year Romney’s portrait of Wesley passed out of Mrs Tighe’s ownership.1 Many ‘scene paintings’ of Wesley appeared around the middle years of the nineteenth century. Whereas this first example uses a smaller canvas and was intended for a domestic space, later ones painted from 1840 tended to be larger, and may be seen as within a genre of moralising pictures intended for public display. The Great Reform Bill of 1832 extended the franchise and gave Parliamentary representation to new industrial urban areas chiefly in the midlands and northern England. It was followed by other Acts to establish municipal authorities in those areas. However, widening the vote brought with it an impetus for improved education: as well as schools there was seen to be a need for public libraries, museums and galleries. So in the 1830s–50s, further legislation allowed public funds to be spent on art galleries, with extensive wall spaces which called for large, ‘improving’ paintings. As well as the political background, there were two further main influences on the emergence of the genre: religion and society, in the shape of the ‘Oxford movement’, and the coming of the Victorian era. Despite the dominance of portraiture, ‘history painting’, often of biblical or classical scenes, was the most elevated genre in the ‘English School’ of painting. While it was already shaped by the Romantics, the High Church, Catholicising movement of the 1830s and 1840s had a huge public impact on the religious consciousness of Britain. With its emphasis on ritual, it encouraged a strongly visual environment for

Scene paintings 57

church worship, a contrast to the often dreary monotony of industrial factories and high-density housing which shaped the lives of many parishes, and also the austere plainness of much nonconformity. The most immediate evidence was in architecture and art. Its foremost genius was undoubtedly A.W.N. Pugin (1812–52), the apostle of the ‘Gothic’ style which became regarded as the true Christian architecture, unlike the classical from pagan Greece or Rome. ‘Gothic’ churches were constructed across the country, and round the world, and the style was embraced by Methodism and nonconformity after F. J. Jobson’s influential 1850 Chapel and School Architecture.With Jobson the Methodist and artist James Smetham (1821–89) painted a derived likeness of Wesley.2 Smetham was an associate of the ‘pre-Raphaelite’ movement which also cast back to recover medieval themes and styles. Its progenitors, who formed the ‘pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’ from the late 1840s sought to move away from sentimentality in art and looked much more to Christian subjects for inspiration. Their work was characterised by paintings such as Rosetti’s ‘Girlhood of Mary Virgin’, Millais’ ‘Christ in the House of His Parents (“The Carpenter’s Shop”)’ and, supremely, Holman Hunt’s ‘Light of the World’.3 From her accession in 1837, the young Queen Victoria (1819–1901) seems to have been intent upon altering the mood of the monarchy from her immediate predecessors, striking a more strait-laced note. This was cemented by her 1840 marriage to her German first cousin, Albert (1819–61): they used both painting and the newly invented photograph to promote a visual public image of themselves and their family. Without a clear public or political role, Prince Albert busied himself encouraging social reform and promoting industry. The most notable result was the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, which became Albert’s project; a massive showcase for British industry and a milestone for the nation’s imperial status. It generated huge impetus in design and also the principles of public display. In many ways this was the creative zenith of the Victorian age. Further, it depended on the new technologies in order to happen at all. The iconic structure designed to house it, the ‘Crystal Palace’, needed the reliable manufacture, transport and assembly of considerable quantities of iron components and panes of glass. Before the coming of canals and, more relevant, the railways, paintings (like everything else) were transported from the studio to their destinations by horse and cart. However well packed, pictures could arrive damaged, which then became a source of dispute between client and artist. Moreover, although roads were much improved later in the eighteenth century, a larger painting was still more challenging to pack and carry. The transport revolution also meant that people could travel to visit destinations such as the new galleries. Special trains brought crowds to London for the Great Exhibition. The year 1851 also brought a national British religious census, as a mechanical age sought to compute the statistics of belief and unbelief. There was a new religious climate: works with a strong religious or moral message, such as the

58  Scene paintings

apocalyptic paintings of John Martin (1789–1854), had been becoming popular since the 1820s. And as the establishment of municipal museums and galleries led to the formation or consolidation of collections, religious themes – including depictions of past religious leaders – formed a suitable subject. If this constructed a generalised background, the first notable scene-painting of Wesley arose ostensibly from a straightforwardly Methodist cause, to mark the 1839 ‘Wesleyan centenary’, one hundred years after Wesley formed his first ‘society’ and started open air preaching.4 Henry Perlee Parker’s picture ‘Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?’ was presented to the Wesleyan conference meeting in Newcastle upon Tyne the following year. It toured the country, and was seen by many before being hung in the new Wesleyan headquarters in London,‘Centenary Hall’. It has remained in a focal position in Methodism’s London offices ever since.5 If its origins were purely Methodistical, and the whole composition initially drafted by a prominent Wesleyan minister, James Everett, it should be seen in a wider context. Originally from Devon, Parker became a leading light in the Newcastle art world, and co-founder of the Northern Academy in 1828, of which John Martin was a member. He exhibited regularly in the R.A. in London, often local Tyneside marine scenes, and in consequence was sometimes known as ‘smuggler’ Parker. Parker’s chief fame rests on his 1838 picture (with the marine artist John Carmichael), ‘William and Grace Darling going to the rescue of the Forfarshire survivors’. Grace Darling’s rescue, with her father, of the crew of the ship, became the stuff of Victorian legend and was formative for the lifeboat movement. This picture had toured the country and made a lasting impact on an island people whose coastline was lengthy and often dangerous. His Wesleyan Centenary picture of the following year was ‘. . . a fine companion picture to your ‘GRACE DARLING’ – two noble rescues, one from fire and the other from water’,6 similar in capturing an heroic incident and individuals, and in its mode of gaining the public eye and forming an influential image. But to treat the Wesleyan Centenary picture at its immediate visual level as simply an imaginative depiction of a dramatic incident fails to recognise its full scope. James Everett, whom Parker acknowledged was responsible for suggesting the subject and making the ‘oils sketch’ of the compositional scheme, was critical of the ruling hegemony within the Wesleyans.7 Ten years later Everett and others were expelled from the Connexion, taking with them about onethird of the national membership. But already by 1839 discontent was brewing. At this time Everett also possessed a collection of nearly fifty pictures, mainly of Dutch ‘old masters’ including (apparently original) works by artists such as Brueghel, Ruysdael and the elder Teniers, a couple attributed to Rubens, some Italian (Carracci, Tintoretto) and one by Poussin. Whether his ‘oils sketch’ was modelled on any of these is a tantalising prospect, though a Flemish influence in the composition and its chiaroscuro might be inferred.8 He was clear about the picture’s purpose: To me it is a matter of regret, that, though Methodism has now run the round of a hundred years, there has not been a single work of art of any

Scene paintings 59

importance – beyond mere portraits and the ‘Conference Print,’9 neither of which, strictly speaking, are historical – presented to the public . . . (of) the life of the great founder of Wesleyan Methodism’.10 As a boy Everett had been taken to see Wesley, but believed that the fundamental evangelical principles of the movement were now being threatened by an overbearing autocracy.The picture sought to remind members of the church of its origins around John Wesley, his ministry and his providential story. He saw the Epworth fire as the ‘simple point, as upon a pivot, that the whole history of Wesleyan Methodism turns’.11 As Amy Green has explored, the picturing of the dramatic moment when the infant Wesley was snatched from the inferno, moments before the house collapsed, alluded to the conversionist imperative which was being overlaid as Wesleyanism became an institutionalised, respectable, legalised body.12 But it might also apply to Everett’s and his associates’ crusade to rescue a foundational core of Methodism from the threat of destruction by a Connexional cabal: Parker painted Everett into the picture at the heart of the rescue ‘below the window, with outstretched arms, ready to receive the child’.13 The picture can further be seen as a critique of the Connexion in illustrating other issues within Wesleyanism. In particular the gender divide is clear: men are at the heart of the action and in the light, while the women, in the shadow, ‘neither engage in outward acts of faith, nor organize themselves into any activity’. Meanwhile between them Samuel Wesley kneels in pious prayer. ‘Parker’s compositional split becomes a visual code for the tension between spiritual submissiveness and spiritual autonomy’.14 Epworth parish church, positioned (inaccurately) above the sight line in the middle background, might also symbolise the receding place of the Church of England in relation to Methodism, as nonconformity gained greater legal status in Britain.15 All in all, for those who cared to see, the composition had levels of interpretation.The picture was soon engraved and prints gained a wide circulation in both Britain, the U.S.A. and, as Methodism spread, around the world. If it represented a genesis through fire, the depiction of the apotheosis of the ‘Founder of Methodism’ came two years later. Marshall Claxton’s ‘The Death of John Wesley’ (also known as ‘Holy Triumph’) was exhibited at the R.A. in 1842 and serves as a complementary thematic riposte to Parker’s picture. Possibly painted in commemoration of the 1841 fiftieth anniversary of Wesley’s death, as with ‘Is not this a brand. . .?’, it was a dramatised symbolic scene which bore little relationship to the reality of the event a half-century earlier. The most immediate issue is that those gathered around the bed were not actually those present at Wesley’s passing, rather Claxton painted individuals who had visited within two days or so of the death. And in order to group them, Claxton had to paint them into a much larger (and grander) chamber than Wesley’s small bedroom in his house in City Road, London: what is created is, in effect, a stage set. Like Parker, Claxton also suggested a gender divide between male activity and female passivity and, conversely, a hint of Dutch interior art traditions.

60  Scene paintings

It is the central figure of Wesley which immediately engages the viewer’s attention, largely by the colour differentiation of cream drapery against a more sombre palette. Like Parker, considerable play is made of the light; although where Parker used fire and moonlight, Claxton relied on an ethereal illumination from an unidentified overhead source. A portrait of Wesley in preaching pose (reversed) hangs from the wall to remind the viewer, if such were needed, of the personality whose death is depicted. As the son of a Wesleyan minister, Claxton was playing to a home audience. Claxton’s (eponymous) father, a Wesleyan minister, seems unlikely to have had sufficient resources to provide his son with the kind of launch in the art world which a successful painter needed. However, Claxton entered the R.A. Schools in 1831, apparently a protégé of John Jackson from whom he may have had prior tuition, since his father had been stationed in a London circuit since 1829. Claxton exhibited at the R.A. and was awarded medals, a promising start, followed by five years in Italy (1837–42).16 On his return he submitted entries for frescoes for the new Houses of Parliament, but was not selected and his career stalled. In 1850 he migrated to Australia, but was unsuccessful in either selling numbers of pictures or establishing an art school in Sydney, so in 1854 he left, spending two, more productive, years in India en route back to Britain. He did, however, secure the patronage of the art collector and immensely wealthy banking heiress, Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts (whose intermediary was her friend Charles Dickens). Nevertheless, Claxton’s career could hardly be considered a success. Given the considerable impact his Wesley scene paintings made on Methodism, they possibly represent the best of his work. The Wesleys’ initial visits to Cornwall provoked violent opposition, but Cornwall became one of the strongholds of Methodism and John regularly spent two weeks there in late summer. Cornwall was developing as a world centre for mineral production, with improved travel and transport. In the 1851 religious census, this was the only county in which Methodism was numerically the majority religious affiliation, much of it centred around the mining areas of the far west. Wesley first preached at Gwennap, near Redruth, in 1743, but it was not until September 1762, when he had to shelter from high winds, that he used some sunken mine workings, the ‘pit’.Thereafter this was a regular preaching place, in which he computed – realistically or otherwise – up to 32,000 hearers could gather, and all hear.17 Early in the nineteenth century, the pit was remodelled as a formally tiered arena, and survives today. One of the engravers of ‘Holy Triumph’ was William Overend Geller, who was based in northern England and responsible for numbers of other prints. He also practised in London and exhibited at the British Institution 1834–46.18 Although few paintings by him are known, in 1845 he exhibited a large canvas ‘John Wesley preaching to Twenty-five Thousand persons in the Gwennap Pit in its original state’.19 Whether Geller ever visited Cornwall is unknown, indeed the landscape setting might owe more to northern moors than to Cornwall. Wherever it might have been painted, this large canvas was exhibited near Gwennap, in the heart

Scene paintings 61

of the Cornish mining districts, and in Truro.The work seems not to have been known since, but the artist’s prints – presumably the pecuniary motive behind the work – became widely circulated and presented a popular, albeit highly mythical, image of Wesley as preacher. Geller had engraved one of John Martin’s apocalyptic paintings, of the Old Testament scene ‘Joshua commanding the sun to stand still over Gibeon’.20 The composition of this work clearly forms the substance for his depiction of Wesley’s Cornish preaching: it bears minimal resemblance to the actual Gwennap Pit. In associating Wesley dramatically with an Old Testament patriarch, performing a miracle in overriding nature to enable the Israelite army to slaughter its foes, Geller took the mythologised imagery much further than either Parker’s genesis or Claxton’s apotheosis pictures. Parker’s painting of the Epworth Rectory fire, Claxton’s deathbed scene and Geller’s of Gwennap Pit cast John Wesley as an heroic figure. In all three pictures, any sense of any likeness to the man himself (beyond Claxton’s face) is hardly relevant. Possible reasons for adjustment in the image of Wesley may be linked to several factors. First, the generation of those who had known John Wesley, and retained some kind of image in their mind, had almost passed.21 Living memory was giving place to inherited tradition, a tradition in which Wesley was more of a figurehead than a continuing authority. This, second, must be linked to the growth and development of Methodism in general (nationally and beyond) and the Wesleyan connexion in particular. Following Wesley’s death the movement soon ceased to have much pretext of remaining within the national church; by 1840 it was firmly a nonconformist denomination. Much of what its founding father had stood for was now out of key with its aims and aspirations – and, moreover, the eighteenth-century world which Wesley had inhabited had passed. Third, the Oxford movement, which by 1840 was gathering strength (and opposition), placed an emphasis upon the saints of the church, enshrined in its liturgy and architecture. It may therefore be unsurprising that Wesley too began to assume a canonised role in which certain events, such as birth and death, came to have a misty unreality. To some extent Wesley himself had been the progenitor of this: his sense of his providential place as ‘a brand from the burning’ was instilled into his connexion’s consciousness and had been an element of the visual imagery as early as the 1740s. Marshall Claxton made three further scene paintings of Wesley:‘John ­Wesley . . . preaches from his father’s grave’ (1850), ‘John Wesley and his Friends at Oxford’ (1858) and ‘The mobbing of John Wesley at Wednesbury’ (1865): the last two were engraved. The Wednesbury scene, dramatic in its movement and its use of light and shade, models Wesley in a composition redolent of depictions of saints and martyrs – as does a later composition, by Wilson Hepple, of ‘Wesley preaching at the Sandhill, Newcastle upon Tyne’ (1883), which had local popularity in north-east England. Claxton’s Oxford picture, though not so dramatically composed as the deathbed scene, is equally a synthesised work, using costume and furniture more

62  Scene paintings

typical of mid-nineteenth than early eighteenth century. Its Oxonian theme might well suggest a Wesleyan rejoinder to the ‘Oxford movement’, a reminder that a century before Keble’s ‘assize sermon’, John Wesley too had caused a stir by his preaching in St Mary’s University Church and that in its emphasis on personal piety, good works and an aspiration to reform the nation, Methodism might prefigure the Tractarians. A more homespun incident which was taken by several artists and engravers was an occasion in June 1742 when Wesley was refused the use of the pulpit at St Andrew’s, Epworth (where his father had been Rector from 1696 to 1735), and in consequence preached outside the church, from his father’s tombstone in the churchyard. As his father’s heirs’ property, the tomb was beyond the jurisdiction of the incumbent. While at an immediate level this is simply a straightforward scene of Wesley preaching, with the family inference, on reflection it conveys two powerful and more far-reaching strands. One concerns the nature of Wesley’s relationship with his family, the other with the church. In preaching atop his father’s tomb, was Wesley taking his stand on his father’s foundation? Or was he trampling underfoot the tradition in which his parents had raised him? His parents had been High Church converts from Dissent, he himself remained a High Church Tory. And yet circumstances were separating him from the established church: a century later the denomination which bore his name was clear about its parentage, but stood firmly on its independence. Positioned within the churchyard, with his back to St Andrew’s parish church, does this depicted incident symbolise that Wesley was within the Church of England, its discipline and traditions, or by his actions exercising defiance? In the imagery of this scene – which several artists took as their subject – the ambiguity of this relationship seems to be expressed. At this point, distinctions between painted works and the resultant prints start to blur, since this was a scene which several engravers chose to depict. The first such print would seem to date from the 1820s, and without a painted antecedent; there are several others with similar compositional originality. According to the inscription on one print the canvas was painted by Alfred Hunt, yet this seems not to be the well-known landscape painter. Wesley preaching at Epworth was also the scene used by John Adams-Acton for his 1872 relief monument to the Wesley brothers in Westminster Abbey, albeit with the figures in a pre-Raphaelite style, of which a version appeared as a coloured lithograph. The ambiguity of the Wesleys’ relationship with the national church here took on a heightened significance, situated as the memorial is where English monarchs have been crowned and buried. Additionally it included as an inscription Wesley’s defiant riposte to censure for extra-­canonical preaching: ‘I look upon all the world as my parish’.22 While this scene was probably no more influential than others of Wesley, as a popularly circulated print, its variety of imagined depiction marks it apart. From Brownlow’s detailed (though over-neat) realism to Adams-Acton’s idealisation, the tableau, with its various symbolic overtones, seems to have appealed widely. As well as the Abbey memorial it featured in church stained glass windows and

Scene paintings 63

at least one mural.23 Unlike some scene paintings, this perhaps narrated a more accessible Wesley, one whom his hearers might see, hear, or even touch, on an ordinary Sunday in an English churchyard. The ebbs and flows of the mainstream art world – Pre-Raphaelites, impressionists, cubism, abstraction – passed images of Wesley by. Methodism’s ­counter-cultural reputation was enshrined in pictures of its founder. Nearly all are tediously representational and seem to have shifted thematically from the central narrative of Wesley biography to more local interest. Around 1860 local artist Thomas Walley painted John Wesley preaching in Bolton in 1749: as he did of George Whitefield’s preaching there in 1750 (also 1860).24 Around 1889 Edward Goldwyn Lewes imagined (there is no reference in Whitefield’s or Wesley’s writings) a nocturnal scene in Oxford with Wesley meeting Whitefield for the first time – this picture was marketed as a print and circulated fairly widely. Neither artist seems more widely known. Wesley’s relationships with women, and especially his familiarity with younger women as an older man, is a subject with which late twentieth-century historians have engaged, but which two Victorian artists represented.25 In 1877 John Faed painted a woodland scene ‘John Wesley and the Maid’ which carries a suggestive degree of intimacy. Perhaps unusually for Faed, who with his brothers was a popular Scottish artist, this does not seem to be based on solid evidence of such an encounter, nor does the likeness of Wesley link to the portraiture. Further: detail of Wesley’s clothing does not tally with clerical garb. Its relationship to the iconography and biography must be questionable. Again local to the artist’s home, Todmorden, Yorkshire, Alfred Bayes painted a scene of Wesley arm in arm with a young lady, named as Sally Lacy, piously making their way to church across the moors above the town. And again, neither the event nor the woman can be identified – there may have been a local or family connection with the artist. The corollary to this relates to how the Wesley image underwent subtle adjustments (and not only in scene paintings) depicting his masculinity. Things have changed little since Jeremy Gregory wrote in 1998 that ‘the concepts of “Christian manliness” and “muscular Christianity” for the period after 1850, have not been mirrored by scholars working on the period before that date’.26 So in scene paintings from the mid-nineteenth century on, Wesley tended to be shown as a man’s man. Another potential of the Wesley image was capitalized on by the Bovril company. From opening production in Britain around 1884, ‘Bovril’ beef extract was marketed vigorously, imaginatively and successfully. The company endeavoured to link the product to various specific markets such as women, invalids, sports and, in times of war, military action. One advertisement around 1890 depicted Pope Leo XIII with a mug of hot Bovril and the slogan ‘The Two Infallible Powers, the Pope and Bovril’ – a play on the Pope promoting a tonic wine.27 A well-known illustrator, William Hatherell, painted Wesley preaching at a market cross (the location is non-specific), which was available as a print to be obtained by collecting Bovril tokens. The print seems to have been issued

64  Scene paintings

when the picture was painted (1909), and again twenty years later after the artist’s death (by which time it had been presented to John Wesley’s Chapel, London). The image had a wide impact as Bovril was marketed around the world; the painting itself is slightly unusual as being monochrome, in a thick impasto: Hatherell was in touch with modern trends.28 The horror of the ‘Great War to end wars’ closed a chapter in the artistic and cultural traditions of all Europe, although there was change in the air before 1914. Roger Fry’s exhibitions of post-impressionist work in 1910 and 1912 heralded the onset of ‘modern’ art; in the world of abstraction most typified by artists such as Picasso, history or scene painting, with its moralising agenda, had little place. Nonetheless, in 1917 Hatherell showed another picture at the R.A., of Wesley’s confrontation with Richard (‘Beau’) Nash, the Bath ‘master of ceremonies’, in the summer of 1739, at the very outset of Wesley’s ‘field’ preaching. By his own account, Wesley outgunned Nash in the verbal clash – a sentiment conveyed by the picture.29 Wesley had commenced his outdoor preaching nearby, in Bristol: fifty years on he had become more accepted and in 1788 preached before the Mayor and Corporation.30 Evidently he preached against slavery, controversially since the port of Bristol had been one apex of the notorious ‘triangular trade’ and had profited greatly from it. One of the ‘Newlyn School’, which encouraged ‘plein air’ painting of scenes of life in west Cornwall,W.H.Y.Titcomb was the son of an Anglican colonial bishop. He painted religious scenes (some ‘Newlyners’ avoided this) which inevitably included Methodists who were part of the warp and woof of Cornish life. Later he settled in Bristol where he painted a large canvas of the 1788 scene: across a diagonal axis Wesley points an admonitory forefinger while the Lord Mayor and his black page look startled at what they are hearing: one of concern, the other of hope.Wesley’s animation is balanced by the statuesque cleric below. Much of the composition comprises the architectural setting of the ancient chapel founded c.1220.Titcomb also made watercolour sketches of Wesley preaching in a Bristol street: if there was ever a worked-up canvas, it is now unknown.31 Prints from Wesley scenes continued to hang on the walls of Methodist chapels, vestries and schoolrooms: they were hardly suitable decoration for 1930s ‘metroland’ homes. Nevertheless, they had left their impress in visually forming a foundational narrative of Methodism, a creation myth which shaped elements such as Methodist Union of 1932 or a John Wesley film sponsored by the wealthy Methodist cinema magnate, J. Arthur (later Lord) Rank.

Notes 1 Charlotte Yeldham, ‘A regency artist in Ireland: Maria Spilsbury Taylor (1776–1820)’, in Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, viii (2005), pp. 187–219; also Ruth Young, Father and Daughter (London: Epworth, 1952). 2 Rev. Dr Frederick Jobson was a prominent Wesleyan minister, originally apprenticed to the Gothic architect Edward Willson. Became connexional ‘book steward’ [publications manager] in 1864 and President of the Wesleyan conference 1869 (DMBI), also A.7.

Scene paintings 65 3 Tate Gallery N04872; Tate Gallery N03584; Keble College, Oxford & St Paul’s Cathedral, London. 4 See below p. 47. 5 Initially at ‘Centenary Hall’, Bishopsgate, then at the ‘Mission House’, 25 Marylebone Road. 6 James Everett, H.P. Parker’s Historical Wesleyan Centenary Picture . . . (Seventh edition) (London, 1862), p. 3. 7 W. B. Lowther, ‘Everett, James (1784–1872)’, Rev. Tim Macquiban, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/9004, accessed 16 March 2016 8 James Everett – Geo. Wood [insurance broker], December 1839 (private collection). 9 A published print of the 1839 centenary meeting at Oldham Street Chapel, Manchester. 10 Everett, H.P. Parker’s Centenary Picture, p. 2. 11 Ibid., p. 3. 12 Amy S. Green, ‘The Rescue of John Wesley: the Birth of Methodism and the Struggle for Temporal Perfection’, in Yale University Art Bulletin, (Spring 1989), pp. 55–62. 13 Richard Chew, James Everett: a biography (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1874), p. 312. 14 Green, The Rescue of John Wesley, p. 59. 15 The Test and Corporation Acts, requiring holders of public offices to be communicants of the Church of England, were repealed in 1828 and marriages in nonconformist chapels permitted from 1837. 16 Ian Sumner, ‘The Claxtons; the Preacher – the Painter 1779–1881’ (Typescript, 1982); Peter Tomory, ‘Claxton, Marshall (1813–1881)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2016 www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/5556, accessed 16 March 2016 17 Journal, Sunday, 22 August 1773. 18 ‘Geller, William’ in Benezit Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs, et Graveurs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) 19 Journal, Monday 29 August 1743. 20 Joshua 10:11–12. In National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, [2004.64.1]. 21 The last preacher to die who had been admitted by Wesley was Robert Hickling in 1858. (John Lenton, John Wesley’s Preachers [Milton Keynes, Colorado Springs, CO: Paternoster, 2009], p. 10). 22 John Wesley-James Hervey in Journal, 11 June 1739. 23 Window at United Methodist Church, Charlotte NC, U.S.A. Mural at Metropolitan United Methodist Church, Detroit MI, U.S.A. 24 Bolton Museum and Art Gallery [BOLMG:1917.3.HITW]. 25 Henry Abelove, The Evangelist of Desire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990); Henry Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (London: Epworth, 1989), pp. 257–269. 26 Jeremy Gregory, ‘Gender and the Clerical Profession in England, 1660–1850’, in Studies in Church History, 34 (1998), p. 237. 27 Leo XIII was shown on advertisements for ‘Vin Mariani’, a tonic which he was known to drink. 28 See Peter Hadley, History of Bovril Advertising (London: Bovril, 1970). 29 Journal, 5 June 1739. 30 Journal, 16 March 1788. 31 See David Tovey, W.H.Y.Titcomb (Tewkesbury: Wilson, 2003, 2 vols.).

6 Pottery and sculpture: a note

Staffordshire was not only the manufacturing heart of English china and pottery production but a stronghold of Methodism so it is little surprise that ‘representations of John Wesley in Staffordshire pottery are legion’.1 These have a quite distinct process of generation, production and distribution against the paint and print images with which this work deals. However, since they became such a significant sector of the dissemination and perception of the likeness of Wesley, they require at least a brief note.2 ‘The Potteries’, as the area was called, produced fine china – Wedgwood or Minton – but also everyday ware. In Burslem a young potter Enoch Wood (1759–1840) modelled the head of Wesley which was produced by his own successful business but also widely copied. Many who had known Wesley considered it the closest likeness of any to him, and it influenced John Jackson’s and Frank Salisbury’s depictions. Wood launched and promoted it at Wesley’s conference in Leeds, where John Fletcher, the evangelical vicar of Madeley, Shropshire, within whose parish was the Coalport china factory, gave him an impromptu homily comparing the process of sculpting the bust to the work of God ‘in the new creation of the human soul’.3 Yet this bust is not without issues. One concerns the dating: that generally accepted for the modeling, supported by Wood himself, is 1781: however the inscription on the reverse of early issue busts gives Wesley’s age as 81, i.e. 1784.4 There is no evidence from Wesley’s writings: he visited Burslem, and held his conferences in Leeds (with Fletcher present at both), in 1781 and 1784. In December 1780 Wood had married Anne Bourne, daughter of a family with whom Wesley had stayed locally.5 But Wood’s memory was clear, and he stated that Joseph Bradford, Wesley’s travelling companion, was with him, so indicating March 1781 for the terracotta model.6 When Wesley might have found the time in his hurried visits is difficult to know. Half a century afterwards, Enoch Wood recalled the circumstances: Mr. Wesley favord me with 5 separate sittings, at the last of which he did me the credit to say that there had been many attempts at his likeness by different artists, but he thought this was much the best, he however asked me if I thought it had not a more melancholy expression than himself, &

Pottery and sculpture – a note 67

I perceived I had fallen into that error, I think owing to his generally being engaged in writing while sitting to me, & from which I withdrew his attention with some difficulty. He therefore sat down again, & in a few minutes after I had made the alteration he came behind me to look at it, & immediately desired me not to touch it again “Lest” (as he said) I should “mar it”, & again expressd himself quite satisfied with it.7 Seeing the progress of Wood’s work, Bradford ‘threw all the impediments which he could with propriety do; in the way of Mr. Wesley rising from the sittings’.8 Wesley himself thus showed both his disinclination to having his image taken (and jealously double-used the time), but also influenced the look of the finished head. Wood was schooled under his relative, the Liverpool artist William Caddick, but his talents were evidently more sculptural and he worked as modeller for Wedgwood, to whom he was also related. He was consummate and precocious: aged 18 he modeled a complex ‘descent from the cross’ inspired by a Rubens painting. However, he did not go into business as a potter until 1783, suggesting busts were not produced until 1784.9 For the modeling, the gown Wesley wore (Wood recalled) was ‘much worne [sic] and the drapery was pressed flat I suppose by being confined in a small compass for the convenience of travelling’.10 A later version of the bust has a fuller and slightly longer gown. Other popular pottery items in the nineteenth century included small earthenware standing figures of Wesley preaching or reading, some within a decorative pulpit, often with a painted clock face. Jackson’s portrait became widely used as a transfer print on jugs, plates and other tableware, although images from other pictures were also used. With the growth of the pottery business, especially as the development of the canal system brought smoother transport for fragile goods (including pictures), unlike jolting carts on rutted roads, national distribution and sales grew.The area had a sizeable Methodist following, so possibly potters saw this as a double opportunity to capitalize on demand created with the growing denomination as well as a missionary opportunity to spread the word through material artefacts. Sculpture stands in contrast to mass-produced ceramic ware. One was produced by Mrs Coade’s Lambeth manufactory, whose synthesized stone was widely used for architectural ornament and proved extraordinarily durable.11 Her supervisor from 1771 was the evangelical sculptor John Bacon (1740–99) to whom this could be attributed: an account that Wesley modelled for this himself in about 1769 is unsubstantiated but should not be discounted.12 John Bacon junior (1777–1859) left much of the running of the business, by then mainly producing funerary sculpture, in the hands of Charles Manning, then his son Samuel Manning (1786–1842) who exhibited a bust of John Wesley at the R.A. (1825) but also at least projected a full-length marble statue.13 His son, also Samuel (1814/15–66) did produce such a statue in 1849 for the Wesleyan college at Richmond, Surrey.14 The sculptor John Adams-Acton (1830–1910) counted a number of prominent Wesleyans among his portrait busts, and also carved the 1876 memorial

68  Pottery and sculpture – a note

relief to the Wesley brothers in Westminster Abbey – the initiative of the broad church Dean Stanley, although instigated by Frederick Jobson when Wesleyan President in 1869. Adams-Acton also sculpted the large bronze statue of John Wesley at the front of Wesley’s Chapel, City Road, London, for the 1891 anniversary of Wesley’s death. Of particular relevance to perceptions of Wesley are equestrian statues. The notion of John Wesley on horseback has become firmly embedded in popular imagination, yet Wesley also travelled by stagecoach and (especially in later years) largely in his own chaise.15 It may be of significance that such sculpture, mostly in the U.S.A., all dates from the twentieth century, when the horse was no longer an everyday means of transport: like Wesley, a process of romanticized memorialization was under way.

Notes 1 C. S. Sargisson, ‘John Wesley Busts in Staffordshire Pottery’, in The Connoisseur, XIX (September–December 1907), p. 11. 2 Collections of such ceramics are held at the Museum of Methodism, John Wesley’s Chapel, City Road, London and Mount Zion chapel, Illingworth, nr. Halifax,Yorks. 3 John Ward, The History of the Borough of Stoke on Trent (Newcastle-under-Lyme: W. Lewis & Son, 1843), p. 263. 4 See Sargisson, ‘John Wesley Busts’; R. Green ‘Enoch Wood’s Busts of Wesley’, in PWHS, VI (1907), pp. 17–23; Frank Falkner, The Wood family of Burslem (London: Chapman & Hall, 1912), p. 49. Later copies were given an updated age for Wesley.Wesley was in Burslem 26–30 March 1781, 31 March 1784 (Journal). Bradford became ill in April 1781, and ceased accompanying Wesley. 5 Journal, 29 March 1786. 6 Enoch Wood – Adam Clarke, 6 October 1830 (ms. in United Library, Garrett Theological Seminary, Evanston, IL.); J.B.B. Clarke, An account of the infancy, religious and literary life of Adam Clarke (London: T. S. Clarke, 1833, 3 vols.), vol. iii, pp. 253. For the accuracy of Wood’s memory see Falkner, The Wood family of Burslem, p. 35. 7 Enoch Wood – Adam Clarke, 6 October 1830. See also George J. Stevenson, Memorials of the Wesley Family (London: Partridge, 1876), p. 349 and Clarke, Adam Clarke, vol. iii, pp. 250–253. 8 Ibid. 9 Falkner, The Wood family of Burslem, pp. 38–45. 10 Ibid., p. 51. 11 Alison Kelly, ‘Coade, Eleanor (1733–1821)’, rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/ view/article/37296, accessed 16 March 2016. 12 Mary Ann Steggles, ‘Bacon, John (1740–1799)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2008 www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/994, accessed 16 March 2016, also friend of the evangelical artist John Russell. 13 Enoch Wood – Adam Clarke, 6 October 1830. 14 Currently at Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, London. 15 ‘. . . I generally travel alone in my carriage . . .’ . John Wesley to Miss March, 10 December 1777.

7 No striking likeness? Images and ambiguities

As already noted, in the summer of 1789, John Wesley gave a ‘fine large print of himself ’, most likely Spilsbury’s (recent) print of Romney’s portrait to Adam Clarke’s wife, Mary, who wrote: ‘I value it much, as the gift of my revered father, but I cannot esteem it as bearing a strong resemblance to himself, it is by no means a striking likeness’.1 Adam Clarke (c.1760–1832), then an emerging younger preacher, became a major Methodist figure.2 Writing to the sculptor Samuel Manning in 1830, Clarke reflected on likenesses of Wesley: Most aspiring artists have wished to try their skill, and acquire a name and reputation, by a successful copy of the face of [Wesley]. That those endeavours have had varying degrees of merit, no proper judge can deny; and that almost every one fell far short of the original, all who were best acquainted with him, must acknowledge. Some were tame and flat, others insipid; some without character, others with certain true features; while others in the same piece had the eye of a Saracen, with the mouth of mere insignificance. Some were juvenile, others senile beyond nature and age. Several were merely tolerable, and a very few true to nature and creditable to art.3 Thus Clarke, a self-taught polymath (and whose grandson became a wellknown marine painter) who had come to know Wesley closely in his final years, mused on the enigma of the Wesley image.4 Whether foremost in his mind were posthumous likenesses or works ‘from the life’, is not clear: probably it was both. Richard Green, at the start of the twentieth century, was perplexed by the same issue over the variety of portraits: ‘anyone . . . must be struck with the remarkable diversity of countenance by which Wesley is represented’. If John Jackson’s posthumous image was misleading, Green wrote, ‘I think the same may be said of a large number of the other portraits’, concluding that only those by Williams and Romney could be considered satisfactory likenesses.5 Richard Heitzenrater came to similar conclusions at the start of the twenty-first century.6 Clarke’s final phrase ‘very few true to nature and creditable to art’ is the nub of his criticism. Many theory of art debates which concerned and ran through the development of the ‘English School’ of the eighteenth century centred around the question of whether a picture – portrait, landscape or history

70  No striking likeness?

painting – should be idealised or true to nature. The previous century Cromwell had instructed Samuel Cooper to paint him ‘warts and all’.7 Reynolds’s ruling philosophy, following Jonathan Richardson and articulated through his Academy discourses, was towards an idealising of form, often by a modelling on classical poses from Greek or Roman antiquity. The portrait was to convey uplifting sensibilities to the viewer. In this Reynolds was not unopposed. His business rival, Thomas Gainsborough insisted that he painted what he saw and as a result boycotted the Academy exhibitions for some years. It has been argued that compositional elements in Gainsborough’s naturalistic ‘landskips’ point towards the better way, the path of salvation.8 As already seen, Hone was disgraced in 1775 when his ‘Pictorial Conjuror’ satirised Reynolds’ ‘imitation’ of the antique.9 The evangelical John Russell painted contrasting portraits of Charles Wesley’s sons, perhaps to indicate his artistic versatility in both approaches.10 It seems that Wesley may well have preferred sitting to those whose art was ‘true to nature’ – a preference which may have been reinforced by his negative experience of Reynolds, or conversely have been the root cause of his dissatisfaction. Such an articulate but damning appraisal as Clarke’s only reinforces the point already made about the inadequacy of many Wesley portraits, as paintings or prints. It has resulted in both an inaccurate picture in the minds of many, but also a stereotyping of the image, so that an ageing clergyman, with long hair, in what might approximate to eighteenth-century clericals, may readily be identified as ‘John Wesley’. As William Beardmore found in the late nineteenth century: ‘the writer has met with numberless “original” pictures of Wesley, whose remote and impossible claims consisted merely of long silvery hair, clerical gown, and bands’: this writer too has met with similar spurious instances.11 Setting aside Wesley’s propensity for ‘redeeming the time’, and possibly occupying himself with reading or paperwork during sittings (as Enoch Wood recalled), so being difficult to depict, there seems little reason why it should be that most images of him appear stilted and insipid, even verging upon caricature.12 This has to be one of the focal conundrums of the subject, for which there may be no clear answer. Since Wesley was a man constantly and obsessively busy, when not active he was hardly himself. Francis Bacon reflected on the portraitist’s eternal dilemma: There is the appearance, and there is the energy within the appearance. And that is an extremely difficult thing to trap . . . with their face you have to try and trap the energy that emanates from them.13 Yet here, again, is another enigma since Wesley did seem, despite his busyness, to possess and exude calmness: ‘I am always in haste but never in a hurry’.14 Hampson recalled his ‘placability . . . an air of sedateness and tranquility’.15 From Charles Wesley’s spur ‘You shall have your picture drawn!’ to his own Journal comment half a century later ‘I yielded to importunity. . .’ it seems Wesley consistently resisted the prospect of a portrait being painted.16 Or at the

No striking likeness? 71

least, this was how he wanted to present himself. In the thick of a busy schedule he seems to have resented the time and what he saw as a frivolity. This is suggested by the consistency of such appointments being generally on a Saturday or Monday, and often first thing in the morning, which would locate these to the periphery of his main work schedule.17 It was also before many artists started their studios, so in the periphery of their working time and avoiding spectators. In winter it might also mean a poor quality of natural light for the painter to work by. Yet straight portraiture, caricature and satire form a continuum. As Marcia Pointon puts it, ‘society portraiture on the one hand and caricature on the other . . . serve . . . to problematize a relationship which has seemed on the historical level to be primarily one of opposites’.18 Diana Donald further points to the ambiguity of Hogarth’s work as a starting point for caricature and satire in Georgian Britain: Perhaps Hogarth’s most important legacy to his successors was the dissolution of hard and fast distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture – in his work one constantly infiltrated the other. . . . The English caricature print moved freely between levels of allusion and signification’ .19 A useful example of such ambiguity might be the last known image of Wesley, by John Kay. On the face of it this is a sympathetic sketch of the failing octogenarian clergyman. Although copies of the print became widely disseminated through Wesleyan Methodism (and numbers survive), the composition is at least a caricature which might be read satirically. As Rauser puts it, ‘etching provides the subjective “wink and nudge” that allowed viewers to interpret symbols and slogans ironically, rather than straightforwardly or objectively . . . it was the language of the truth teller’.20 Taken in profile, Wesley’s diminutive and frail figure is minimised by the bulk of his two supporters. Here is a man whose time is past; the inference might be that he is dependent upon his followers for his strength, past, present and future. Kay’s plates were sold on in the 1840s and eventually destroyed.21 One puzzle is that there were numbers of (nearly identical) prints produced, by local printers across Britain.22 Whether other plates were made and sold for printers to add their own names – a kind of franchise arrangement – or whether they obtained prints from which they made their own plates is unknown. Whichever, the print became exceedingly popular but it should be recognised that Kay intended it as an image for levity rather than veneration. Caricatural elements can be detected in more serious pictures which seem not to have been ‘striking likenesses’, in the phrase of the time. By comparison with the life and movement characteristic of many portraits of the period, even clergy portraits such as Gainsborough’s of his friend and proponent, Sir Henry Bate-Dudley, Reynolds’s of Laurence Sterne, Raeburn’s ‘The Skating Minister’, or even of other evangelicals such as George Whitefield, Wesley generally appears wooden and stilted.23 Looking at paintings of the same period by artists

72  No striking likeness?

who painted Wesley bear out this point. Nathaniel Hone’s ‘Portrait of a Lady’, of the courtesan Kitty Fisher, exhibited at the Society of Artists exhibition in 1765, is a case in point.24 Robert Hunter’s portraits of the mid-1760s are generally much more finished, as are Russell’s of the early 1770s. Not only are those of Wesley more static in appearance, but they are in contrast to the character which comes through Wesley’s writings, of a life constantly in motion and a man who, however serious and moralistic, had broad interests and reading, but also a level of charm and even wit.25 Like the compositions by Hone and Russell, Hamilton’s too is in a preaching pose, though in a pulpit and not the open air and – again – far from convincing. At this point it is appropriate to address two linked issues in Wesley portraiture. First that many paintings of him from the life are evidently less than satisfactory likenesses and, second, Wesley’s own perception of his appearance. So, for instance, he considered Hamilton’s picture ‘the best that was ever taken’.26 Hamilton was evidently capable of much finer work: he was elected A.R.A. in 1784 and to full membership in 1789. His portraits and history paintings (such as his scenes from Shakespeare for the Boydell Gallery) display a sensitivity and quality of painting which seems quite lacking in his likeness of Wesley. His figure painting was perhaps not his strongest point, but even allowing for that, like Hunter, Hone or Russell, Hamilton’s portrait of John Wesley stands little comparison with, for instance, that of Henry Curzon (also 1787). Not only do these portraits show a woodenness of figure, but something of an exaggeration of features, which at least suggests an element of caricature. This may be less so in those by Williams or Romney, although it has been suggested that Romney modelled Wesley on the actor John Henderson as Falstaff, and was adjusted (on the canvas as well as the print) by Jonathan Spilsbury at Mrs Tighe’s insistence.27 However unfounded this theory may be, it lends weight to the ambivalent perception of Wesley portraiture ‘from the life’, and beyond as has already been seen with Sayer’s ‘droll’.28 That the major proportion of likenesses of him were taken from his later years must be a basis for this. Together with the issue of the less than satisfactory likenesses of an apparently attractive man, this becomes another – visual – element of the Wesley paradox, the ‘reasonable enthusiast’ as Henry Rack put it. The obverse in this is that the vagueness of the Wesley likeness has led to spurious identifications. In 1926 a portrait was presented to Wesley House, Cambridge, supposedly of Wesley by Romney: there are no real grounds for supposing either is the case.29 Another painting, ‘John Wesley preaching in the chapel of ease, Old Cripplegate Church’, in Dr Johnson’s presence, attributed to Hayman, is incorrect in each respect – indeed the interior more resembles Dutch or German church architecture.30 While the satirist’s sketchbook may seem removed from the world of the artist’s studio, and the print-shop window from the Academy exhibition, in reality the two worlds intersected considerably. Bonewitz points out that satirical prints of Wesley ‘whose production climaxed in the year 1778 and would continue until the end of his life, even succeeding him in death, run virtually

No striking likeness? 73

parallel to . . . the emergence of [modern] caricature around the year 1780’.31 So caricature and portrait together contributed to public perceptions of John Wesley, not simply in physical likeness but in identity of character. Prints of evangelical clergy look down from the upper rows of Carington Bowles window, but whether they represent virtue looking down on vice, or equally ‘deserving ridicule’ – or something of both – is for the viewer’s eye. There were, though, some images which were unambiguously caustic: to those we turn next.32

Notes 1 Mrs Mary Clarke to Miss Cottle, 11 August 1789, in Richard Smith, Mrs. Adam Clarke, Her Character and Correspondence (London: Partridge & Oakey, 1851), p. 244. 2 Rev. Dr Adam Clarke was born in Co. Londonderry, Ireland, a Methodist minister in Britain from 1782 and highly regarded by Wesley, later becoming three times President of the Wesleyan Conference. Self taught polymath and polyglot, despite being slightly heterodox he was one of the most considerable influences on Wesleyan Methodism in the decades after Wesley’s death. Among other works he wrote an eight-volume Commentary on the Bible and was editor for a Royal Commission edition of Rymer’s Foedera. See Ian Sellers, ‘Clarke, Adam (1762–1832)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/ view/article/5483, accessed 16 March 2016 and DMBI. 3 See J.B.B. Clarke, An account of the infancy, religious and literary life of Adam Clarke (London: T. S. Clarke, 1833, 3 vols.), vol. iii, pp. 251–252. 4 James Clarke Hook (1819–1907). 5 R. Green, ‘A True Portrait of Wesley’, in PWHS iv (1904), p. 121. 6 Richard P. Heitzenrater, An Exact Likeness (Nashville: Abingdon, 2016), pp. 95–102. 7 Philip Mould quoted The Guardian 8 November 2013. For Cooper’s artistic techniques see John Murdoch, ‘Cooper, Samuel (1607/8–1672)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm. oclc.org/view/article/6226, accessed 16 March 2016. 8 See Amal Asfour and Paul Williamson, Gainsborough’s Vision (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999). 9 See Reynolds, Discourse VI in Robert R. Wark (ed.), Sir Joshua Reynolds: Discourses on Art (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1959), pp. 93–113. 10 Peter S. Forsaith, ‘Pictorial precocity: John Russell’s Portraits of Charles and Samuel Wesley’ in British Art Journal, X/3 (Winter/Spring 2009/2010), pp. 98–103. 11 William G. Beardmore, ‘Portraits of our Founder, Second Part’ in Magazine, 1896, p. 179. 12 Enoch Wood to Adam Clarke, 6 October 1830 (ms. in United Library, Garrett Theological Seminary, Evanston, IL.). 13 David Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact, Interviews with Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 1987), p. 175. 14 John Wesley to Miss March, 10 December 1777. 15 John Hampson, Memoirs of the late Rev. John Wesley (Sunderland, 1791, 3 vols), vol. iii, pp. 179–80. 16 Charles Wesley-John Wesley, 16 December 1742 ‘You shall have your picture drawn! I am delighted with it above measure. Such a scarecrow let them make of me when I consent to make my appearance in black and white. Yet they say that comely face of yours may be taken out, and a less puritancial one put in’. In Kenneth G. C. Newport and Gareth Lloyd (eds.), The Letters of Charles Wesley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), vol. i, pp. 100–1. Journal, 22 February 1790. 17 See Appendix B.

74  No striking likeness? 18 Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 97. 19 Diana Donald, The age of caricature: satirical prints in the reign of George III (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1996), p. 2. 20 Amelia Rauser, Caricature Unmasked (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2008), p. 98. 21 Donald, The age of caricature, p. 2. 22 Donald Ryan lists those in Hull, Birmingham, Liskeard and also the U.S.A. (Donald Ryan ‘The Edinburgh Wesley Portraits’ in PWHS, 55/1 (February 2005), p. 1). 23 Thomas Gainsborough, ‘Sir Henry Bate-Dudley’ (c.1780), (The Tate Gallery, London). Sir Joshua Reynolds, ‘The Reverend Lawrence Sterne’ (1760), (The National Gallery, London). Sir Henry Raeburn, ‘The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch’ (c.1795), (Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh). 24 Nathaniel Hone, ‘Kitty Fisher ‘(NPG 2354). 25 Hampson, Memoirs of John Wesley, pp. 165–209, especially 177–9. 26 Journal, 22 Dec 1787; G. B. Hill and L. F. Powell (eds.), Boswell’s Life of Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934–50, 3 vols.), vol. iii, p. 230 cf. p. 39, n.17. 27 Correspondence A. H. Carr – H. M. Hake, Asst. Director, NPG, London c.1936, in Iconographic Notes J. Wesley 2/4, Heinz Archive, NPG. 28 see p. 41. 29 Peter Forsaith, ‘The Romney Portrait of John Wesley’, in Methodist History, XLVII/4 (July 2004), pp. 249–55. 30 Dr Johnson’s House, Gough Square, London. 31 Anna M. Bonewitz, ‘A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing’ (unpubl. M.A. thesis, University of Virginia, 2012), p. 2. See also Amelia Rauser, Caricature Unmasked (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008). 32 While Macaroni and his Mistress here. At other Characters in picture sneer To the vain Couple is but little known How much deserving ridicule their own. [‘Miss Macaroni and her Gallant’ (1773)]

8 ‘The Pious Preacher’: satire

‘Many writers on Methodism have clucked their tongues at the anti-Methodist attacks’, as Lyles noted.1 Luke Tyerman, in his three-volume biography of Wesley, criticised the first known, and adverse, public comment on Methodists for its verbosity and for one paragraph being ‘so loathsomely impure, that it would be a sin against both God and man to reproduce it’.2 This referred to a anonymous letter to Fogg’s Weekly Journal in 1732 proposing that the ‘Oxford Methodists’ follow the example of Origen in self-castration.3 Similarly, in a sequel to his articles on ‘Portraits of our Founder’, Beardmore waxed vitriolic in condemning ‘Picture Satires on Methodism’, contending that the evangelical message of Methodism had ultimately overcome and outlasted such pernicious and misguided attacks. In milder language than the main content, he concluded that ‘Wesley led his followers too directly and uncompromisingly against the empire of darkness’ to escape the virulent enmity of lampoon, caricature and satire . . . the moral influence of the caricaturist’s profession is undoubtedly bad. Wesley, who was the mark for besotted jesters has . . . his apotheosis among those who are ‘clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands’.4 Many Methodist historical collections have their roots in the nineteenth century, so it is hardly surprising that they tend to contain few satirical images and also that (until recent years) ‘the visual culture of Methodism is underexplored and detailed academic studies of anti-Methodist imagery remain scarce’ although this has recently been addressed by several scholars.5 Yet satirical comment, textual or visual, presents an important insight into how Methodism, and its leaders, were viewed. Moreover, Methodism started to take a hold at a time when not only were portrait and print businesses expanding, but alongside, the output and audience for satire, which had few bounds. Part of the vigour of the Georgian era was its potent mixture of ‘taste’ or ‘virtue’ with a bawdy earthiness, which moralising Victorians found barely comprehensible. ‘An exceedingly frank acknowledgement, one might almost say a relish, of man’s animal functions was as much a part of the age as the elegant furniture or delicate china’.6 Methodism, though, was counter-cultural, railing

76  ‘The Pious Preacher’

against high ‘taste’ as much as against smut. In 1764 Wesley saw some ‘remarkably bad’ pictures, such as an ‘honest heathen would be ashamed’ ‘unless he designed his wife and daughters should be common prostitutes . . . what an abundant proof of the taste of the present age’.7 By such decided rejection, Methodists presented an easy prey for satire; since Wesley was a key leader of the movement, he was one obvious target for the pen or the brush. But what was ‘satire’? Visual and verbal satire ranged from the mild lampoon to barbed and vicious attacks. Since humour was generally the essential ingredient, most tended to subvert by ironic depiction. The boundary between high art and satire might often be blurred; de Loutherbourg’s ‘A Midsummer Afternoon with a Methodist Preacher’, hung at the R.A. 1777 exhibition, was evidently satirical, but of whom? It might have been of Methodists; it has been argued that it was against Swedenborgians, or possibly the R.A. itself – or all three.8 If nothing else, though, it is the sole known contemporary painting depicting Methodist outdoor preaching. Public prominence brought the hazard of mockery, ‘the accepted price of fame or social notoriety, which it was wisest to ignore or disdain’.9 As Dr Johnson put it, ‘I hope the day will never arrive when I shall neither be the object of calumny or ridicule, for then I shall be neglected and forgotten’.10 The latter part of the eighteenth century saw an unbridled profusion of popular satire, even through the wars with France when anything apparently seditious was suspect, until in the 1820s George IV bought off the key artists.11 The vast majority of satire tended to be political, some was social: comparatively less was directed against clergy, bishops or the church. Although it is no longer widely held that the Georgian church was corrupt and its ministers neglectful, it had its critics at the time, and not just Methodists who were keen to point to defects. A 1772 print ‘The Fat Pluralist and his Lean Curates’ satirized clergy who held several remunerative livings while paying curates poorly for taking their parish duties. Carington Bowles print-shop window displays Wesley and other evangelicals but also points a finger at the great disparity in clerical incomes with two prints ‘A Journeyman Parson with a Bare Existence’ above ‘A Master Parson with a Good Living’ (1782) – part of an anti-clerical campaign from the 1780s as clergy incomes rose.12 So unless they entered the political arena or committed some social solecism, clergy were generally left in peace and, apart from the 1770s, Wesley himself was – perhaps unexpectedly – seldom a target for verbal or visual satire. It was Methodism in general and George Whitefield particularly who attracted greater abuse, partly because Whitefield was more prominent as a popular preacher and partly because his dramatic manner (and squint) laid him open to such barbs. As Misty Anderson noted, ‘the implications of Whitefield’s theatrical style detonated in the many representations of his preaching’.13 Wesley was occasionally visually mocked from early on in his public ministry, so in ‘Dr. Rock’s Political Speech. . .’ (1743) Methodists were associated with quack doctors – like them, Methodists claimed to heal, albeit the soul rather than the body, and similarly their preachers travelled the country. In

‘The Pious Preacher’ 77

one of Hogarth’s prints a Methodist preacher, reading from a book labelled ‘Wesley’, accompanied the ‘Idle Prentice’ on the cart to the scaffold at Tyburn.14 ‘Bung Triumphant’ (1756) associated Wesley with the disgraced (later executed) Admiral Byng. Visual satire reflects little, if anything, of the likeness of Wesley, his identity may indicated by books or papers linked to him.Where his likeness is used, clerical wear and long hair, occasionally with a facial caricature, suffices. The greatest broadside came in 1762, with one of Hogarth’s most famous engravings, ‘Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism’ which mercilessly scourged ‘enthusiastick’ religion. Reworked from an earlier print, Enthusiasm Delineated, as ever with Hogarth’s satires it was littered with barbed references. Beneath his gown the preacher wears a harlequin’s costume while dangling a witch and a demon before the emotional congregation. A young couple openly embrace below the pulpit implying sexual immorality. In one corner are two books, ‘Westley’s Sermons’ and ‘Glanvill on Witches’ – a tome Wesley had derided a decade before.15 Nor does it target only Methodists; a Jew stands by a bloody knife laid on a book open at the sacrifice of Isaac, although a Muslim smokes meditatively outside the window, pondering this irrational chaos. This, like so much eighteenth-century art, can be read at other levels besides satire on Whitefield’s and Methodists’ propensity for emotional over-­indulgence in religious matters and otherwise. As Krysmanski has pointed out, it is more subtly a polemic on shopworn academic French art theory and on a misplaced, even erotically passionate, artistic ‘enthusiasm’, a satire on the esoteric world of taste and the connoisseur.16 Then, it also contains subtle references to the ‘Cock Lane Ghost’, a case of fraud which brought to the surface many of the tensions between Anglican rationale and Methodists’ readiness to accept the supernatural in whatever form it presented itself.17 At this stage, Methodism was still essentially a reforming movement within the national Church, with numbers of clergymen either actively involved (such as the Wesleys and Whitefield, Grimshaw in Haworth or Fletcher in Madeley) or sympathetic.18 At this time, John Wesley’s London ‘society’ was being troubled by the activities of the eccentric George Bell, supported by Thomas Maxfield, who claimed that it was possible to achieve perfection as a Christian in this life, but also that the world would end on 28 February 1763. When this event failed to occur, Bell was arrested for causing a public disorder: he and Maxfield left Wesley’s society, taking about a fifth of the membership. These form the context of Hogarth’s print: a decade later, much had changed. Around 1770, the year Whitefield died, the ‘golden age of graphic satire’ was emerging: some ’20,000 or so satirical and humorous prints . . . were published in London between 1770–1830’.19 Whitefield’s death also in part triggered the ‘Calvinist controversy’ of the early 1770s, a doctrinal wrangle which his personal peacemaking had kept at bay for three decades. Coming hard on the heels of the ‘Wilkes and liberty’ agitation this evangelical spat over the axis of power between human freewill and divine sovereignty was both a minor sideshow and a theological arena for the main debate.20 The agitation then flowed almost seamlessly into the American crisis over colonial freedom versus monarchical government.

78  ‘The Pious Preacher’

If this made public the domestic squabbles and divisions among Methodists, exposing them to attack, Wesley’s declared political views over the American revolutionary war made him ‘the most abused Methodist leader in the satiric prints’.21 After he published his 1775 A Calm Address to Our American Colonies he was subjected to a period of vituperative onslaught. In part this was because the publication was plagiarised (without acknowledgement) from Samuel Johnson’s Taxation No Tyranny. ‘Within the next five years attack after attack accused Wesley of most vices, ridiculed his person and his beliefs, and denounced him and his source . . .’ . Of the nineteen known instances of satiric images of him which Glen details, the majority were from this period.22 In the early 1770s a print ‘The Tree of Life’ had mocked evangelicals in general, including Wesley, while in 1775 Augustus Toplady’s Old Fox Tarr’d and Feather’d followed both Wesley’s Calm Address and also the Calvinist controversy in which Toplady had been a key protagonist, vehemently hostile to Wesley and the Arminian position. Although a verbal attack, its graphic frontispiece was a powerful visual summary and symbol of Toplady’s accusations which probably had as much impact as the text. That same year a ‘tête-à-tête’ print in the Town and Country Magazine linked Wesley (‘The Pious Preacher’) with a ‘Miss D-ple’. The scurrilous implication was that one Miss Dalrymple had taken charge of Wesley’s household and become pregnant. ‘As [Wesley] gazes from his oval to hers, the lust of this potent old man is meant to seem almost palpable’.23 By this time Wesley was already sensing himself under attack, indicated in a revealing letter of 1777 to his estranged wife about a possible reconciliation.

Figure 8.1 Miss D-ple and The Pious Preacher

‘The Pious Preacher’ 79

But he thought the obstacles too great: she had, he wrote, ‘spoken all manner of evil against me, particularly to my enemies and the enemies of the cause I live to support’. Specifically, ‘you have said over and over that I have lived in adultery these twenty years’, damage not so readily forgotten or forgiven.24 Allegations of sexual misconduct, a recurring theme in satire, were thus not only made of him from distant quarters. The anonymous Sketches for Tabernacle-Frames of 1778 was perhaps the most vituperative, a barely veiled personal attack on Wesley as ‘Preacher, Pamphleteer, and Quack’. Mocking his visual appearance, it ‘saw symbolism . . . in Wesley’s features’: His hoard Head, his penitential Face, His flinty Front, bespeak a Babe of Grace. His looks demure, his grave Deportment, Eyes Half-clos’d, denote him pious, meek, and wise. . . .25 The frontispiece dressed ‘Reynard’ (the fox) in an M.A. gown, drawing a tooth from a follower, who has an ass’s head, surrounded by emblematic elements of his deceitful practices. At most it is the gown and bands, perhaps the low stature, which have any visual semblance to Wesley. If Wesley was mocked for his supposed duplicity more than anything, the attack in 1778–9 was wider and more direct in its content. The majority of the critical response to Methodism, and to Wesley, came in published books, sermons and tracts. Although these were mostly verbal broadsides, it was (as with Toplady’s) the picture frontispieces which carried the force of the assault. Perhaps most visually expressive was ‘a coat of arms for Mr. Wesley’, like Hogarth’s satire, full of critical detail. At the top a dagger drives through a motto ‘good will towards men’; below reads ‘my son get money’. The two supporters – a fox and a wolf in sheep’s clothing – emit farts ‘New Light 40 Articles’ and ‘News from America’ – all clear references to Methodism undermining church and state. Hegenbarth usefully emphasizes ‘the interdependence of word and image’ in ‘how these images functioned and how the reader-viewer engaged with them. . . . The process of meaning making encouraged the reader-viewer to interpret anti-Methodist discourses in relation to each other and in reference to the wider socio-political and religious debates’.26 Recognising the metropolitan focus of both print culture and Methodism, she focuses upon how Specific emergent areas of discourse around John Wesley and London Methodism were coded and decoded in relation to readily legible discourses around sovereignty and governance,‘madness’, religious enthusiasm and the passions, idleness and gin and religious imposture and priestcraft.27 For at this time not only was Wesley provoking a storm by his pro-monarchical political stance, but in a period when the American revolution seemed to threaten the established order of church and state,Wesley was – conversely – building his

80  ‘The Pious Preacher’

new chapel in City Road, and launching his ‘Arminian Magazine’, both steps which proclaimed the movement’s strength and independence. By then he had developed over nearly four decades a strong and effective nationwide publishing and sales network, which distributed the magazine (including images of him as well as of the new chapel):28 this CALM ADDRESS made its appearance in a fury; it was never so much as advertised; but, contrary to all probable or natural means, like a mushroom it sprung up in one night, and in the morning was dispersed in the most distant parts of the kingdom.29 In a closing comment, Hegenbarth questions why, aside from the period she examines, there was so little visual satire of Wesley and Methodism during the eighteenth century. Bonewitz, also opening by noting ‘the tremendous dearth of material written on John Wesley and the Methodist Church more generally in visual satire’, highlights a group of images produced as frontispieces to seven poetical epistles possibly by William Combe between 1778–80.30 Here Wesley’s features were distorted to signify a physical embodiment of his personal self-interest in supporting the crown against the American cause. In the later 1770s, with growing interest in human physiognomy, particularly the shape of the skull, following Lavater’s theories, physical distortion assumed new satirical significance. Bonewitz further suggests there was also growing distinction between understandings of public and private persona.31 While Wesley never seems to

Figure 8.2 The ‘new chapel’, City Road; The Arminian Magazine, 1781

‘The Pious Preacher’ 81

have distinguished between his Methodist ‘connexion’ and his own interests, others did and as a result satire which had targeted the movement sharpened to attack him personally. The ‘Gordon riots’ which erupted in 1780 saw Wesley compromised by his previously published sympathy for the Protestant Association.32 Although this stance became exaggerated, it sparked a further number of satirical jibes, which then continued through the remainder of his life and beyond, particularly as he became seen (justifiably or not) as inappropriately voicing political views. As Donald shows, from ‘the early 1780s . . . satirical prints again assumed prime importance as the chosen weapon in a carefully devised political strategy’.33 In the shifting sands of British politics in that decade, which brought the younger Pitt to power, Wesley’s outmoded Toryism left him an open target, attracting even the lampoons of two leading satirists, Rowlandson and Cruikshank.34 Bonewitz concludes by identifying that two oppositional, yet interrelated strands exist in the circulation of John Wesley’s image . . . his out-of-the-ordinary ministerial practices, or his political beliefs that favored the King over that of his people, and the more flattering component of his public identity as was constructed through portraiture.35 Although the satire in which Wesley was ‘more often a monster shaped like a man’ adds little, if anything, directly to visual likenesses of Wesley, it helped to create (as Lyle explored) ‘a fictitious Wesley’ in the public mind.36 As Wesley moved into the last decade of his life, from which the majority of images date, the boundary between faithful realism and caricatural license in images was becoming increasingly blurred. Moreover, he was becoming seen, in a way he had not been hitherto, as the personification of the movement he headed. The ambiguity of images of him later in life, which may be viewed as portrait, caricature or even satire have to be ‘read’ against this background. They should also be read against Wesley’s own, ambiguous, views of and on art, to be explored next.

Notes 1 Albert M. Lyles, Methodism Mocked (London: Epworth, 1960), p. 25. 2 Luke Tyerman, The Life and Times of John Wesley (London: Hodder, 1878, 3 vols.), vol. i, p. 86. 3 Fog’s Weekly Journal, Saturday 9 December 1732. 4 William G. Beardmore, ‘Picture Satires on Methodism’ in Magazine, 1897, pp. 285–92. 5 Robert Glen, ‘The Fate of John Wesley in English Satiric Prints’, in Tim Macquiban (ed.), Methodism in its Cultural Milieu (Oxford: Applied Theology Press, 1994); Carly Louise Hegenbarth, Religion and Representation: Methodism ‘Displayed’ In A Series Of Seven Images Accompanying Six Anti-Methodist Publications, 1778–1779 (M.Phil. thesis, University of Birmingham, 2011), p. 7; Anna M. Bonewitz, ‘A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing’ (unpubl. M.A. thesis, University of Virginia, 2012). 6 John Harold Plumb, The First Four Georges (London: Hamlyn, 1974), p. 15. 7 Journal, 19 May 1764.

82  ‘The Pious Preacher’ 8 National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (NGC 4057); in the late nineteenth century the preacher’s face was apparently overpainted as Wesley, since it was assumed that this must depict the Methodist leader. Later conservation has removed this. Murray Brown ‘Satire and Spectatorship in Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg’s, A Midsummer’s Afternoon with a Methodist Preacher: Wesley, Swedenborg, and the Gospel According to Luke’, in 1650– 1850: Ideas, Aesthetics and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, 8 (2003), pp. 119–34. Peter Forsaith, Preachers in the Landscape, unpublished paper presented to the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference, Oxford, January 2012. 9 Diana Donald, The Age of Caricature, Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1996), p. 15. 10 Tamara L. Hunt, Defining John Bull (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), p. 18. 11 Vic Gatrell, City of Laughter, Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London (London: Atlantic, 2006), pp. 530–38. 12 ‘A real scene in St Paul’s Churchyard on a windy day’ (1783/4). 13 Misty Anderson, Imagining Methodism in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Enthusiasm, Belief, and the Borders of the Self (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), p. 137. 14 William Hogarth (1697–1764).‘The IDLE PRENTICE Executed at Tyburn, Design’d & Engrav’d by Wm Hogarth, Publish’d according to Act of Parliament Sept. 30. 1747’. The preacher (possibly Silas Told) is reading from the book while the ‘ordinary’ (chaplain) looks on from his carriage. 15 Journal, 2 September 1751. Joseph Glanvill, Sadducimus Triumphatus (1766). 16 Bernd Krysmanski, ‘We see a Ghost: Hogarth’s Satire on Methodists and Connoisseurs’, in Art Bulletin, 80 (June 1998), pp. 292–310. 17 Annual Register, vol. cxlii. and Gentleman’s Magazine (1762), p. 43 and p. 339. 18 William Grimshaw, 1708–63, incumbent of Haworth, Yorkshire from 1742; John Fletcher (Jean de la Fléchère), 1729–85, vicar of Madeley, Shropshire from 1760. 19 Gatrell, City of Laughter, p. 9. 20 See Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, England 1727–1783 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 374ff. 21 Glen, ‘The Fate of John Wesley’, p. 43. 22 Lyles, Methodism Mocked, p. 112. 23 Glen, ‘The Fate of John Wesley’, p. 38. 24 John Wesley to Mrs Mary Wesley, 1 September 1777 (in JWL vol. vi, pp. 273–274). 25 Quoted Lyles, Methodism Mocked, pp. 132, 113. 26 Hegenbarth, Religion and Representation, p. 92. 27 Ibid., pp. 10–11. 28 See Clive Norris, The Financing of John Wesley’s Methodism, c. 1740–1800. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 29 Patrick Bull, A Wolf in Sheep’s Cloathing: or an old Jesuit Unmasked. Containing an account of the wonderful apparition of Father Petre’s Ghost, in the form of the Rev John Wesley. With dome conjectures concerning the secret causes that moved him to appear at this very critical juncture (Dublin and London, 1775), p. 6 (quoted Hegenbarth, Religion and Representation, pp. 20–1. 30 Bonewitz, ‘A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing’, p. 1. 31 Ibid., p. 31ff., citing Amelia F. Rauser, Caricature Unmasked: Irony, Authenticity and Individualism in Eighteenth-Century English Prints (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008). 32 Henry D. Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (London: Epworth, 1989), p. 310ff. 33 Donald, The Age of Caricature, p. 60. 34 Thomas Rowlandson, ‘Old Cantwell Canvassing for Lord Janus’ (1788) and Isaac Cruikshank, ‘Self Murder, or the Wolf Tried and Convicted on his own Evidence’ (1791). 35 Bonewitz, ‘A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing’, p. 78. 36 Lyles, Methodism Mocked, pp. 126, 111.

9 ‘Of pictures I do not pretend to be a judge’: John Wesley and art1

When John Wesley visited Knole in Kent in October 1780, he was charmed by the park, ‘the pleasantest I ever saw’, but seemed awed by the ancient house, describing – with almost a hint of grudging admiration – the opulence of its furnishings. ‘The pictures’, he noted, ‘are innumerable’.2 Just ten years later he visited again, by which time he was physically aged and his eyesight was deteriorating, despite which he observed ‘some changes for the worse here. The silk covers are removed from several of the pictures, particularly that of Count Ugolino . . . and it is placed in a worse light’.3 Wesley was then accompanied by a young preacher, Robert Miller, who recalled ‘The judicious remarks he made on the paintings &c. shewed how well he was acquainted with all the principal characters that had at different times distinguished themselves in this nation’.4 While Wesley singled out one of Reynolds’s more celebrated history pictures, this suggests they looked mostly at portraits. This introduces some underlying and interlocking questions of the double ambivalence of Wesley’s attitude to art, including portraits of himself and whether he made use of the visual image in fostering the growth of the Methodists. The most cogent route into what might, pretentiously, be termed Wesley’s aesthetic perceptions will be first to explore his own stated attitudes, then his comments on visiting great houses, before assessing his critique of pictures. So his ‘Thoughts upon Taste’, in the Arminian Magazine 1780 (a year when he seems particularly to have focused on art), were a response to reading Alexander Gerard’s Essay upon Taste, first published in 1759, of which a new edition had recently been issued.5 In those two decades, English culture and society had changed. Most significantly, from Gerard’s viewpoint, the axis and arbiter of European culture had shifted from Paris to London, where the rococo and the sublime were elbowing out the strictly classical. ‘After all he has said’, posited Wesley, ‘one would still be puzzled to answer the Question, “What is Taste?” ’ not unreasonably since ‘taste’ was something better generally understood in society than precisely articulated. Having proposed several possible meanings, before considering taste as an attribute of refinement and education,Wesley pronounced himself in its favour as a form of

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inward attitude and outward behaviour so long as it is ‘directed to that glorious end, The pleasing all men, for their good, unto edification’.6 That same year, 1780, Reynolds took a similar line for his annual Discourse. One of the briefest, on the opening of the Academy’s building in Somerset House, London, he outlined the purpose of art as uplifting not only the senses but, through them the mind, for the betterment of society, concluding ‘that contemplation of universal rectitude and harmony which began by Taste, may, as it is exalted and refined, conclude in Virtue’.7 So taste, cultivated and polite behaviour, was not an end in itself but a means to civilize humanity. Here Wesley would have differed from the high culture of elite society, for his purpose was more moral and ultimately soteriological. An eighteenth-century man of taste might expect to engage with the culture about him: ‘in later life Wesley never missed an opportunity to visit stately homes, and most especially their gardens’.8 If he enjoyed the landscaping, by and large he was less complimentary about the houses, and if he did sometimes appreciate the architecture it was rarer that he approved the interior furnishings, including pictures. Generally he added a pious platitude, ‘commonplace moralizing about the vanity of riches’.9 Knole was an exception: in Yorkshire in 1779 he visited the recently completed Harewood House, admired its position but ‘was not struck with anything within. There is too much sameness in all the great houses I have seen in England. . . . But here is profusion of wealth. . .’ . The landscaping was by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, whose style chimed with his own appreciation, but given that Harewood was designed by John Carr and Robert Adam; the furniture one of Thomas Chippendale’s early major commissions, and its picture collection outstanding, this seems an inadequate verdict. ‘But’, he concluded, ‘what has the owner thereof, save the beholding them with his eyes?’10 Nine years later, also in Yorkshire, he visited Wentworth, another great hereditary seat with the longest country house facade in Europe (180m). Faced by this cornucopia of indulgent taste, the splendour of its classical architecture, rooms, furnishings and paintings he was again hardly impressed. ‘The situation of the house is very fine . . . The front of the house is large and magnificent, but not yet finished. . . . Few of the pictures are striking’ – the pictures included several Van Dycks and Stubb’s great equine canvas ‘Whistlejacket’.11 ‘The most extraordinary thing I saw was the stables . . . O how much treasure might [the owner] have laid up in heaven, with all this mammon of unrighteousness’.12 Wesley evidently grasped the fundamental principles of landscape, architecture and interiors, as well as art (and music): whether to be true to nature or morally uplifting. Yet there seems to be a fault-line in his understanding for while he might admire landscapes in which ‘art strove to appear as nature unassisted’, at the same time he deprecated the buildings and lifestyle they were designed to embody.13 So: that what Wesley wanted was indeed art and not nature in the raw is the consistent message of his comment on the landscape at large, a comment

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which reveals an uncomfortable disjunction in his mind between his understanding of revival and the world in which it took place.14 This disjunction also applied to his attitude to pictures.Visiting Hampton Court in 1772 he thought ‘everything is quite, as it were, natural’ unlike Blenheim which he thought ‘designedly grand and splendid’. But he continued: Of pictures I do not pretend to be a judge. But there is one by Paul Rubens which particularly struck me, both with the design and the execution of it. It is Zechariah and Elizabeth with John the Baptist, two or three years old, coming to visit Mary and our Lord sitting upon her knee. The passions are surprisingly expressed, even in children. But I could not see either the decency or common sense of painting them stark naked. Nothing can defend or excuse this.15 These insights into his viewing of art can be set alongside two other visits recorded in the Journal. In 1774, he saw Raphael’s ‘Cartoons’ in the Queen’s House, London [now Buckingham Palace]. Thurs. 22 December, 1774 I walked, with one that belongs to the family, through the Queen’s House . . . the staircase and the saloon. I was disappointed in the Cartoons, They are but the shadow of what they were; the colours are so entirely faded that you can hardly distinguish what they were once.16 Then in Bath in 1780 he: narrowly observed and considered the celebrated Cartoons, the three first in particular. What a poor designer was one of the finest painters in the world! . . . Oh pity that so fine a painter should be utterly without common sense!17 Since the original cartoons were always in the royal residences in London, Hampton Court or Windsor, what he saw were presumably either copies or prints.18 In 1781, viewing Benjamin West’s ‘Raising of Lazarus’ in Winchester Cathedral, he used similar language:19 I was disappointed. I observed (1) there was such a huddle of figures that, had I not been told, I should not have guessed what they meant; (2) the colours in general were far too glaring, such as neither Christ nor His followers ever wore. When will painters have common sense?20 Several threads run through these critiques. First, he abhorred human nakedness or anything which he considered tending to immorality. In June 1757

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‘observing some very fine but not very modest pictures in the parlour where we supped. . . [my companion] piled them on a heap in a corner of the room, and they have not appeared since’.21 This is consistent with his general views and conduct, and not only in art, shown in his support for organisations like the Society for the Reformation of Manners, but the general ethos of the Methodists. Then, by his structured criticism, Wesley clearly had sufficient comprehension of art theory to be systematically analytical of elements such as perspective and proportion, compositional symbolism or allegorical figures. His lack of appreciation of Raphael’s bending of perspective or metaphorical imagery indicates this, as do his comments upon West’s depiction of clothing in his ‘Lazarus’. But if he had read Jonathan Richardson’s An Essay on the Theory of Painting (1715), any of Joshua Reynolds’s Presidential Discourses (from 1769), or even John Russell’s Elements of Painting with Crayons (1772) these are not recorded in the Journal or elsewhere. Wesley also appealed, in each case, to ‘common sense’.What he meant by this may be debatable: one clue is in his sermon ‘The Use of Money’, in which he exhorted: ‘Gain all you can, by common sense . . . continually learning, from the experience of others, or from your own experience, reading and reflection. . .’ .22 This seems to conflict with the previous point – that if he not only understood but appreciated some of the concepts and construction of art, he surely recognized that it was a genre with its own principles and practices, just as might be said of religion in general or Methodism itself. Was art for the educated viewer or the public at large? Yet he acknowledged that a principle of ‘taste’ was that ‘every man . . . forms some [views] that are peculiar to his own way of thinking’.23 Such a contradiction might be taken further. If Wesley’s preferences were for truth to nature, his taste, as a high-church Tory, would incline to the straightforwardly classical, and was iterated in his repeated preference for plainness with elegance. But the disjunction which has already been seen between landscape and house seems also present in his views of art. What he viewed as ‘common sense’ seems subjective. Bruce Hindmarsh has recently and incisively explored some fundamental commonalities between eighteenth-century art theory and evangelical dogmatics. Further, he posits that the essential fault-line was over just the same issue: empiricism versus social and moral renewal, Arminianism or Calvinism. In contrasting the lives and careers of Whitefield and Wesley with Reynolds and Gainsborough he observes: the evangelicals entered this same debate on slightly different terms, but they too were interested in establishing a basis for a kind of public life in which contemplation of divine truth would lead to ethical transformation . . . Though the strata of the public concerned with the sort of ideals expressed by Reynolds and Shaftesbury was more self-consciously refined than the audiences of the Methodist preachers, these publics still

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overlapped considerably in the emerging public sphere shaped by freer discourse and trade.24 Wesley’s aesthetic ideas, then, were neither isolated from his doctrinal compass nor from the tides of social, cultural and political life which ran through the eighteenth-century transatlantic world. His evangelical conversion of May 1738 might be interpreted as marking a crescendo of personal equivocation with a rejection of the cultural baroque (hearing Purcell in St Paul’s Cathedral) for primitive classicism and spiritual empiricism (‘my heart . . . strangely warmed’).25 For artists the tension was whether ‘to reach beyond technical skill to achieve a more universal truth’ ‘till that contemplation of universal rectitude and harmony which began with Taste may . . . conclude in Virtue’ or to depict ‘an empirical truth according to nature’.26 While ‘the evangelical Calvinist seemed time and again to seek repose in an experience of contemplation [of] God as utterly sublime’.27 Arminians understood human agency as agonistic warfare towards a salvation both spiritual and social: In vain thou strugglest to get free I never will unloose my hold. . . Wrestling I will not let thee go, Till I thy name, thy nature know.28 Wesley’s ideal of Methodism’s purpose: ‘to reform the nation, particularly the church’,29 was thus not so far removed from Reynolds’s aim of ‘bestowing on whole nations refinement of taste’.30 Notwithstanding this, what evidence there is of Wesley’s notions of art suggests that his doctrinal Arminianism may have been displaced by artistic naturalism: preferring ‘plain truth for plain people’31 as he elsewhere insisted. His idea of a good portrait may have been an unflattering likeness, opposed to the prevailing principles of the Academy. But if Wesley, an educated gentleman, could in 1780 structure a reasoned critique of some of the most revered artworks in British hands, comment knowledgeably on great houses and landscapes and later act as informed guide to one of his young preachers on a visit to Knole, how could he approve such a crude likeness of himself with the first issue of the Arminian Magazine in 1778 or describe Hamilton’s portrait as ‘the best that was ever taken’?32 Wesley rarely articulated a direct comment about his portrait, but by inference his attitude was not positive. He was bored by sitting still, as Enoch Wood found, and mostly unimpressed by the result, especially when older. Yet, once painted, he made use of the picture in publications: whether he hung pictures on his walls is unknown. Vertue’s inclusion of the ‘brand from the burning’ vignette or Fittler’s (albeit putative) ‘Wesley coat of arms’, do suggest he was not agnostic about the appearance of the published outcome. This leads into the question of whether, or to what extent, Wesley used the visual image to reinforce his own and his organisation’s public profile. Rack discusses Wesley’s apparently implacable insistence on maintaining his own power,

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particularly over those in the ‘connexion’ of Methodist ‘societies’ he formed.33 In this respect there are conflicting accounts; those who were loyal to him (a loyalty which was reciprocal) saw him as their ‘father in God’ whose every action carried benevolent intent. On the other hand there were preachers and others who parted company from him, sometimes amicably, sometimes not. At one level, with his travelling preachers, there was a fair sprinkling of those from whom he became alienated.34 As Knox observed, ‘Wesley . . . was a man who liked to manage the whole of peoples’ lives for them; and if this applied to his converts in general, it applied with even greater force to his itinerant preachers’.35 John Hampson and his (eponymous) father left Wesley in 1784 when they were excluded from his ‘Deed of Declaration’, but retained a high regard for him, although recognizing his failings.36 Hampson recalled: Opposition from his preachers or people he could never brook. His authority he held sacred.37 His first lay preacher, Thomas Maxfield (later ordained a clergyman in the established church), parted company from him in the early 1760s: when Maxfield sought reconciliation ten years later he was rebuffed.38 Successive writers have noted a Janus-like quality more generally about John Wesley. Was he, for instance, ambitious or the reverse? His writings (and portraits) give the impression of a man who never relaxed and hardly smiled, yet those who knew him testified to his sense of bonhomie – ‘it was impossible to be long in his company without partaking his hilarity’.39 The periodic publication of his Journal, while other evangelicals were eschewing similar action as an un-Christian exercise in egotism, may suggest Wesley tending to selfpromotion, yet equally as a way of laying his life, activities and views, as well as the progress of the Methodist movement, open to general scrutiny. It was ambiguous. The question here is whether he used visual images of himself – or visual images at all – in this way. The use of images, including portrait prints of himself, in the Arminian Magazine only seems to increase the conundrum. As already noted, Wesley kept a close editorial hand on the publication, including pictures; yet those of himself seem profoundly unsatisfactory.40 Then, a 1790 print depicted Kingswood School, near Bristol, founded by him in 1748, although it was ever a thorn in his flesh.41 One pupil recalled: Bleak and terrific was the prospect of the barren desert that surrounded us; and the only human beings we beheld, or could converse with, without the walls of this holy Bastille, were the sooty delvers of the coalpits that extended for miles on every side of it. Two miserable years were passed in the bosom of this howling wilderness, the solitude of which was alleviated only by occasional visits to Bristol.42 Adam Clarke was scathing about the month he spent there in 1782, recording getting a drink from ‘the vile straining stone behind the kitchen for some of the

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half-putrid pit water . . . there was a pond of rain water in the garden’, where he occasionally bathed, since it was ‘scanty indeed of water, for there is none in the place but what falls from heaven. . . . I was obliged to contend with frogs, askes, or evets, and vermin of different kinds’.43 But the print depicted the school in a tasteful, pastoral setting. Was it aimed to promote recruitment of pupils by showing an idealized world for children? The case, however, is thin: it was at the end of Wesley’s life, his health and eyesight were deteriorating and he no longer had the direct management of the school which he had had at times. It remains ambiguous. For one who so assiduously managed his general reputation, it seems odd if Wesley was, conversely, indifferent to the impact of visual culture. It may be that he was so adjusted to the written and published word that he was effectively blind to appreciate pictures. He was, after all, probably the most prolific author and editor of his time, responsible for over 400 publications; maybe it is in his Journal or letters that his likeness is better seen? Ambiguities over visual images were inherited by Wesley’s religious heirs. Adam Clarke was writing forty years after the old man’s death, by which time posthumous likenesses were in circulation and Wesley would soon become the focal figure of moralizing scene-paintings. The ambivalences of eighteenthcentury evangelicals were reworked in the nineteenth as memories faded and Wesley became lodged in public view as a hero of legend, again a process with its own questions.

Notes 1 Journal, 7 February 1772. 2 Knole is one of Britain’s most historic great houses, 20 miles SE of London. Journal, 17 October 1780. 3 ‘My eyes were so dim that no glasses would help me’ (Journal, 28 June 1790). Journal, 17 October 1780. Joshua Reynolds ‘Count Ugolino and his Children in the Dungeon’ [1773]. See Martin Postle, Sir Joshua Reynolds; the subject pictures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 138–55, esp. p. 149.The picture, with its Whiggish overtones, was exhib. R.A. 1773, not 1783 as Curnock gives (JWJ, vol. viii, p. 103). 4 Magazine, 1801, p. 194. 5 Magazine, 1780, pp. 662–7. 6 Ibid., p. 662. 7 ed. Robert R. Wark, Sir Joshua Reynolds; Discourses on Art (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1959), p. 171. 8 W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater (eds.), ‘Introduction’, in WJW, 18 (Journals & Diaries I), p. 62. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., p. 64. Journal, 30 April 1779. The owner was Edwin Lascelles (1713–95), 1st Baron Harewood. 11 Painted c.1762, now in National Gallery, London (NG6569). 12 Journal, 4 July 1788. The Whig 2nd Marquess (1730–82), who was responsible for the great extension of the house, was twice Prime Minister. 13 WJW 18 (Journals & Diaries I), p. 65. For gardens see Timothy Mowl, Gentlemen & Players, gardeners of the English landscape (Stroud: Sutton, 2004), esp. pp. 124ff. 14 WJW 18 (Journals & Diaries I), p. 62. 15 Journal, 7 February 1772.

90  John Wesley and art 16 Commissioned by Pope Leo X in 1515, painted by Raphael (1483–1520) and his assistants, these are full-scale designs for tapestries that were made to cover the lower walls of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. www. vam.ac.uk, accessed August 2014. 17 Journal, Mon. 24 July, 1780. 18 Anon, The historic gallery of portraits and paintings (London, 1812) records a Raphael cartoon (‘The Massacre of the Innocents’) ‘was in the possession of the late ingenious and excellent Mr. Hoare of Bath’. 19 (1780) Now at Wadsworth Atheneum, Art Museum CT, U.S.A. 20 Journal, 9 October 1781. 21 Possibly William Coward (see Journal 10 June 1757). Journal 22 June 1757. 22 Sermon L in WJW 2 (Sermons II), p. 273. 23 Magazine, 1780, p. 667. 24 Bruce Hindmarsh, ‘The Inner Life of Doctrine: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Calvinist-Arminian Debate Among Methodists’, in Church History, 83: 2 (June, 2014), p. 378. 25 Journal, 24 May 1738. See Peter S. Forsaith, ‘Methodism and its images’ in Charles Yrigoyen Jr. (ed.), T & T Clark Companion to Methodism (London and New York: T & T Clark, 2010), pp. 350–68. 26 Hindmarsh, ‘The Inner Life of Doctrine’, pp. 371, 377–8. See Joshua Reynolds, Discourse 9 (1780). 27 Ibid., p. 385. 28 John Wesley and Charles Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems (Bristol, 1742), pp. 115–18, quoted Hindmarsh, 2014, p. 395. 29 ‘Large Minutes’ in WJW 10 (Minutes of Conference), p. 845. 30 From Joshua Reynolds, Discourse 9 (1780), quoted Hindmarsh, ‘The Inner Life of Doctrine’, p. 377. 31 John Wesley, in ‘Preface’ to Sermons on Several Occasions (London, 1746). 32 Magazine, 1801, p. 194. Journal, 22 December 1787. 33 Henry D. Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (London: Epworth, 1989), pp. 538–544. 34 See John Lenton, John Wesley’s Preachers (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009), pp. 291–309, also Gareth Lloyd, Charles Wesley and the Struggle for Methodist Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 147–52. 35 R.A. Knox, Enthusiasm (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), p. 444. 36 A Deed Poll enrolled in Court of Chancery, 9 March 1784 to provide for the future of the ‘Conference of the People called Methodists’. This stipulated that the legislative power would ultimately reside in a body of one hundred named persons, as well as other matters. (DMBI). 37 John Hampson, Memoirs of the late Rev. John Wesley (Sunderland, 1791, 3 vols.), vol. iii, pp. 179–80. 38 Journal, 25 February 1772. 39 Hampson, Memoirs of John Wesley, vol. iii, p. 578, quoted Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, p. 527. 40 See p. chap. 7, pp. 69–74. 41 A. G. Ives, Kingswood School in Wesley’s Day and since (London: Epworth Press, 1970); Linda Ryan, Child-rearing and Education: The Thinking and Practice of John Wesley . . . (unpubl. Ph.D. Thesis, Oxford Brookes University, 2015). 42 Thomas Maurice, Memoirs of the Author of a History of Indian Antiquities (1819), quoted Ives, Kingswood School, pp. 84–5. 43 J.B.B. Clarke, An account of the infancy, religious and literary life of Adam Clarke (London:T. S. Clarke, 1833, 3 vols.), vol. iii, pp. 168, 157.

10 Image, identity and institution: constructing a canon

Why and how was it that between 1839, the celebration of the ‘Wesleyan centenary’, and the end of the nineteenth century a range of likenesses came to be identified as acknowledged images of John Wesley, a ‘canon’ which still generally remains the accepted catalogue of Wesley portraits? The story is not a straightforward one, involving as it does the twists and turns of a denomination’s history and attempting to track the often unrecorded provenance of pictures. In 1739, John Wesley formed the first of his ‘societies’ and, after initial reluctance, commenced his outdoor, itinerant preaching ministry: together these would be the core of his life for the following half-century. Although Methodists now view 24 May 1738 as the pivotal date, when Wesley underwent his ‘Aldersgate experience’, this is a much later (possibly twentieth century) commemoration. So in 1839 Wesley souvenir merchandise was marketed, a medal was struck and a Centenary Fund inaugurated which eventually raised £222,589, much of which was spent on acquiring ‘Centenary Hall’, Bishopsgate, London.1 Ostensibly the offices of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, Centenary Hall effectively served as connexional headquarters until the building of the Central Hall, Westminster in the early twentieth century. Having made its presence felt in the capital city with a classically styled building to befit its emerging status as the leading nonconformist denomination came a need to acquire and display pictures and other items suited to such status. The way was led by two works: John Jackson’s synthesized c.1827 portrait of Wesley and Henry Perlee Parker’s large scene painting (1839–40) of the infant Wesley’s rescue from the Epworth Rectory fire, but clearly there was space for more. In the half-century after Wesley’s death, Wesleyan Methodism had moved from being a still-fluid movement theoretically within the Church of England to an independent denomination. Although much of this transition was internally energised, it was also shaped by external forces. Following the French Revolution, and through the Napoleonic wars, groups which might be considered seditious were suspect and Lord Sidmouth’s Bill of 1811 sought to curtail the activities of Protestant dissenting ministers and travelling preachers. The Church of England, which had through the eighteenth century often seemed

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accommodating, even elastic, in its role as a state church became more strident about embodying national unity and identity, defining its territory more closely. Beyond Methodism, 1790–1820 was a period of economic and social hardship: the cost of the Napoleonic wars, repeated failed harvests and the threat of invasion all served to create levels of instability. Alongside this came the industrial and agricultural revolutions, with population migration to towns and the building of factories. If radical thought was suppressed during the wars, following them came political agitation: the ‘Peterloo massacre’ (1819) was pivotal in consolidating radical opinion leading to the ‘Great Reform Bill’ of 1832. This brought limited but significant change in the electoral system of England and Wales and led to municipal status for the growing industrial urban areas mainly in the midlands and north of England – which were also strongholds of Methodism. In the wake of the ‘Great Reform Bill’ came ecclesiastical changes. Perhaps triggered in part by John Keble’s Oxford ‘assize sermon’ of 1833 which is credited with instigating the high-church ‘Oxford movement’, came – p­ aradoxically – recognised status for non-Anglican bodies. From 1837 it became legal to conduct marriages in nonconformist chapels (as places of worship were generally termed). Free-church men could be elected to Parliament, later enter the universities and occupy other civic and social positions. Methodist ministers were no longer simply travelling preachers, but a profession. Indeed, they were part of a trend towards the emergence of ‘professions’ – clergy, lawyers, doctors, schoolteachers (and artists) were all undergoing subtle changes of identity.2 This professionalisation of the ministry was not uncontested, and the inception of several Methodist training institutions from the 1830s was strongly opposed by some. For one thing, the cost was considerable, but there was also a fear that ministers could become a clerical élite – the balance of power between laity and ministers led to several schisms which characterised Methodism between Wesley’s death and the mid-nineteenth century. So the acquisition and hanging of portraits of luminaries such as founding denominational or institutional fathers, as well as the garnering and recording of historic papers and artefacts, was a significant element for a ministry (with its wealthy backers) positioning itself hegemonically within the denomination. Methodism was not only growing in status but in size. When Wesley died the membership of his ‘Societies’ totalled some 70,000 in Britain, with a similar number in America. By 1850 the various British Methodist denominations numbered over 534,000 and by 1907, 881,000.3 As Methodist premises multiplied, denominational identity was proclaimed architecturally and through publications, as well as tableware and ephemera, in which the display of visual images, especially of the founder, was frequent. Yet around 1839 it seems as though there was little certainty about the visual identity of the denomination’s ‘father in God’. Although Jackson’s portrait of Wesley was known to be unsatisfactory and the many surviving prints could not have been overlooked, the absence of archival or published evidence about portraits strongly suggests a level of either a lack of concern or an invisibility of such works. But by the close

Image, identity and institution 93

of the century, there was what seems to have been tantamount to an established range of known and accepted likenesses. The hundredth anniversary of John Wesley’s death in 1891 was not commemorated as markedly as the ‘Wesleyan centenary’ of 1839. Following a century of expansion and consolidation, the mood of Methodism – and more widely in Britain with Queen Victoria’s jubilees in 1887 and 1897 and the approaching new century – was forward-looking and optimistic. In 1898 the ‘Twentieth Century Fund’ was launched which raised over a million guineas.4 There were Methodists prominent in business and political life and if there had been apprehension about professional education sixty years before, by 1900 Methodism was strong in academic repute, having produced significant figures in theology, education and other fields, and with more major scholars emerging.5 Further, some sectors of Methodism married their future vision with at least antiquarian interests, if not historic investigation. As Wesleyan minister in Oxford in the 1880s Hugh Price Hughes, leader of the ‘Forward Movement’, publicly challenged the eminent Mark Pattison (Rector [head] of Lincoln College, where John Wesley had been a fellow) about the lack of a monument in the university to Wesley as one of its most influential sons.6 While the eighteenth century was largely deprecated by the nineteenth as the bad old days, corrupt and chaotic, reaction in the ‘naughty nineties’ included something of a cultural revival of classical style, a throwback to Georgian tastes. Learned attention began to be given to modern scholarly studies of the Wesleys and the early growth of Methodism. In 1888 a group of antiquarians and other interested individuals formed a ‘Wesley Historical Society’. In 1902 and 1904, the layman Joseph Wright published articles in its ‘Proceedings’ on Wesley portraiture.7 These represented the first serious attempt at a considered overview of the iconography and such was the extent of Wright’s collection and his critical understanding that these articles were, and have remained through the succeeding century, the most authoritative concise source of images ‘from the life’. They in effect form the basis of a canon. This, then, starts to address the background to the evolution of an accepted range of Wesley likenesses over, essentially, the latter half of the nineteenth century. But it only deals with one side of the matter, for it was a question of supply as well as demand. It would not have been possible to develop such a canon of images without the availability of the actual works. Let us, for a moment, step outside the immediate field of likenesses of John Wesley to those of his mother, Susanna. I have dealt elsewhere with how a portrait of her by J. M. Williams of 1738 came into Wesleyan hands in 1863, and how, frustratingly, it has not been possible to trace a link between the Mr Whitehead whose family had apparently possessed it for some seventy years (taking it back to around the year of Wesley’s death) and Wesley’s physician Dr John Whitehead, a co-executor of his will who was known to have abstracted certain of his effects. Nonetheless, this coincidence of name and

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dates, coupled with an inscription on the back of the canvas ‘Mrs. Wesley, 1738, Williams’ gives a strength of probability that it is an authentic picture which had been in the family.8 Contrast this with a profile portrait which also came into Wesleyan hands at the same time. An article in The Christian Miscellany, also in 1863, announced that F. J. Jobson had acquired ‘a collection of paintings possessed by the late Mr. Sergeant Thomas’. Among them was a profile portrait purportedly of Susanna Wesley. ‘It is authenticated by writing, on the back of the painting, almost as old as the picture itself ’.9 The label on the stretcher reads: “Miss Annesley” Mrs  Susannah Wesley Mother of John and Chas. Wesley The script seems to be more in keeping with early nineteenth century style: the profile pose and style of costume equally suggest a later date than would be expected (and the face seems to be young in life) of a portrait painted a century earlier. Although the frame may not be original, its style and a framers’ label to Guillet, also suggests later eighteenth century at the earliest. Moreover, the Annesleys are a large family: Susanna Wesley was by no means the only ‘Miss Annesley’. This Williams painting was acquired for Wesley College, Headingley, Leeds; the ‘Miss Annesley’ portrait by Jobson, and then passed to the Book Room. While it seems impossible to either validate or negate the claims of each thoroughly, this instance serves to indicate both the importance of the quest for an image of the matriarch of Methodism, together with connexional rivalries – it seems that neither knew of the existence of the other at the time, which is barely credible.10 It also indicates some of the complexities in attempting any solid historical account when it comes to the Wesley family. Did John Wesley possess any portraits, of himself or his family, and – if so – what might have become of them? Although he insisted on plainness and simplicity in life and circumstances, he lived as an educated clergyman so it seems likely that at least some pictures decorated his walls. When he died in 1791, his will was detailed in several aspects, directing the disposal of not only his furniture, chaise, horses, books and papers, clerical garb and other ‘wearing apparel’, and even leaving ‘the coins, and whatever else is in the drawer of my bureau at London to my grand-daughters’, but pictures were not mentioned.11 His will also directed that ‘any part of my personal estate undisposed of by this will [was bequeathed to] my two nieces Elizabeth Ellison and Susanna Collett, equally’.12 However reverentially disposed one might be to the Wesley name, it seems difficult not to avoid an impression that they were a somewhat dysfunctional family, over several generations. From Samuel and Susanna’s marital disharmony, to their grandson Samuel’s mental illness and disordered family life, a number of other episodes suggest similar tendencies. John Wesley’s own ambiguous relationship with his brother and failed marriage were not isolated unhappinesses.

Image, identity and institution 95

Such episodes are liable to disrupt the onward transmission of family traditions, in story or artefact. John Wesley outlived all but one of his siblings; and there were few of the following generation to inherit any family heirlooms.13 Charles Wesley’s widow reached a considerable age, but of their three children who survived to adulthood, (Charles, Sarah [Sally] and Samuel) only Samuel produced issue. He fathered two families of children, but towards the end of his life his mental condition deteriorated and a certain degree of confusion appears to have prevailed.14 It is not clear whether any of those children inherited family pictures or other items. The two portraits of Charles and Samuel by John Russell, presented to the Royal Academy of Music, London, by Samuel’s son Matthias Erasmus Wesley (1821–1901), were sold to him by the Marlborough Galleries in 1892. Williamson states that they had been owned by a Mr Matthews, 21 Manchester Square [London] and thence sold through Colnaghi, so were not inherited.15 Samuel’s elder brother and sister, Charles and Sarah, had remained in the family’s Marylebone home, as Thomas Jackson (1783–1873) recorded: Charles, the eldest son . . . lived . . . with his sister, who may be said to have been his housekeeper and his guardian . . . their mode of living may be approximately characterized by the terms ‘genteel poverty’.16 It seems that many of the contents of the family home also remained with them, and Jackson was able to secure some for the Wesleyan church. Although only documents and books were specifically mentioned, it would appear that other family artifacts may well have been acquired. Sally had enjoyed a positive relationship with her uncle John, travelling with him on an evangelistic journey to Kent in 1777, and was artistic, having had some tutelage from John Russell. It would not be unlikely that if anyone was to gather and value any family portraits it would be her. Sally died on a visit to Bristol in 1828, prior to which Thomas Jackson ‘took charge of their furniture, which included some family portraits in oil’.17 Charles’s domestic arrangements then became chaotic – and somewhat difficult to trace. He died in 1834 having lodged with Mrs Elizabeth Greene, a maternal cousin, at her home, 20 Edgware Road [Bayswater, London]. She was also coexecutor of his will – in which he left her his portrait drawn by John Russell.18 Samuel Wesley junior died in 1837. In 1840 G. F. Urling, a Methodist and ‘gentleman of London’ who served on the Wesleyan Missions General Committee wrote to Jabez Bunting to ask him to support the purchase of some Wesley family portraits.19 ‘Being uncertain whether you have seen the Wesley family pictures at Bayswater, or have entertained ye. idea of their being purchased for the Centenary Hall, I am induced to trouble you with a few lines on that subject,’ says Mr. Urling. After expressing ye. fear that ‘some private adventurer mt. step

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in & buy ye. pictures’, & giving his opinion that ‘no part of ye. Centenary expenditure can be more legitimate than their purchase’, he goes on to say that ‘Mrs Green, ye. present owner, is executrix & residuary legatee of ye. late Charles Wesley, Esq. She has several interesting family pictures not to be disposed of: but from a lengthened conversation wh. I had with her yesterday I am convinced that a favourable arrangement mt. be made. I spoke to her particularly with ref[eren]ce. to ye. whole, & am authorized to say that if and offer were made for ye. principal portraits – wh. are really desirable to us – she wd. Not object to give an undertaking that all ye. Wesley family pictures shall be given up to the Society free of cost on ye. death of herself & her sister: I mean those wh. shall not be purchased.’ He then asks Dr Bunting if he will commence negotiations, & offers to ‘gladly promote ye. object’. The ‘list of ye. pictures for sale’ is then given as follows: 1  Rev. J. Wesley, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, half-length, life size, age about 40  £200 2  *Rev. C. Wesley, shorter length, life size   70 3  *Mrs. C. Wesley  15 4  *Miss [Wesley]  age 14  10 5  *Charles Wesley, Esq. full length   50 6  *Samuel [Wesley] do. 10 years old   50 7  Miss Judith Annesley ¾ length, painted by Sir Peter Lely   30. [*  – bracketed together as ‘painted by Russell’] Mr Urling’s Letter is endorsed by Dr Bunting, ‘Ans. Ap. 11.’20 From the subsequent notes it would seem that only the first two pictures were purchased by the Wesleyan church, although after some years it was acknowledged that the ‘Reynolds’ was the ‘Harley’ copy of that by J. M. Williams. Items 5 and 6 have already been noted, otherwise what happened to the rest of these pictures, or the other ‘family pictures not to be disposed of ’ is unknown.21 The provenance of the National Portrait Gallery painting of John Wesley by Nathaniel Hone is given as purchased in 1861 from the dealer Henry Graves who in turn had bought it ‘at the sale of “Miss Wesley” ’. Kerslake was unable to trace such an auction and surmised that this was not Sally Wesley, but one of her brother Samuel’s descendants.22 However, if this simply indicates that the picture was regarded as coming from among those inherited by Sally Wesley, then eventually into the possession of Mrs Greene, perhaps among those ‘several interesting family pictures not to be disposed of ’ and sold at some later point, this might be ‘Miss Wesley’s sale’. Hypothetical as it may seem, the fragmentary surviving evidence makes this, at present, seem a reasonably tenable hypothesis. In summary, it would appear that some family portraits, including at least one of John Wesley, passed through the family until at least the death of Charles Wesley junior in 1834, thus giving a pivotal date for the subsequent transition

Image, identity and institution 97

of pictures into more public arenas. But it was also a period when others who had inherited paintings were passing away – as already seen with the Williams portrait of Susanna Wesley – so pictures of forbears of whom the living had no direct memory may have been of fading significance and might have been disposed of. One copy of Williams’s portrait of Wesley was bought in London in the mid-1850s.23 In effect, there was a complementarity of sellers and buyers, sources and acquirers. What is striking is how some leading and influential figures in Wesleyan Methodism took key initiatives to acquire and then interpret historic material, including pictures. James Everett, the leader of the ‘Wesleyan Reformers’, was not only instrumental in the production of the painting of the Epworth Rectory fire.24 He also listed and detailed surviving correspondence from early Methodism and compiled some of the first Methodist local histories, of Manchester and Sheffield, which relied on oral history from those who could remember the Wesleys and their associates.25 Unbendingly loyal to the Wesleyans was Thomas Jackson (1783–1873) who was twice President of the Conference (1838, 1849). From an ordinary background he became a considerable scholar who wrote works on early Methodism and lives of Charles Wesley (1841) as well as of his own contemporaries Richard Watson and Robert Newton, and also edited John Wesley’s ‘Works’ (1829–31) and Charles Wesley’s ‘Journal’ (1849). Although the accuracy and integrity of his work may be questionable by modern standards, it should not be denied that without his initiative and foresight much material might not have survived.26 Jackson’s position as Connexional Editor (1824–37, 1839–41) then Theological Tutor of Richmond College (Surrey) from its opening in 1842 to 1861, where many future ministers were trained, enabled him to shape the opinions and judgements of much of Methodism. Following his initial munificence Richmond College built up a strong holding of Wesley papers, books, artefacts and portraits, and the Wesleyan Book Room collections also probably owed much to his collecting tendencies.27 What concerns us hardly concerned them: establishing provenance. While by the end of the nineteenth century mainly Methodist institutions but also some public galleries held virtually what we see today as identified pictures of John Wesley, in many cases it is hardly known how they got there. The fine ‘lily’ portrait understood to be of Charles Wesley, as one example, was in the Wesleyan Book Room by the late nineteenth century, but how or when it was acquired is unknown. There are no derived prints to affirm the sitter’s identity, nor supporting literature: only tradition and physiognomic comparisons support its claim. Moreover, various suggestions have been made for the artist, all speculative. Its usual confident attribution has little firm ground. While identified portraits and prints of John Wesley are greater in number, enabling cross-bearings to be more readily made, similar issues can arise. Two early portraits, of Wesley as a boy at the Charterhouse and a pair of miniatures (the other supposedly of Charles) from his Oxford years are cases in point.28

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While the first has strong visual similarities with known portraits there is no solid premise for its identity (or date), while the second has an unsupported claim that it came from Martha Wesley. Neither can be substantiated; they form an interesting and useful pair of items but in terms of the canon remain apocryphal. There are three copies of the Williams portrait of John Wesley: the ‘mission house’ copy (bought from a shop in London, mid-nineteenth century) was stated to be ‘the original’ until another was presented to Didsbury College, Manchester, around the end of the nineteenth century, since when that has been so known – there seem no clear reasons for the adjustment. That at Lincoln College, Oxford, was also bought in London, in the late nineteenth century. All seem to be early: which, if any, is the prototype? Did Williams paint several copies (as was not unknown), and what was the history of them between the 1740s and their later emergence? Issues like this dog a serious study of the image of John Wesley. From circumstances around the painting of portraits or the production of prints, through the numerous copies, versions and variants in all manner of media – chapel china or stained glass, logo or website – at every turn of the way there are critical questions to be addressed. Little is what it immediately seems, least of all when it comes to the man himself.

Notes 1 ‘Centenary Fund, Mission House’ (DMBI). 2 See W. M. Jacob, The Clerical Profession in the Long Eighteenth Century 1680–1840 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 3 See C.D. Field ‘Membership Statistics’ in DMBI, also Robert Currie, Methodism Divided (London: Faber & Faber, 1968), p. 85ff. The population of England and Wales in 1901 was 32,527,843. 4 i.e. £1,100,000. 5 Such as the Primitive Methodist biblical scholar, A. S. Peake (1865–1929). 6 (D. P. Hughes), The Life of High Price Hughes (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1905), pp. 161–2. 7 Joseph Wright, ‘Notes on Some Portraits of John Wesley’, in PWHS, iii (1902), p. 185. 8 Peter S. Forsaith, ‘The Curious Incident of Susanna Wesley’s Rosebud Lips’ in Norma Virgoe (ed.), Angels and Impudent Women: Women in Methodism (n.p.: Wesley Historical Society Publications, 2007), pp. 31–51. 9 The Christian Miscellany or Family Visiter (London: John Mason, 1863), pp. 3ff. 10 An inaccurate image had been published by Thomas Tegg in 1836; although soon ­re-identified as Lady Rudd, Charles Wesley’s sister-in-law, it persists in being labelled as ‘Susanna Wesley’. 11 JWJ,viii,pp.342–4.His‘grand-daughters’(Mary and Jane Smith) were step-granddaughters. 12 Wesley’s Will in JWJ, viii, pp. 342–4. See Page Thomas, John Lenton, Henry Rack ‘John Wesley’s Will’, in PWHS, 54 (May 2003), pp. 29–38. Granddaughters of JW’s sister Susanna (1625–1764), who married Richard Ellison. 13 Martha Wesley b.1706 d.12 July 1791 (see George J. Stevenson, Memorials of the Wesley Family (London: Partridge, 1876), pp. 356, 383. 14 Sarah Gwynne/Wesley 1726–1822; Michael Kassler, Philip Olleson, Samuel Wesley (1766–1837) A Source Book (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 4–5.

Image, identity and institution 99 15 Invoice in Royal Academy of Music [London] archives. G. C. Williamson, John Russell R.A. (London: George Bell, 1894), p. 150; Kassler and Olleson, Samuel Wesley, p. 715. 16 Thomas Jackson, Recollections of my own Life and Times (London, 1873), pp. 227–32. 17 Stevenson, Memorials, p. 489. 18 Kassler and Olleson, Samuel Wesley, p. 481, 553. At R.A.M., London – see Peter S. Forsaith, ‘Pictorial precocity: John Russell’s portraits of Charles and Samuel Wesley’, in Stephen Banfield and Nicholas Temperley (eds.), Music and the Wesleys. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010), pp. 150–63, also in British Art Journal, X/3 (Winter/Spring 2009/2010), pp. 98–103. 19 See Wesleyan Methodist Church, Minutes of Conference, 1826, p. 155; 1829, p. 497, 1873–80. 20 WHS MS. Journal, Frank Baker papers, Duke University, NC. All sic. Not in W. R. Ward, Early Victorian Methodism:The Correspondence of Jabez Bunting, 1830–1858 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976). 21 All but ‘7’ can currently be located. 22 John Kerslake, Early Georgian Portraits (London: HMSO, 1977), p. 298. 23 William G. Beardmore in Magazine 1896, p. 27. 24 See above p. 58–9. 25 James Everett volumes in Methodist archives, John Rylands Library, Manchester. James Everett, Historical sketches of Wesleyan Methodism in Sheffield and its vicinity (Sheffield: James Montgomery, 1823), and Wesleyan Methodism in Manchester (Manchester: Russell, 1827). 26 See Gareth Lloyd, Charles Wesley and the struggle for Methodist identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. vi–viii. 27 See ed. Frank H. Cumbers, Richmond College 1843–1943 (London: Epworth, 1944), pp. 52–60 (chapter ‘The Treasures of Richmond’). 28 See Appendix A; B.1, F.1.

11 Conclusions: visualising Mr Wesley

Very soon after his passing Wesley’s followers seem to have acquiesced about which likenesses best summarised their departed leader and could be used in print or elsewhere.1 This range of images persisted until the appearance of Jackson’s synthesised portrait in the 1820s became the dominant one through the rest of that century. The results were, inevitably, hybrid: of the man in his prime but also as aged patriarch; statuesque yet energetic; physically small while spiritually giant. Equally inevitably, they were unsatisfactory. By the twentieth century the denomination was a global communion, which although fragmented retained a sense of fraternity with a common tradition. As shown in the previous chapter a range of images of its progenitor became identified as accepted, although Methodists took care to eschew caricature and satire, or pictures which might denigrate Wesley’s heroic stature.Yet this prevailing characterisation built in an underlying caricature. From Hunter and Hone onwards, portraits of Wesley carried aspects of ambiguity or duplicity, on canvas or in the making, well exemplified in the inconclusive sittings to Reynolds. These critical issues have formed a key focus of this study. Despite such ambiguities, the face of John Wesley became quickly and universally recognisable through much of the transatlantic and British imperial worlds into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The commonalities of the efforts of painters and engravers (and sculptors and potters) seem to have become synthesised and stereotyped so that an ageing clergyman with long hair and certain facial features might be identified as the personification of the Methodists’ father-in-God. While other religious traditions have developed a cult of personality around a founding figure, it should not pass unremarked that Methodism, which has hardly been renowned for its strong visual culture, has cheerfully engaged in the proliferation of the graven image of Mr Wesley. Crucifix, candles or holy pictures are mostly taboo in its sanctuaries, with this exception. Moreover in Protestantism neither Lutherans or Calvinists, for example, have promoted so incessantly pictures of their respective Reformers. This study has avoided using the term ‘icon’, yet comparisons might well be made. The visual propagation of Wesley has been, and to some extent remains, much more widespread than the credal community. While determining what

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the image has connoted to so many is inaccessible, it is nonetheless its multiplicity and ubiquity which make it intriguing. Against this, the great range of images, portraits from the life and posthumously, scene paintings and prints, produced in quantities and distributed widely, militates against any coherent and comprehensive account. Nor has it been possible to encompass all extant images.To take one example, in Wesley’s last decade, and after, a plethora of profile likenesses appeared, many claiming to be taken from the life while he preached. Some are included here, but taken together they not only illustrate a growing trend towards profile portraits, but attributions around their origin suggest an imperative for a material link with the denominational progenitor, a recurring feature which is unquantifiable.2 This tendency was further exemplified by the collection of relics – locks of his hair or other memorabilia, often accompanied by an image.3 The material culture of religions, perhaps especially of Methodism, is ripe for further research, and this study is offered as a contribution although, besides a brief excursion into ceramics and sculpture, it has only dealt with two-­ dimensional likenesses. Paintings and prints have particular processes of creation and production which differ from other representations. But without considering the multiplicity of three-dimensional objects, in a range of media, an entirely overall assessment is incomplete. While this account of images of John Wesley has addressed many critical issues, it has left numerous stones unturned which merit further study. Clerical portraiture in the eighteenth century has attracted almost no research, besides John Ingamell’s masterly, and wider ranging, survey of English bishops.4 How were the clergy depicted; what did the images connote; were they subject to the caricature and satire which other public figures attracted? Might Wesley be considered typical or otherwise? The question of the progressive though subtle re-articulation of Wesley’s image to reflect changing perceptions of masculinity (in the church as well as more broadly) has been raised only briefly.Yet here too there seems material for development. One area for attention, not thus far mentioned, is the appearance of Wesley on postage stamps, a subject which moves the phenomenon firmly into the public sphere. From setting out to offer ‘a detailed critical survey’ of the portraiture several fundamental issues have emerged.5 One concerns the ambiguity of Wesley’s own notions of art and its purpose, and specifically with relation to portraits. For it is those works ‘from the life’ which are central to the Wesley image. From them, directly or indirectly, the whole complex iconography is derived. If many of them – most notably excepting that by Williams – may be in some way problematic, understandings of Wesley for which the visual perspective is key are called into question. When Michelangelo was criticized on the grounds that some of his portraits of the Medici were not lifelike, he supposedly replied ‘what will it matter in a thousand years’ time what these men looked like?’6 Here is the portraitist’s dilemma: that a ‘striking likeness’ and good art are not always easy bedfellows

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and are sometimes in mortal combat. It would seem that when Mr Wesley sat for the painter there was a dichotomy to be addressed which was rarely resolved, for it is difficult to see (as Adam Clarke recognised) that many pictures of Wesley are either good likenesses or good art.7

Notes 1 For instance, the ‘funeral biscuit’ used a head based on the miniature by Barry. 2 See, for instance, ‘A Wesley portrait in America’, in Magazine, 1922, p. 884. 3 The Wesleyan Reformer James Everett admitted he treasured ‘everything associated with his name . . . I was superstitiously attached to his person’ (Richard Chew, James Everett [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1875], p. 15). 4 John Ingamells, The English Episcopal Portrait 1559–1835: A Catalogue (London: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 1981). 5 John Kerslake, Early Georgian Portraits (London: H.M.S.O., 1977), p. 301. 6 Quoted Ernst Gombrich, The Image and the Eye (Oxford: Phaidon, for Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 104 (citing Charles de Tolnay, Michelangelo III [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948], p. 68). 7 See J.B.B. Clarke, An account of the infancy, religious and literary life of Adam Clarke (London: T. S. Clarke, 1833, 3 vols.), vol. iii, pp. 251–2.

Plate I

Anon.: John Wesley (anon. line engraving, 1741)

Plate II

J. M. Williams: John Wesley (c.1743)

a J. Faber: John Wesley (mezzotint, 1743)

b Attrib. J. M. Williams: John Wesley (early copy)

Plate III

a Anon.: John Wesley (line engraving, G.Vertue, c.1742)

b After J. M. Williams: John Wesley (line engraving, G.Vertue, 1745)

Plate IV

Plate V

J. Harley (attrib.): John Wesley (n.d.)

Plate VI

Thomas Bakewell: John Wesley (line engraving, c.1740s), with detail

Plate VII

John Tinney: John Wesley (line engraving, c.1740s)

Plate VIII

Robert Hunter: John Wesley (o/c, 1765)

a After Robert Hunter: John Wesley (o/c, n.d.)

b Anon.: John Wesley (o/c, n.d.)

Plate IX

Plate X

Nathaniel Hone: John Wesley (o/c, 1765)

a After Nathaniel Hone: John Wesley (mezzotint, 1770)

b ‘Miss MACARONI and her GALLANT at a Print Shop’ (mezzotint, John Raphael Smith, 1773)

Plate XI

a After Nathaniel Hone [reversed]: John Wesley (mezzotint, John Greenwood, 1770)

b After Nathaniel Hone: John Wesley (Bland, c.1766)

Plate XII

Plate XIII

John Russell: John Wesley (o/c, c.1772)

a Anon.: ‘BUNG TRIUMPHANT’ (1756)

b Anon.: ‘The tree of life’ (c.1770)

Plate XIV

a Anon: ‘A coat of arms for John Wesley’ (1778)

b Anon.: ‘Toothless, he draws the Teeth of all his Flocks’ (1778)

Plate XV

Plate XVI

a (Thomas Rowlandson),‘OLD CANTWELL CANVASSING FOR LORD JANUS’ (1788)

b (Isaac Cruikshank), ‘Self murder. . .’ (1791)

Plate XVII

Anon.: ‘John Wesley’ (mezzotint ‘droll’, publ. R. Sayer, 1791)

Plate XVIII

Thomas Horsley: John Wesley (o/c, c.1784)

Plate XIX

Rev. Thomas Olave: John Wesley standing in a graveyard (o/c, 1783)

Plate XX

William Hamilton: John Wesley (o/c, 1788)

a After William Hamilton: John Wesley (line and stipple, engrv. James Fittler, 1788)

b Sylvester Harding: John Wesley (stipple, engr. J. Gardiner, 1788)

Plate XXI

Plate XXII

George Romney: John Wesley (o/c, 1789)

a After George Romney: John Wesley (mezzotint, engr. J. Spilsbury, 1789)

b After George Romney: John Wesley (mezzotint, engr. J. Ward, 1825)

Plate XXIII

Plate XXIV

a After Lewis Vaslet: John Wesley (mezzotint, engr. Campbell and Gainsborough, 1789)

b Henry Edridge: John Wesley (miniature, poss. watercolours on ivory, c.1790)

Plate XXV

Anon.: John Wesley (oils on glass, c.1789)

Plate XXVI

John Barry: John Wesley (miniature, oils on ivory, 1790)

a After John Barry: John Wesley (line engr., J. Fittler, 1791)

b After John Barry: John Wesley (stipple, J. Ridley, 1808)

Plate XXVII

Plate XXVIII

Anon. John Kay: John Wesley (etching, 1790)

Plate XXIX

J. Butterworth: John Wesley (ink on paper, 1791)

a Printing plate of John Wesley, inscribed ‘from the collection of the late Thomas Bewick’ (1791)

b William Bromley, in European Magazine, 1791

Plate XXX

Plate XXXI

John Wesley, death mask (plaster cast, 1791)

Plate XXXII

Enoch Wood: John Wesley (bust, 1784)

Plate XXXIII

Anon.: John Wesley Coade stone (inscr. Coade London 1793)

Plate XXXIV

John Renton: John Wesley (o/c, c.1824)

Plate XXXV

Anon.: John Wesley (steel engraving, publ. Tomkinson and Dean, 1838)

Plate XXXVI

John Jackson: John Wesley (o/c, c.1827)

Plate XXXVII

Gluck Rosenthal after John Jackson (in script): John Wesley (steel engraving, 1850) with detail of start

Maria Spilsbury-Taylor: John Wesley preaching in Ireland (o/c, 1815)

Plate XXXVIII

Henry Perlee Parker: ‘Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?’ (o/c, 1839–40)

Plate XXXIX

Marshall Claxton: The Death-Bed of the Rev. John Wesley (o/c, 1842)

Plate XL

Plate XLI

a Marshall Claxton: John Wesley with his friends at Oxford (o/c, c.1858)

b Anon. (after Marshall Claxton): John Wesley in the Wednesbury riots (steel engraving)

W. O. Geller: John Wesley preaching to twenty-five thousand persons in the Gwennap Pit in its original state (o/c, 1845)

Plate XLII

John Martin: ‘Joshua commanding the sun to stand still over Gibeon’ (o/c, 1816)

Plate XLIII

George Washington Brownlow: ‘John Wesley preaching from his father’s tomb, Epworth’ (o/c, 1860)

Plate XLIV

[attrib.] Alfred Hunt, ‘John Wesley preaching from his father’s tomb’ (o/c, c.1850)

Plate XLV

Plate XLVI

John Adams-Acton: ‘I look upon all the world as my parish’ (marble relief, detail, 1876)

Plate XLVII

Thomas Whaley: ‘The triumph of religion . . .’ (o/c, c.1860)

Plate XLVIII

E. G. Lewes: John Wesley meets George Whitefield (o/c, c.1889)

Plate XLIX

William Hatherell: ‘John Wesley preaching from the steps of a market cross’ (o/c, 1909)

Plate L

W.H.Y. Titcomb: ‘John Wesley preaching in Bristol’ (watercolour, 1915)

W.H.Y. Titcomb: ‘John Wesley preaching before the Mayor and Corporation of the City of Bristol in the Mayor’s Chapel, 1788’ (o/c, c.1918)

Plate LI

Plate LII

Frank O. Salisbury: John Wesley (o/c, 1932)

a Frank O. Salisbury: John Wesley [‘The Ecclesiastical Statesman’] (o/c, c.1950s)

b Frank O. Salisbury: John Wesley [‘The Scholar’] (o/c, c.1950s)

Plate LIII

Plate LIV

Richard Douglas: John Wesley mounting his horse (o/c, 1992)

Plate LV

Kathy Priddis: John Wesley (o/c, 2010)

Plate LVI

[supposed] John Wesley as a boy (o/c, n.d., cf. p. 17)

Plate LVII

a Display of busts of John Wesley, Museum of Methodism, London

b [supposed] miniature of John Wesley as a young man (watercolour on ivory?, n.d.)

Plate LVIII

Logo for ‘John Wesley 250’ (1988)

Appendix A: Iconography of principal paintings of John Wesley, with selected prints

While every effort has been made to ensure that this listing is comprehensive, the numbers of images of Wesley mean that there will almost inevitably be unintended omissions.

Abbreviations exhib. – Exhibited f/l – Full length h/l – Half length h/s – Head and shoulders L – Left n.d. – undated o/c – oils on canvas R – Right tql – Three-quarter length Sizes are given in cm., in whole cm. where exact size not known. Imperial sizes only used where that exists for (e.g.) a painting which is lost. Each entry is set out as follows

notes – Offer details of, artist and other relevant information. See Index for main text, with illustrations. Dimensions are given in centimetres; imperial equivalent is given where this is the source’s stated dimensions. descr. – Works are described where no copy is known to survive, or is illustrated. prot. – [Prototype]The presumed original, with known provenance. prov. – The provenance of a painting where this is ancillary to known versions. secy.  – [Secondary] Copies or versions after the original.

A  Portraits from the life 1  J. M. Williams (1710–c.80)  c.1743

notes – The earliest authenticated portrait of Wesley, it depicts him in scholarly pose. Dated by publication of print by Faber.1 Some visual similarity

162  Appendix A

with Riley’s portrait of Henry Compton, (Bp. London 1675–1713) engr. Beckett.2 Wesley considered Williams more gifted than Reynolds (letter to Henry Brooke, 15 Oct 1771).3 Williams (fl. 1743–66) was a minor painter of gentry and clergy including James Gibbs the architect and Rev. James Hervey (engr. Faber, 1751). Supposedly scene painter to Sheridan in Dublin 1756.4 Visually linked to Hatherell [D.16]. It is not clear which painting is the prototype. a – [Wesley College, Bristol]5 (formerly as Didsbury College, Manchester to 1945, thence in Bristol; as Wesley College 1967–2013), o/c 94 x 74 cm. Presented to Didsbury College c.1889 by Mr. John L. Barker, of Bowdon’.6 Joseph Wright considered ‘there is no reason for doubting [this] being Williams’s original’ since it had no inscription on the back (see A.1/b).7 Previous provenance unknown; possibly that ‘in the possession of Rev. R. M. Wilcox [Wesleyan Methodist Minister], Southwark’ in 1862.8 b – Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford [Methodist Church House collection] o/c 89.0 x 66.5 cm. Previously known as the ‘Mission House’ copy.9 Bought by T. Hayes in Jewin Street ‘about forty years ago’ (c.mid-1850s), then considered to be ‘the original’.10 Wright noted writing on the back ‘John Wesley M.A., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxf. John Harley pinxt’.11 c – Lincoln College, Oxford (in the ‘Wesley Room’). O/c 86.0 x 68.0 cm. Purchased 5 June 1889 for £25.00 from J. N. Breun, 9 Greek St, Soho Sq, London.12 Wright states this ‘inferior’ copy was bought from ‘a dealer’s in Greek Street, London, who had purchased it for 5/- with other rubbish’. Rev. Wellesley Wesley (1844–1931) was also interested in purchasing it.13 secy. d – Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, o/c 89.0 x 70.5 cm. History currently unknown. engr. i – Johann Faber jun. (1743) mezzotint, 35.8 x 25.5 cm. Faber (1684–1756) engraved some 165 plates, mostly mezzotint.14 The print was distributed by Williams from ‘the first house in Dogwell Court, White Fryers, where the Original Picture will continue about a month and may be seen if desired’.15 ii – G.Vertue (1742, 1745, n.d.) line, 37.4 x 25.4 cm. George Vertue (1684–1756) was a leading London engraver, active by c.1720. He produced numerous prints in line and mezzotint, including portraits and scenes.16 He produced three line engravings of Wesley of which that of 1745 [‘I. Williams pinx. . . . G. Vertue del. & sculp. 1745’] is closest to the Williams portrait, though in an oval and without background, as the Harley [A.1a]. iii – John Downes (1755) line, 19.1 x 13.3 cm. Engraved as frontispiece to John Wesley Notes on the New Testament [1755].17 iv – Carington Bowles (26 Nov 1770) 32.6 x 25.4 cm., Jno.Williams fecit/ Carington Bowles execudit’. v – T. T. Haid & fils exe. AV.

Appendix A 163



vi – J S Watson fecit/ Printed for Robert Sayer, mezzotint, 15.2 x 11.4 cm. vii – Titled mistakenly ‘Charles Wesley, M.A.’, also inscr. ‘Jno. Williams pinxt. J. Faber fecit/ Printed for & sold by Robert Sayer, Printseller near Sergeant’s Inn Fleet Street’. (39 x 28 cm. Sayer, in common with other printers, acquired successful plates either after the initial edition or, more usually, after the death of the original printer. He may have bought Faber’s plate after his death in 1756. The direction suggests after 1760 when Sayer moved along Fleet Street.18

1a  J. HARLEY (after J. M. Williams)  c.1745

Reasons for the attribution to an unidentified artist are unknown. Wright found writing on the back ‘John Wesley M.A., Fellow of Lincoln College. John Harley pinxt. 1745’.19 Copied from the original canvas’.20 Formerly known as the ‘Book-room copy’. Close visual similarity to Vertue’s print of the Williams portrait (oval, h/s only) might be suggestive of a link to Edward Harley (1689–1741, second Earl of Oxford) or family. Harley was Vertue’s patron and close friend, whose company he greatly missed in the early 1740s. prot. a – Epworth Old Rectory, Lincolnshire o/c 92.0 x 63.5 cm. Possibly from Charles Wesley’s family.21 Formerly at Wesleyan Book Room/ Methodist Publishing House, City Road, London.22 engr. See A1/ii. 2  Robert Hunter (1715/20–1803, fl. 1748–80)  1765

notes – Sitting recorded by Wesley, 31 July 1765 in Dublin.23 ‘Mr Buttress . . . says. . . “I well remember my father saying, that when Mr. Wesley gave this portrait to my great-grandfather, he said that he considered it the best likeness taken of him” ’.24 Hunter was ‘the establishment portrait painter in Dublin for the second half of the eighteenth century, he was much admired by his contemporaries and slightly later critics, including William Carey, who saw him as “a walking chronicle of everything relative to the Irish artists and arts”, and W. B. Sarsfield Taylor, who said he took ‘excellent likenesses’ and that his practice was extensive.25 Hunter was much influenced by English painters such as Thomas Hudson, Reynolds, and Arthur Devis, whose work he knew through engravings and frequently used as a source for his own compositions. It is uncertain whether he ever visited England.26 prot. a – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London, o/c 75 x 62 cm. Presented by a descendant of Mr Buttress for whom it was apparently painted. Kerslake noted a paper affixed to the rear of the canvas,Wright records it later as in the possession of Mr J. J. Buttress of Crouch Hill, London.27

164  Appendix A

secy. b – (copy) The Leys School, Cambridge (on loan from John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, London) o/c 45.2 x 36.7 cm. The ‘Jamieson Farm portrait’. h/s only – cut down. c – (later copy) World Methodist Museum, Lake Junaluska, NC. o/c 45.7 x 40.5 cm., [18 x 16 in.] image reversed. d – (variant) John Rylands Library, Manchester o/c. The ‘Ranmoor College portrait’, recorded in a photograph of 1897 in ­Methodist Archives.Telford gives this as presented by James Wild Esq. of Fulham House, nr. London to the Methodist New Connexion. Thence from Ranmoor ­College (Sheffield) to Victoria Park/Hartley Victoria College, Manchester.28 Upon closure c.1974, all portraits passed to the University of Manchester Library. e – Radstock Museum [RDKRM 1990.005], o/c 6.5 x 52.0 cm., after Hunter by Gerald Albert Cains (b.1932), 1989 by gift 1990. engr. J.Watson, 35.5 x 28 cm. inscr. ‘Robert Hunter pinxt/Weaver exec/James Watson fecit/Price 5s’. Watson (c.1740–c.90) was born in Ireland and became active in London. He was a celebrated mezzotint engraver.29 3  Nathaniel Hone (1718–84)  c.1766

notes – Walpole described Wesley in Bath in 1766: ‘a lean elderly man, fresh coloured, his hair smoothly combed; but with a soupçon of a curl at the ends, wondrous clean, but as evidently an actor as Garrick’.30 Engraved by Bland as the frontispiece to Wesley’s Explanatory Notes on the Old Testament [Bristol: William Pine], published in instalments from 1765, inscribed Aetatis 63. The dating to be preferred is in a 1766 note ‘To the Subscribers’‘. . . as the Work unavoidably exceeds what was at first intended, the Subscribers shall receive GRATIS, A Print of Mr. Wesley, with each of the volumes, to serve as a Frontispiece’.31 From an Irish artistic family, Hone was known as a London portrait artist who achieved some notoriety with his Pictorial Conjuror, lampooning Reynolds, selected for the R.A. in 1775 although not then hung. Hone’s pictures of children are among his best; a portrait of ‘the young Wesley’ (possibly Samuel 1766–1837) is attrib. to Hone.32 prot. a – National Portrait Gallery, London [NPG 135] o/c 125.7 x 99.7 cm. Bought 1861 from Graves from ‘the sale of Miss Wesley’s effects’, discussed by Kerslake.33 Thought to be the prototype by provenance through the family, also the presence of pin holes indicating the engraver’s use. secy. b – Methodist Publishing House, Peterborough 73.5 x 63.5 cm. [29 x 25 in.] Possibly ‘Hone’s large three-quarter length’ in John Wesley’s house, London c.1906.34 c – through Christies, London, 10 Dec 1965 [Lot 168] 170 x 115 cm [50 x 40 in], withdrawn prior to sale. Property of D. Wellesly Wesley in dirty condition, possibly a later copy.35

Appendix A 165

d – Methodist Archive and History Center, Drew University, Madison NJ. H/s, image reversed. Said to be a copy by an unknown artist in Tewkesbury c.1771, given by Wesley to John Cole (1750–1808) who emigrated to America 1785, settling near Baltimore.36 e – World Methodist Museum, Lake Junaluska o/c 60 x 70 mm. [24 x 27 in.]. f – Epworth Old Rectory, Lincolnshire [EPWOR 2009–410] o/c 76.2 x 63.3 cm. Copy by Margaret Grose, 1920. Possibly cut down. It may be that presented to Wesley’s Chapel, City Road, London in 1928 by Lord Marshall.37 engr. i – Bland (c.1766) line engraving, 16.5 x 13.0 cm. Benezit cites only one other engraving by Bland, of George Carpenter, possibly 5th Earl of Tyrconnell (1750–1805); however, Bland also engraved John Wesley by Russell and William Romaine. ii – Carington Bowles (5 December 1770) mezzotint, 41.5 x 36.8 cm. Bowles’s print-shop in St Paul’s Churchyard in the later eighteenth century was depicted in engravings by John Raphael Smith and Robert Dighton.38 iii – John Greenwood (printed Robert Sayer, 20 December 1770) mezzotint, image reversed, 34.0 x 28.0 cm. ‘Done from an Original Picture in the Possession of Thos. Wooldridge Esqr. of East Florida’. East Florida was a British colony 1763–83. Greenwood was b. Boston, New England, but settled in London from 1763, becoming a prominent auctioneer, also artist and engraver of mezzotints. Exhib. Society of Artists.39 ‘His plates after Hone are generally considered to be his best productions’.40 It is possible that Greenwood auctioned the picture and engraved a plate before it was shipped to America. iv – h/l in ‘A Striking Likeness’, a possibly satirical treatment ‘of the late Justly Celebrated, and Pious Christian, the truly Reverend Mr. John Wesley A.M.’ with ‘A New Song in Praise of Methodism’. Published 22 March 1791, C. Sheppard, Lambert Hill, Doctor’s Commons. v – Fry, stipple, 12.4 x 10.3 cm (1824) 4  John Russell, R.A. (1745–1806) 

c.1772

On 30 December 1771, Wesley recorded ‘At my brother’s request I sat again for my picture’.41 It seems likely that this was the Russell portrait although prints did not appear until 1773.42 Compositional similarities between Russell and Hone suggest of an element of plagiarism. Bland’s engraving is possibly the best likeness of the original portrait. Around this time Russell painted Charles Wesley and his family43 and his later (oils) portraits of Charles jnr. and Samuel jnr. (Royal Academy of Music, London) are among his finest. Russell experienced a Methodist conversion under Martin Madan in 1764, and remained committed to the Methodist cause while pursuing a career as

166  Appendix A

an artist. Apprenticed to Francis Cotes (1726–70), Russell became chiefly known for his sensitive portraits in pastels, elected R.A. 1788. At this time, Russell’s career had not developed, and he painted a number of Evangelicals including Lady Huntingdon, G. Whitefield, M. Madan, W. Wilberforce. Portrait of a Clergyman exhib. R.A. in 1771 (269) is usually identified as Charles Wesley, although a small whole length is not known to be extant. prot. a – Kingswood School, Bath o/c 125 x 100 cm. Traditionally supposed to be the original, but possibly a copy, which Kerslake supports. Discussed by Telford and Workman drawing on Williamson.44 secy. b – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London [LDWMM/1993/1613] o/c 118 x 94 cm. Formerly at the Leysian Mission, London. engr. i – Faden and Jeffryes (20 March 1773). Faden was the artist’s father-in-law, and was principally a mapmaker. ii – Bland (July 1773). 5 Thomas Horsley  [1784]

notes – ‘Picture!’ noted in Wesley’s diary for Saturday 5 June 1784.45 Painted for Robert Hutton of Bishops Wearmouth where the attributed artist’s son suggested it was painted. A number of questions around the dating, artist, location and multiplicity of copies are discussed by Bretherton concluding that the artist is otherwise unknown, and that a dating of 1790 is too late.46 The artist was probably ‘Thomas Horsley, Painter, Sunderland’ who was made a freemason 24 November 1783 and married Mary Roxby 26 January 1793.47 His son Thomas John Horsley, 1795–1844, specialised in watercolour portraits. Possibly related to the painter John Callcott Horsley (1817–1903). When the prototype was relined, a letter on the rear of the canvas stated that the vignette of the ‘New Chapel’, City Road, London, was copied from an illustration in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine [possibly Dec. 1781] and added years later ‘by a cousin’.48 This addition, c.1830, is an aid to dating copies. prot. a – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London [LDWMM/1993/1478] o/c 70 x 51 cm. Presented by Charles Hutton Potts (grandson of Robert Hutton) to Richmond College, Surrey, 1863.Thence to John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism c.1972 on closure of Richmond College. secy. b – Sunderland Art Gallery [TWCMS : B3551] o/c 61 x 49.5 cm. c – Brunswick Methodist Church, Newcastle-upon-Tyne o/c 63.5 x 53.0 cm. Previously at Whitburn Wesleyan Methodist Church, Monkwearmouth, Sunderland. Possibly that noted as in the ownership of Jacob Rowell, then Anthony Steel, of Barnard Castle, Co. Durham.49

Appendix A 167

d – World Methodist Museum, Lake Junaluska o/c 60 x 50 cm. [23½ x 19¾ in.]. e – Melbourne, Australia Pastels, 56 x 49 cm. Through Joels Auction, Melbourne, 1991. Private collection. f – St. John Methodist Church, Ashbourne, Sunderland. Formerly at Sans Street Mission Chapel, Sunderland until closure in 1963, then Park Road Methodist Church to c.1990s.50 g – Brunswick Methodist Church, Newcastle-upon-Tyne o/c 62 x 47 cm. With reveal of books, not the ‘New Chapel’. h – Elvet Methodist Church, Durham Plain background, placed in memory of Capt. R.H. Tindale, May 1938. 5a  (attrib.) Thomas Horsley  [1784]

notes – Although attributed to Horsley, the (reversed) head is so dissimilar from other copies that being a copy from Horsley portrait must be doubted. It might not be impossible that this was the portrait supposed to have been painted for Josiah Dornford of Deptford, c.1785.51 a – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London [LDWMM/1993/1617] o/c 52 x 43 cm. 6 William Hamilton (1751–1801)  1788

notes – On 22 December 1787 Wesley ‘. . . sat an hour and a half, in all, for my picture. . .’ .52 Curnock identifies it as this portrait, and discusses the coat of arms which appears on the Fittler engraving.53 prot. a – National Portrait Gallery, London [NPG 317], o/c 128.0 x 101.9 cm. Commissioned by James Milbourne (1745–1826), a carver, gilder and picture framer, at 221 Strand, also a member of Wesley’s London Society, remaining in the Milbourne family until given to the N.P.G. in 1871, probably on the death of James Milbourne’s eponymous grandson. Exhib. National Portrait Exhibitions, London, 1867 [828]. secy. b – Victoria University,Toronto Copy by J.W.L. Forster, c.1900 (see also C.4). Possibly donated by a Mrs Coleberry c.1930. engr J. Fittler line, 33.0 x 27.5 cm., November 1788. Published by James Milbourne. Fittler (1758–1835) was chiefly a line engraver of scenes. He also engraved Lady Huntingdon after Bowyer.54 6a  Robert J. Westley  1927

notes – A head and shoulders copy of the Hamilton, noted as painted by ‘a descendant’ [sic].55 prot. John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London [LDWMM/ 1993/1619] Oil on paper on panel, 51 x 40 cm.

168  Appendix A 7  George Romney (1734–1802)56 1789

notes – The published Journal recording a single sitting (5 January 1789) masks the evidence of Wesley’s private diary that there were four sittings for the portrait, on consecutive Monday mornings 29 Dec 1788; 5, 12 and 19 January 1789, of varying lengths. Pointon notes the volume of Romney’s practice at this period: in 1783, for instance, he received 593 sittings.57 Romney was by 1789 the leading London portraitist and Reynolds’s chief rival: many of his society portraits attest to his skills. By 1790 he was earning £3000 per year, although his infatuation with the now absent Emma Hart (later Lady Hamilton) was affecting his work.58 This may be a factor in the less-than-exciting treatment of Wesley. John Hickling (d.1858), the last preacher to survive who had been admitted by Wesley (1788), said of the engraving by Ward: ‘that is John Wesley as I knew him 60 years ago’.59 Wright considered (possibly from Hickling) ‘the portrait bears all the semblance of reality. . . . There is, however, one fault. Wesley is painted of much more bulky form than he really was. This may be due, in part, to an amplitude of gown, or it may be that the short time Wesley sat for his painting was devoted to securing an exact likeness of the features. . .’ . Wright may not have realised that the diary gives four sittings and assumed only one, as in the Journal.60 A. H. Carr suggested that Wesley’s face was modelled on a sketch of John Henderson as Falstaff ‘apparelled as a clergyman’ and that Jonathan Spilsbury later overpainted Romney’s canvas to ‘reduce the bulk and adjust the facial features’.61 Mrs Sarah Tighe(1743–1822) was a wealthy Irish supporter of Wesley who used J. Spilsbury as her agent as well as engraver of the painting.62 He paid Romney £30 for the picture and frame, and it was despatched to Ireland on 19 July.63 Wesley visited Mrs Tighe 25 June 1789, and a later painting by Maria Spilsbury-Taylor (Jonathan Spilsbury’s daughter) expresses that visit, also making a visual reference to the Romney portrait (D.2). Among the many copies Wallington noted two ‘replicas’ by Romney (‘b’ and ‘c’); others by Henry Tighe (in 1910 the property of T. W. Webber of Kellavil, Ireland, and possibly that which Hamilton gave as by Mrs Tighe’s daughter Elizabeth64), by Maria Spilsbury-Taylor (for Rev.T. Roberts, Bristol; see A.7.ii), another by the daughter of Rev. Joseph Sutcliffe.65 Many copies also show ‘the peculiarity that the clerical dress appears to be heavily trimmed with fur’.66 The picture at Wesley House, Cambridge claimed to be by Romney is generally discredited (F.4).67 prot. a – Philadelphia Museum of Art [M1928–1–37,The John Howard McFadden Collection, 1928], o/c 76.5 x 63.5 cm. Sold by Mrs Tighe’s executors 1815 ‘to a Wesleyan for about £40’ possibly the businessman Joseph Butterworth M.P. (1770–1826), thence his heirs.68 Sold Christies, 1 March 1873, lot 65 (530 gns.), bought W. R. Cassels.69 Sold Christies 30 Jun 1906, lot 62, (720gns.) bought Agnews.70 Sold 5

Appendix A 169

September 1910 to John H. McFadden of Philadelphia, thence Philadelphia Museum of Art.71 Exhib.‘Romney Exhibition’, Grafton Gallery 1900 (74);‘Wesley in America’ exhibition, Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, 2003.72 secy. b – National Portrait Gallery, London [NPG 2366], o/c 74.9 x 62.9 cm. Bequeathed 1929 M.S. Rowe, by descent from Rev. G. Stringer Rowe, who purchased it c.1842. Exhib. National Portrait Exhibitions, London, 1868 [870] ‘Lent by Rev. G. Stringer Rowe’. c – Christ Church, Oxford [LP 188] o/c 76.2 x 61.0 cm. A fine early copy possibly by J Spilsbury, purchased through subscription 1892, for £150. d – Lincoln College, Oxford o/c 75 x 62 cm. Copied from the original in Philadelphia by Wilbur. D. Hamilton, c.1928.73 e – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London. [LDWMM/1992/1427] o/c 76 x 67 cm. Later copy. f – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London. [LDWMM/1992/421] o/c 49 x 41 cm. g – World Methodist Museum, Lake Junaluska o/c 62 x 75 cm. h – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, the ‘New Room’, Bristol. An amateur copy, o/c 31 x 24 cm. i – Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, [Westminster College collection] o/c 73 x 61 cm. Painted by Kate Gray on loan from Wesley’s Chapel, London c.1958.74 engr i – J. Spilsbury (1789) mezzotint 28.5 x 22.5 cm. A variant in an oval, possibly stipple over mezzotint but otherwise identical, is known. The brothers Jonathan (bap. 1737–1812) and John Spilsbury (1739–69) were both printmakers. Jonathan was also a portraitist who exhibited Society of Artists 1763–71 and R.A. 1776–84 and taught drawing at Harrow School c.1785–89. There he taught Mrs Tighe’s sons: she invited him to Ireland to tutor her daughters. An evangelical, he was associated with Methodists and joined the Moravians in 1781. John is credited as the inventor of the jigsaw puzzle.75 ii – W. Ward (1825) with vignette of Epworth Parish Church, mezzotint with etching, 35.6 x 26 cm.76 William Ward A.R.A. (1766–1828) and his brother James were prominent mezzotint engravers.77 The print presumably from the copy by Maria Spilsbury/Taylor was prepared under the ‘immediate superintendence’78 of John Jackson (see below, C.2), who was James Ward’s son-in-law. Published by Rev. Thomas Roberts (1780–1841), minister of King Street Baptist Church, Bristol, ‘a monument of Mr. Robert’s pious esteem for the memory of the venerable Founder of Methodism’.79 In 1827 the Wesleyan Book Room committee proposed: That 100 Guineas be given to Mr. T. Roberts for his Plate of Mr. Wesley, and that the stock of prints on hand be purchased by the Book

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Steward at the rate of five shillings for the Proofs and two shillings and sixpence for the common ones.80 iii – Oleo-lithograph by George Baxter, 8.9 x 7.6 cm. [3½ x 3 in.] Baxter (1804–67) invented a novel method of printing in oil colours c.1835. A version signed ‘Smetham/Jobson’ is possibly modelled on the Baxter print. See also a miniature by Alexander Grimaldi [B.6]. 8 Anon.  n.d. (?1780s)

notes Several similar three-quarter view compositions may be related, including a portrait apparently taken to America and given by Thomas Coke (the first Methodist ‘superintendent’ in America) to Daniel Hitt in New York in 1808 but ‘destroyed by a fire in Cincinatti in 1868, where it had been sent to be lithographed’.81 These also have a resemblance to the miniature by John Barry [B.4], possibly suggestive of an image derived from that. Sometimes attributed to Benjamin West (1738–1820) for which there is no evidence. The whereabouts of the rather plain head-and-shoulders portrait shown by Telford (‘signed . . . in the upper left-hand corner ‘B.W, 1789’) is now unknown.82 West, a Quaker, was born in America, but after the death of his mother travelled to London, arriving 1760. He became President of the R.A. 1792–1820 in succession to Reynolds.83 descr h/s, white shoulder length hair with curled ends. Gown and bands. Some h/l with R hand in R foreground. a – Lincoln College, Oxford [PCF64] o/c 50 x 40 cm. b – John Wesley’s chapel (‘The New Room’) Bristol o/c 74 x 56 cm. c – Scottish NPG [PG 2113] attrib. Henry Bone, pencil/chalks on paper, 23.2 x 18.4 cm. see B.4. Bone (1755–1834) is best known for his enamel miniatures (for which he made preparatory pencil sketches then laid onto chalk), often copied from a painted portrait. These were larger than usual, so this sketch may relate to projected finished work. His Cornish origins (a near-contemporary and friend of John Opie), and a likeness by John Jackson, suggest at least some link with Methodism so a possibility that this sketch was taken from life.84 A small h/s profile enamels ‘Painted by Henry Bone R.A.’ is a different image and now seems unknown.85 engr i – Coloured lithograph inscr.‘Strobridge & Co’ (Cincinnati) [74 x 57 cms.]. 9  Richard Westall R.A. (1765–1836)  1791

‘The Death of Revd. John Wesley 2 March 1791’ notes – Purporting to be John Wesley on his deathbed, it was probably taken from his ‘lying in state’, as discussed by Baker.86 Marshall Claxton may have

Appendix A 171

used this likeness for Holy Triumph (D.4). Three copies of the death mask survive.87 Westall was a leading painter and illustrator in London, entering R.A. schools 1785, elected R.A. 1794. This dates from the outset of his career. An influential artist, he was criticised for using visual tricks and appealing to sentiment. His best known output is drawings and watercolours.88 prot. Original sepia drawing with Colnaghi, London, 1952.

B Miniatures 1 Anon

notes – Pair of miniatures attributed as of John and Charles Wesley as young men, possibly when at Oxford. prot. John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, [LDWMM 2006/10418/1–2] possibly oils on ivory (each) 3.5 x 2.5 cm. Note accompanies: ‘the Wesley brothers as young men’.While the costume might suggest a later date than 1720s/1730s, the physiognomic likenesses are closely related to John and Charles given that Charles Wesley later wore a wig for all other known portraits. An alternative identification as Charles Wesley’s sons Charles and Samuel is unlikely.They were discovered in 1917 stored with the will of Martha Wesley, which might indicate provenance.89 2  Lewis Vaslet (1742–1808)  1789

notes – Wesley noted visits to Mr or Mrs Vaslet in Bath 1788 and 1789, although an identification with Lewis Vaslet, painter and pastellist, is unproven.90 Vaslet was recorded in Bath between 1775 and 1805, his ‘distinctive compositions often involve head and shoulders at the same ¾ orientation, and many are viewed slightly from below’.91 Telford noted an ‘original drawing’ at the Mission House as well as engravings by John Jones and T. A. Dean.92 engr. – Inscr.‘Vaslet del.; Engr. J. Jones’ (36.4 x 26.1 cm.). Published 20 June 1791 by ‘Campbell & Gainsborough, Publick Library, Bath’. 3  Henry Edridge (1769–1821)  c.1790

notes – Henry Edridge attended R.A. schools from 1784; Reynolds admired his work. He set up his portraiture business in 1789, ‘and became well known for a style of portraiture that combined the delicacy of miniature painting with breadth of draughtsmanship’.93 ‘Edridge drew his subject in soft lead pencil, applying watercolour with a miniaturist’s technique of stippling, principally to the face and hands, but using some washes or body colour to

172  Appendix A

enrich the drapery. His meticulous pencil lines, occasionally strengthened by pen, give his figures a posed appearance, but the accuracy of dress and detail is remarkable.’94 prot. John Wesley’s chapel (‘The New Room’) Bristol [?watercolours on ivory, 9.7 x 7.8 cm.].  Remains of (?) poem ‘By a lady . . . 1 October 1819’ on reverse. engr. – Inscr. ‘Engraved by Ridley from an Original Drawing by Edridge’, frontispiece to T. Coke and H. Moore Life of Wesley (1792). Stipple engraver William Ridley (1764–1838) contributed many illustrations to books and magazines, his portrait prints for the Methodist Magazine are remarkable for their fine detail of expression: ‘some of his best work is to be found in the “Evangelical Magazine” ’.95 A painting on glass (Oxford Brookes University, Wesley Historical Society collection, 16 x 11.3 cm.) of Wesley ‘taken as he usually Preached Aged 86’ is probably derived from this image. 4  John Barry (fl. 1784–1817)  1790

notes – On 22 February 1790, Wesley noted ‘I . . . once more sat for my picture. . .’ . Sittings were also recorded in his diary for 13 and 25 (as well as 22) February: it is assumed that all these were for this miniature. Wesley was at that time revising his Journal (‘writ narrative’) and the sittings could have taken place in his house, so shown with a book, rather than preaching as Wright suggested.96 Long attributed to Richard Arnold, a member of the Society of Artists who exhib. R.A. in 1791 (283, Miniature of a Gentleman). As Kerslake concluded, an attribution seems preferable to Barry who exhib. ‘Portrait of a clergyman R.A., 1790, (Rev. John Westley’[sic], 176), whereas there is no comparable evidence for Arnold. This is supported by the inscription on the Fittler print. Barry also exhib. ‘Portrait of a clergyman’ in 1792 and 1816. Address as 1, Old Compton St.97 Not to be confused with the history and scene painter James Barry (1741– 1806) although the ambiguity of the Fittler print inscription may have led to this identification, and an erroneous belief that Wesley was included in James Barry’s Great Room mural canvases ‘The Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture’ at the [Royal] Society of Arts.98 A drawing of Wesley’s head by Henry Bone (1755–1834) is possibly based on this image, potentially the 1809 engraving. [National Portrait Gallery of Scotland PG2113, pencil and chalks 23.1 x 18.5 cm.] prot. a – Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford [Wesley Historical Society library collection] oils on ivory, oval, 10.2 x 8.2 cm.The signature is indistinct (fall of table cover, lower R). Identified as original by detail of painting and presence of signature. Gold frame in later papier-maché mount (13.6 x 11.4 cm.) in rectangular ornate gilt frame (22.5 x 20.5 cm.). Label on rear

Appendix A 173

William Wade/Picture Frame maker, Carver, Gilder/PRINT SELLER/ No 86 Leadenhall Street/LONDON. . . Around mid-nineteenth century ‘the original was in the possession of . . . Thomas Marriott’ (1786–1852), of a prominent London Wesleyan Methodist family. Rev. George Osborn (1808–91) inherited his library and manuscripts (many associated with Wesley), possibly including this. Rev. F. F. Bretherton married Osborn’s great niece: his library formed the core of the W.H.S. library, suggesting descent through the family.99 secy. One of the following may have been the property of J. Lambert Jones, Dublin, before 1903.100 b – Through Christies, 2 May 1901 (‘Miniature portraits’, lot 124, vendor W Girdlestone.) Paper on rear: ‘. . . became the property of the Revd. C. Girdlestone, 1840, whose wife was a niece of the widow of Revd. Dr. Barry vicar of St. Mary’s Reading’.101 Bought Hallam, 25gns. Whereabouts unknown, although may be B.4.c or d. c – Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford [Methodist Church House collection], oils on ivory, 10.0 x 8.1 cm. As (b), however detail is less sharp. Conservation reveals 2 ivory panels. No signature. Note on reverse ‘from the late/ Dr Roberts’/Museum at/ Bridport’. d – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London. As (b), detail less distinct. No signature. Enlarged copies. secy. B.4X/a – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London (c.1791) [LDWMM/1993/1484] o/c 32.1 x 25.2 cm. As ‘Painted from the life by James Barry’. Attached card gives provenance through Morrell family, Catterick,Yorks. to Rev. Alexander C. Blain. B.4X/b – World Methodist Museum, Lake Junaluska, NC, U.S.A. o/c 60 x 75 cm. [24 x 30 in]. A h/s version was destroyed by fire in Cincinnati in 1868, where it had been sent to be lithographed. Telford terms this the ‘Hitt’ portrait from its association with Rev. Daniel Hitt, Methodist Book Agent in New York 1808–14 to whom it was given by Dr Coke.102 See A.8. engr. – i – ‘J. Fittler sculpt., Drawn from a miniature of the same size, painted by Barry . . . Publish’d April 1791’. H/s only, plain background in oval. ii – (W.) Ridley ‘Done from original picture of the same size’. Frontispiece to Works of John Wesley, ed. J. Benson (1809). A precise engraving of the entire original. 5  J[ohn] Butterworth (c.1760–c.1820)  1790

notes– ‘SATURDAY, May 1. 4 Prayed; Magazine; letters. 8 Tea, religious talk, prayer, necessary business. 10 Chaise. 12.30 Tadcaster . . . 4.45 York. . .’ .103 Wesley had spent that week in and around Leeds and Bradford, so

174  Appendix A

Butterworth may have already undertaken preparatory studies. It follows that Butterworth must have taken, or completed, his likeness before Wesley took chaise for Tadcaster and York, which may account for the ‘much simpler style than is usual for Butterworth’ noted in Bonhams auction catalogue. Through Bonhams, New Bond Street [London] sale 10534 (‘Portraits Miniatures and Silhouettes’, Tuesday 7 October 2003, lot 9). Previous history unknown. Catalogue description: A Silhouette of the Reverend John Wesley . . . hammered brass frame, the reverse with broken trade label and later covering inscribed by/Father of/Uncle Butterworth/who was great great/uncle of W.R.**** . . . It would appear that Butterworth added the inscription after Wesley’s death, 10 months after taking his profile. prot. a – Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, U.S.A. 8.9 cm. (3½”), painted on card, inscr. ‘The Revd JOHN WESLEY/Died March 2d 1791 Aged 88/Taken from the Life by J. Butterworth Leeds May 1st 1790’. Bought Bonhams, London, Portrait Miniatures and Silhouettes, 7 October 2003, Lot 9. 6 William Grimaldi R.A. (1751–1830)  c.1827

notes – The artist was son to Alexander Grimaldi who with his brother Charles travelled to Georgia with J. and C.Wesley in 1735. On 25 December 1774, John Wesley ‘buried the body of Esther Grimaldi [the artist’s mother] who died in the full triumph of faith’.104 Image modelled on Romney’s portrait. prot. a – Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford [Methodist Church House collection] enamel on copper 8.5 x 6.9 cm. Inscription: presented by the artist to the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society 1829. secy. b – said to have been painted in the sitter’s lifetime. Now unknown. Exhib. New Gallery, London, 1891 [1165], lent by Baroness Burdett-Coutts (patron of Marshall Claxton).105

C  Posthumous portraits This section does not generally include portraits which were copies, versions or derivatives from other likenesses. 1  John Renton R.A. (1774–c.1841)  c.1824

notes – Renton exhib. portraits and landscapes as a painter at R.A. 1799–1839. W. G. Beardmore commented on the composition: ‘it has a powerful and somewhat heavy lower face . . . no picture of Wesley has a greater air of

Appendix A 175

reality and naturalness’.106 Heitzenrater suggests this was submitted as a frontispiece for a new edition of Wesley’s Hymns but rejected.107 prot. John Wesley’s chapel (‘The New Room’) Bristol [o/c, 92 x 73 cm.]. engr. W. T. Fry (28.5 x 22.6 cm) 1824. ‘Engraved W.T.Fry from the original picture by J. Renton. Printed May 15 1824 for the proprietor by W.T.Fry, 4 Swinton St, Grays Inn Road’. Fry (1789–1843) exhibited his work at Suffolk St. 1824–30.108 2  John Jackson R.A. (1778–1831)  c.1826

notes – This ‘synthesised’ portrait received widespread circulation in the nineteenth century. The minutes of the Wesleyan Book Room committee for 14 June 1827 record: 1 That the portrait in the possession of Mr. Townsend be the approved likeness of Mr. Wesley from which the painting is to be made in a preaching attitude. 2 That Mr. Jackson be requested to paint, in his best style, from that and other portraits with which he is to be furnished, a likeness of the late Rev. John Wesley, to be considered the standard portrait of him, & from which superior engravings shall be taken on copper.109 It was used as (and possibly painted specifically for) the frontispiece to a new edition of Wesley’s Hymns (1827). It continued to appear as the frontispiece to the hymn book, supposedly ‘reaching in sixty years, the enormous total of six millions’, disregarding other iterations of the prints.110 It is, however, unsatisfactory and received criticism from an early date which has generally been summarised by Wright and Heitzenrater.111 Largely based on Wood’s bust and Romney’s portrait, it has been much copied, some painted canvases may be based on engravings. The identity of Mr Townsend is unclear. The Wesleyan Methodist Magazine described the picture:  . . . the work was undertaken con amore . . . to convey to posterity a more vivid impression of the mind and heart, as well as of the features, of a man whose name will ever stand prominent in the records of the church of Christ. Of the painting produced by Mr. Jackson, it is enough to say, that it is among the happiest efforts of his successful pencil, and of the engraving, which is executed by Mr. Thomson, that it is, perhaps, as spirited a copy as the nature of the art would admit.112 John Jackson (elected R.A. 1817) was a leading portrait artist of the later English school, exhibiting 145 pictures at the R.A. 1804–30. His prolixity was not matched by his proficiency, and much of his work seems to lack the quality

176  Appendix A

he could, and sometimes did, achieve. Contemporary and friend of Constable, who mourned his ‘great loss to the Academy and the public’.113 He was a skilled copyist, astonishing observers in Rome with his rapid copy of Titian’s ‘Sacred and Profane Love’ and made a small replica of Correggio’s ‘Agony in the Garden’ for the parish church in his home village of Lastingham,Yorkshire. A second generation Methodist, he provided portrait images for the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine between 1813–30. He also painted a synthesised portrait of the Wesleys’ associate, Rev. John Fletcher, vicar of Madeley, Shropshire.114 prot. a – Epworth Old Rectory [EPWOR 2009–385] o/c 96 x 75 cm., Original painting, at the Wesleyan Book Room, City Road, from commission, afterwards termed Methodist Publishing House. To Epworth c.1972. secy. b – Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford [Methodist Church House collection] o/c 54.0 x 41.5 cm. c – Lincoln College, Oxford (dining hall) o/c 76.2 x 50.8 cm. d – Cliff College, Calver, nr. Sheffield e – World Methodist Museum, Lake Junaluska NC o/c 115 x 105 cm., (45½ x 41½ in.) f – World Methodist Museum, Lake Junaluska NC o/c 75 x 60 cm., (30 x 24 in.), oval. Presented by Charles C. Parlin, New York, c.1960.115 g – National Library of Australia o/c 98.8 x 87 cm. [Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK10165]. Exhib.: ‘The Great Masters by Mortimer Menpies’, National Library of Australia, July – October 2002. h – Wesleyan Museum, First Methodist Church, Birmingham, MI o/c 130 x 110 cm. Formerly at Wesley Memorial Church, Oxford. i – Bishop Wearmouth Parish Church, Sunderland j – Selly Oak Methodist Church, Birmingham k – Trinity Methodist Church, Savannah, Georgia l – Wesley Memorial Church, Oxford (approx 152.5 x 116.0 cm.) m – Private collection, Cheshire n – Private collection, Didsbury, Manchester o – Private collection, Oxfordshire Smaller versions of the portrait are also known: CX/a – Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas o/c 42.0 x 35.0 cm. [16½ x 13¾ in]. Heitzenrater suggests this may be a preparatory sketch or an early copy.116 CX/b – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London [LDWMM/1997/6655] o/c 31 x 26 cm. CX/c – Johnston School, Durham 26.5 x 23.0 cm. [10½ x 9 in] attrib. to William Owen. Date of 1778 is conjectural. Given by Mrs Vazeille Smith. No longer known.117 CX/d Birmingham/Stourport engr i – J. Thomson (1828) 23.5 x 18.5 cm. James Thompson or Thomson (c.1785–1850) was a line engraver of portraits.118

Appendix A 177

ii – T. A. Dean (1827) 23.6 x 18.4 cm., 11.2 x 8.6 cm. (& other). iii – J. B. Longacre (24.0 x 18.2 cm.) James Barton Longacre (1794–1869) was chief engraver to the U.S. Mint from 1844 and responsible for the design of many coins. iv – In script, by Glück Rosenthal, 1850, 55.5 x 44.5 cm. Some 20,000 words of a biography of Wesley form the image, with a border which includes allegorical and biographical material. Artist’s name at bottom L corner, besides start/finish.119 3 Anon.  c.1900

notes – After print by George Zobel (1810–81) publ. William Tegg 1866. World Methodist Museum, Lake Junaluska NC, oils on wooden panel 31.5 x 41 cm. [11.5 x 16 in.]. 4  J.W.L. Forster (1850–1938)  c.1900

descr. – f/l, facing L, cassock, gown, bands. R hand raised, L hand clutching book to chest. Plain ground. notes – John Wycliffe Lowes Forster, ‘a strong supporter of the work of the United Church [of Canada]’, visited Britain around 1900 and painted portraits of John and Charles Wesley and their mother, Susanna, for Victoria College, Toronto.120 Those of John and Charles, in preaching pose, represent heroic perceptions of both. a – Victoria University,Toronto o/c Not now known. b – Methodist Central Hall,Westminster, London A smaller copy apparently presented by the artist, possibly for the opening of the Hall in 1912. Not now known. 5  Frank O. Salisbury C.V.O. (1874–1962)

notes – The first of Salisbury’s three paintings of Wesley was made to support the restoration of Wesley’s House, City Road, London, at the time of British Methodist Union.121 The architect C.F.A. Voysey modelled for the portrait at Salisbury’s request, who was amazed to discover that Voysey was a ‘descendant’ of the Wesleys, hence his forename Annesley.122 Recounted in Salisbury’s romantic but not always accurate Portrait and Pageant.123 Initially trained for work in stained glass, Salisbury was an anachronistic exponent of the English School, most noted for his photo-realistic portraits and scene paintings of royalty, state occasions and the establishment. A deeply religious man, committed to nonconformity although a convinced ecumenist.124 Salisbury painted three [original] variants.

178  Appendix A

a – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London [LDWMM/1997/6654] o/c 127 x 102 cm., s. ‘Frank O Salisbury’. ‘The Founder’, 1932. Exhib. R.A. 1934. Labelled. ‘Painted for Methodist Union, and presented to H.M. King George V and Queen Mary’. ‘Presented to Wesley’s House and Museum, 20th September 1934’.125 b – Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, London o/c 137 x 111 cm. ‘The Ecclesiastical Statesman’/‘The Evangelist’ Salisbury gives an account of the use of Wesley’s surplice and the painting of this picture.126 c – World Methodist Museum, Lake Junaluska o/c 110 x 85 cm. (43.5 x 35.5 in). ‘The Scholar’. This painting may have been made some years later. secy. d – World Methodist Museum, Lake Junaluska (approx. 90 x 70 cm.) Variant of ‘b’, known as ‘The Italian’ viturino Mo in Venice. Possibly not by Salisbury as signed ‘V. Mo (Rome)’ engr. – Coloured lithograph published Raeburn, 54 x 40 cm. Copyright London 1 Oct. 1934, U.S.A. 1934. 6  Kathy Priddis  2010

notes – The artist is wife of former Bishop of Hereford. Apart from a copy of the Romney portrait [A.7.i], this is the only painting of Wesley known by a female artist. prot. Wesleyan Assurance Company. Birmingham. s. ‘K. Priddis, 2010’.

D  Scene paintings 1 Thomas Olave (c.1748–99)  1783

John Wesley standing in a graveyard notes – Olave was Vicar of Mucking, Essex 1782–99.127 Wesley is painted standing in a churchyard, although evidently not St John’s, Mucking: Smith rehearses the background to this picture.128 The morbidity of the subject is a matter of curiosity. prot. a – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London [LDWMM/1993/1608] o/c 141 x 111 cm. In the Peell family to 1834, by tradition painted for Miss Peell’s maternal grandfather.Thence by purchase to Mr John Stephens (possibly the brother of Rev. Joseph Rayner Stephens) and probably by gift to Richmond College.129 Telford suggests presentation through the Corderoy family.130 A 1922 restoration found a label and verse on the rear of the frame.131 To John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism on closure of Richmond College c.1972.

Appendix A 179 2  Maria Spilsbury-Taylor (1777–1820)  1815

John Wesley Preaching in Ireland notes Wesley visited Mrs Tighe’s home at Willybank, Rosanna, Co. Wicklow, Ireland on 25 June 1789 and recorded preaching in the Great Hall. It is possible that the artist was present.Wesley had preached under a tree on his 1783 visit.132 Mrs Tighe was a wealthy supporter of Wesley who commissioned Romney’s portrait [A.9].133 The artist was J. Spilsbury’s daughter: Spilsbury engraved Romney’s portrait of Wesley, and the face of Wesley in this painting makes visual reference to Romney’s likeness. Incorporated in the picture are a number of identified characters, including individuals who had attended Wesley’s preaching as well as the artist’s family members, described in a letter from John Taylor, the artist’s husband.134 Spilsbury-Taylor also painted The Harvest Dance (c.1813–20) in the same picturesque outdoors setting at Rosanna (through Christies, 15 July 1988, Lot 54). The juxtaposition of folk and Methodist scenes may be purely coincidental. prot. a – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London [LDWMM/1997/6628] o/c 76 x 104 cm. Conserved and reframed 1993. 3  Henry Perlee Parker (1795–1873)  1839–40

Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? (‘The rescue of John Wesley from the Epworth Rectory fire, 9 February 1709’). notes – Wesley’s escape from the Epworth fire which destroyed his original boyhood home represented a key element of the dramatised providential narrative of both Wesley’s life and the rise of Methodism and has been treated extensively by biographers.135 In the early part of the nineteenth century this scene was a popular subject for engravings: some may derive from a vignette in Vertue’s engravings. The concept was suggested to Parker by James Everett, a prominent Wesleyan minister, though expelled in 1849. Parker painted Everett into the picture.The young John Wesley was modelled by one Septimus Hudson.136 The image is not straightforwardly a scene of Wesley’s rescue but might be read as a visual criticism of the then Wesleyan connexional leadership, as proposed by Green.137 The picture was painted for the centenary of Wesleyan Methodism, and toured Britain. An explanatory booklet was printed in connection with this.138 Subsequently it hung in the Wesleyan ‘Centenary Hall’, London, and has remained in central Methodist buildings since. Parker was a native of Devonport and trained as a marine architect. Moving to Newcastle upon Tyne he became a successful artist, known as ‘Smuggler

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Parker’ for his marine scenes. His painting of ‘William and Grace Darling Going to the Rescue of the SS “Forfarshire” ’ (c.1838) helped to inspire the British lifeboat movement.139 A staunch Methodist, he was linked to the Wesleyan Reform movement and from 1841–c.45 taught drawing at Wesley College Sheffield before moving to London in 1847, following which his life became obscure. prot. a – Methodist Church House, London o/c 160 x 220 cm. Presented to the Wesleyan Conference meeting in Newcastle in 1840, thence to the Methodist Church from 1932. Exhib. Royal Manchester Institution, 1841 [62]; Exhibitions of Art and Industry/Manufactures,York 1866 [353]. b – Brunswick Methodist Church, Newcastle on Tyne o/c approx. 80.5 x 108.5 cm. In all probability the half-size duplicate by Parker, c.1839–40, presented to Brunswick Church.140 secy. c – World Methodist Museum, Lake Junaluska 71.1 x 55.9 cm. Stated to be Parker’s ‘finished study’, though evidence unclear. Sold through Christies 1927, and bought by Inns and Black (art dealers), later to John Morgan of E. Sussex, who sold it to the Friends of the World Methodist Museum 1996. Relined and reframed in 1989 by Trevor Howe of Sudbury Jones Ltd., London. d – Epworth Old Rectory, Lincolnshire [EPWOR 2008–213] oil on board 28.0 x 38.1 cm., by David Ernest Keal, c.1990. e – Epworth Old Rectory, Lincolnshire [EPWOR 2008–134] oil on board 91.5 x 122 cm., by Richard Gilmore Douglas, 1991. engr. – Reynolds S. W. (1840, republished 1863) (22 ¾ x 31 ¾ in.) 4  Marshall Claxton (1813–81)  1842

The Death-Bed of the Rev. John Wesley A.M.  (‘Holy Triumph’) notes – Wesley’s final weeks and days were recorded by Elizabeth Ritchie: he died in his house at City Road, London 2 March 1791.141 The question of the number of people present has been discussed and it is safe to assert that this is a constructed, not realistic, image.142 The date of the picture suggests that it relates to the 50th anniversary of Wesley’s death. Claxton took his likenesses from known images of the individuals involved, some of which (e.g. Sally Wesley by J. Russell) have disappeared.143 That of Wesley may be derived from Westall [A.9]. The large oval portrait on the wall probably relates to the Barry miniature [B.4]. Claxton was the son of a Wesleyan minister. He entered R.A. 1831: if he was tutored by John Jackson R.A., it must have been prior to this. He was in Italy 1837–42: this work was exhibited on his return.Thirty-seven of his paintings hung at R.A. From 1750–54 he was in Australia to paint and to

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found an Australian School of Art, but met with disappointing results and returned to England via India and the Middle East, arriving back in 1859. prot. a – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London [LDWMM/1997/6733], o/c 160 x 182 cm. Exhib. R.A. 1842 [212]. (Wesleyan) Methodist Missionary Society from 1873; ‘the painting had been bought at a picture sale, and the owner asked permission to exhibit it at the Mission House, with the hope of disposing of it’. Bought for £80.00.144 From Methodist Mission House c.1996. engr. i – W. O. Geller (1844) Geller was a line/mezzotint engraver, fl. c.1830–40.145 ii – Samuel Bellin (1856) (12½ x 14½ in) Bellin (c.1799–1893) was known as a line engraver who used ‘some mezzotint fortification’. Sold by Thomas Agnew & Sons, Manchester. 5 William Overend Geller (1804–81)  1845

John Wesley preaching to Twenty-five Thousand persons in the Gwennap Pit in its original state Wesley preached many times at Gwennap, near Redruth in Cornwall. The ‘pit’ was a depression in the ground probably caused by mining subsidence, which formed a useful amphitheatre, with good acoustics. It has been remodelled and survives. However, in either original or remodelled state it hardly resembles that depicted in this apocalyptic composition which is related to John Martin, Joshua commanding the sun to stand still upon Gibeon [cf. Joshua 10:9–15].146 Geller was briefly a pupil of Martin and practised as an engraver in Bradford and London, producing copies of some of Martin’s work. He probably had Methodist affiliations and also engraved Claxton’s Holy Triumph. Martin was in artistic circles in Newcastle, contemporary with H .P. Parker. In presenting Wesley as a patriarchal and near messianic figure it probably expresses something of Wesley’s reputation in Cornwall. prot. a – Not now known Exhib. Cornwall 1845, at St Day, Lanner and St Mary’s Truro, 980 x 420 cm. [78 x 56 in.]. engr. – (Geller) 1845. Engravings were available when the picture was exhibited; on India paper (7/6) and a print 21 x 15 in. (5/-).147 6  Marshall Claxton R.A. (1813–81)  1849

John Wesley being refused the use of the Church, preaches from his father’s grave Exhib. Royal Manchester Institution 1849 [122]; R.A. 1850 [1279], not now known. notes – See D.7 for general background. engr.

182  Appendix A 7  (attrib.) Alfred Hunt  c.1850

John Wesley preaching from his father’s tomb, Epworth notes – When John Wesley returned to Epworth 6 June 1742 he was refused permission to preach in the parish church, where his father had been rector for forty years (1695–1735), so preached from his father’s tomb. This scene became popular in nineteenth century Methodist imagery. Dated by canvas (stamped ‘Roberson & Miller . . . R&M 1792’) indicates 1828–40. Engraving gives artist as ‘Alfred Hunt’, however, an identification with the landscape painter Alfred William Hunt (1830–96) is unlikely. prot. a – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London [LDWMM/1993/1607] o/c, 96 x 116 cm. engr. – J. B. Hunt (active 1853–57). 8  Marshall Claxton R.A. (1813–81)  c.1850

John Wesley with his Friends at Oxford notes – The ‘Holy Club’ was a more informal organisation than Claxton’s picture suggests, although he reputedly used the ‘actual room’, and modelled the figures on contemporary likenesses. A key is known to the individuals featured.148 Letter of G. Stevenson 18 Oct 1851 states that when Claxton left for Australia in 1850 he left behind a painting The Institution of Methodism half completed, to be finished by Geller. This may be the picture.149 prot. a – Salford Museum and Art Gallery, Manchester [1880–1] o/c, 136.5 x 173.5 cm. ‘Presented by Thomas Agnew Esq, 1880’; this work does not appear in the Agnew records. engr. Bellin 1862 (25 x 32 in) priced 10/-. 9  George Washington Brownlow (1835–76)  1860

John Wesley preaching from his father’s tomb, Epworth notes – See D.7 for background. Brownlow’s likeness of Wesley was possibly derived from Manning’s statue. His treatment of an eighteenth century scene pays good attention to costume detail. Likewise his painting of St Andrews Church is architecturally accurate. Brownlow was born in Newcastle, came under the patronage of Rev. J. St Clere Raymond of Belchamp Walter, Essex, where he settled. He painted mainly scenes from rustic life in Essex, Scotland and Ireland. prot. a – Boston Guildhall Museum, Boston, Lincolnshire [1926.81] o/c, 102 x 142 cm. (upper corners rounded). Exhib. R.A. 1860 (441). To Boston Borough Museum 1926, at Guildhall from 1929. secy. b – Private Collection,Yorkshire, January 2014. o/c, 117 x 146 cm. engr. – Steel engraving 19.2 x 24.6 cm.

Appendix A 183 10  Thomas Whaley (1817–78)  c.1860

The Triumph of Religion – John Wesley Preaching in Bolton, 1749 notes – Depiction of Wesley preaching to a mob at Mealhouse, Bolton 18/19 October 1749. The picture is said to have been commissioned by a ‘well known Bolton gentleman, James Barlow’.150 Whaley established himself as a successful portrait artist in Preston and Bolton. He also painted a scene of George Whitefield preaching at Bolton (Bolton Art Gallery). descr.Wesley is represented as to L in preaching pose, with white shoulder length hair, gown and bands. Gathered around is an unruly group. Diamond paned mullioned window to L, behind Wesley, is only source of light on the scene, producing dramatic effects. prot. a – Victoria Hall, Bolton Methodist Mission, Bolton, Lancs. o/c 160 x 130 cm. Exhib. Royal Manchester Institution 1861 [660]; Conserved 1995. 11  Marshall Claxton R.A. (1813–81)  1865

John Wesley in the Wednesbury riots notes  Only known now as an engraving, this depicts the dramatic and violent anti-Methodist riots in Wednesbury, Staffs. 20 October 1743, and Wesley’s calm response. prot. Exhib. Royal Society of British Artists 1865 [219]. Not now known. engr. – 34.7 x 55.9 cm. 12 John Faed R.S.A. (1820–1902)  1877 (s/d)

John Wesley and the Maid notes – This romanticised scene of Wesley meeting a young woman, apparently alone and in a secluded rural setting, seems not to be based on any known original narrative. The side view of Wesley’s bust may be derived from a profile taken towards the close of his life, such as by Edridge or Holloway.151 J. Faed was a member of a Scottish artistic family. He tended to specialise in historical and biblical genre and domestic scenes. Usually he based his compositions upon a well attested story. prot. a – Private collection, Scotland o/c laid down on board. 76 x 63.5 cm. Upper corners rounded. With Mellors-Laing Galleries, Toronto, 1994. Sotheby’s Scottish sale 16 April 1996 (Lot 67). 13 Wilson Hepple (1854–1937)  c.1883

John Wesley preaching at the Sandhill, Newcastle upon Tyne notes – The subject depicts an incident in John Wesley’s first visit to Newcastle (28–31 May 1742) when he was defended by ‘a Fisherwoman of the name of Bailes’ who ‘shouted ‘Noo touch the little man if ye dare?’.152

184  Appendix A

prov. Painting not now known, though in ownership of Sir Arthur Sutherland (1867–1953), Newcastle, c.1940s.153 engr. ‘Published April 1883 by Gibson Brothers, Groat Market, Newcastle upon Tyne (Copyright) Printed by Vincent Brooks Day & Son London’. 14  Edward Goldwyn Lewes  c.1889

John Wesley first meeting George Whitefield notes  There is no known documented incidence of such a meeting. In this dramatic imagined night-time scene (supposedly outside the ‘Holy Club’) the Oxford location may well be conjecturally composite although the spire in the background seems that of St Mary’s University Church. The drama of the scene representing this meeting of two influential leaders is significantly enhanced by the use of light. Artist identified by inscription on engraving. prot. a – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London [LDWMM/2001/8263] o/c; only the central section survives featuring the principal characters (94 x 113 cm). engr. Bellin 1889. 15 Alfred Walter Bayes (1831/2–1909)

On the Way to Church  s/d 1907 notes – Scene shows Sarah Lacy accompanying John Wesley on a lane above Todmorden,Yorks. Possibly a visit such as that of 25 April 1785 as Wesley is depicted as ageing. Sarah Lacy does not appear in Wesley’s Journal or Letters. Bayes was born in Todmorden, and possibly the scene was one he knew from local hearsay. He practised in London and was President of the Royal Society of Painters, Etchers and Engravers. prot. a – Private collection,Yorkshire With Phillips, Leeds, 1995 (10881 Oil Paintings, Watercolours and Prints sale, 15 March 1995, lot 90.) o/c 49 x 67 cm. By descent from family of Sarah Lacy. Sold after sale to private collector, Todmorden area.154 16 William Hatherell R.I., R.W.A. (c.1855–1928)  s/d 1909

John Wesley preaching at a Market Cross notes – Open air preaching in centres of public assembly was characteristic of early Methodism. In this imagined scene, which despite the ‘Red Lion’ inn is not Epworth, Wesley is depicted as an older man. Engravings of the picture were used as promotional material by the Bovril company. Hatherell was a well known graphic illustrator. The power of this work rests greatly in its monochrome tones and thick impasto. prot. a – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London [LDWMM/1999/7445] oil on canvas/card, 76 x 51 cm. s/d; exhib. R.A.

Appendix A 185

1909. Presented by Messrs. Bovril Ltd. to ‘the Trustees of Wesley’s Chapel, City Road, London’. secy. b – London Road Methodist Church, Brighton, Sussex A (watercolours?) copy in muted colours, painted possibly by a member of the church in the 1930s. c – Epworth Old Rectory Coloured copy. c.1990–95 by Richard Gilmore Douglas. engr. 56 x 38 cm, for Bovril, c.1909. 17 William Hatherell R.I., R.W.A. (c.1855–1928)  s., c.1917

John Wesley preaching at Bath notes – When Wesley preached at Bath on 5 June 1739 he encountered the Bath ‘master of ceremonies’ Richard ‘Beau’ Nash (1674–1761). By Wesley’s account he resisted Nash’s confrontation and was able to continue preaching after Nash’s retreat. Hatherell’s imagined depiction relies on contemporary portraits of Wesley (Williams) and Nash (possibly Hudson or Hoare). descr. Set under a tree, Wesley, in bands, gown and buckled shoes, is elevated on bench to L. Nash to R, with individual positioned between in background. Group of spectators at edges of picture. prot. a – with Berry-Hill Galleries, New York 1976 o/c 370 x 830 cm. (54 x 72 in.), exhib. R.A. 1917. Current location not known. 19 W. H. Y. Titcomb (1858–1930), s., c.1915

John Wesley preaching in Bristol notes – Possibly based on Wesley preaching in St James Barton, Bristol, 4 August 1771. Several sketches are extant although a worked-up canvas is not now known. William Holt Yates Titcomb, R.B.A., R.W.A, R.B.C., R.I. son of the first Bishop of Rangoon, was associated with the Newlyn School. Slightly unusually, he was known for painting religious scenes in Cornwall such as Primitive Methodists at prayer [Dudley Museum and Art Gallery]. prot. a – Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives, watercolour 48 x 61 cm. Exhib. Bristol Savages, 1915, from which purchased by Bristol Art Gallery. Squared in pencil as if intended for a larger work.155 20 W. H. Y. Titcomb (1858–1930)  s., c.1918

John Wesley preaching before the Mayor and Corporation of the City of Bristol in the Mayor’s Chapel, 1788 notes – Wesley preached in the Mayor’s Chapel on College Green 16 March 1788 by invitation of the Mayor, Mr Edgar. He preached on ‘that awful passage

186  Appendix A

of Scripture, the history of Dives and Lazarus’ and it is thought that he preached against slavery. prot. a – Mansion House, Clifton, Bristol [Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives, K519], o/c 123 x 175.4 cm. Exhib. R.A. 1918. Purchased with the assistance of Mrs Yda Richardson for the City of Bristol 1918.156 21 Anon. n/d

John Wesley Attending a Deathbed Possibly Moses Haughton ‘John Wesley attending the Death-bed of his humble Followers’; exhib. Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, 1847 (403).157 prot. a – John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism, City Road, London [LDWMM/ 1993/1614] o/c, 125 x 102 cm. 22  Richard Gilmore Douglas (c.1937–)  1992

John Wesley Mounting His Horse notes – The identity of Wesley and his horse, as a heroic itinerant preacher, seems particularly prevalent in the twentieth century, and may be linked to the travels of Francis Asbury (1745–1816), the pioneer of Methodism in the U.S.A. Wesley also travelled on foot when young, by stagecoach and from the 1760s using his own chaise. Richard Gilmore Douglas, a former art teacher, painted a number of pictures while a volunteer guide at Epworth Old Rectory, several with an equestrian emphasis. prot. a – Epworth Old Rectory, Lincolnshire [EPWOR 2009–284] oil on board, 45.8 x 61.0 cm. 23  Richard Gilmore Douglas (c.1937–)   1999

John Wesley Riding a Horse whilst Reading a Book notes – See D.22. prot. a – Epworth Old Rectory, Lincolnshire [EPWOR 2009–283] o/c 60.2 x 91.7 cm. 24  Richard Gilmore Douglas  c.2000

John Wesley at Wroote, Lincolnshire notes – Samuel Wesley added the small neighbouring parish of Wroote to Epworth in 1725; John Wesley served as his occasional curate there 1726–29.158 prot. a – Epworth Old Rectory, Lincolnshire [EPWOR 2009–307] o/c 50.9 x 61.0 cm.

Appendix A 187 25  Richard Gilmore Douglas  c.2002

John Wesley Holding a Quill Pen notes – Wesley was a prolific letter writer, as depicted here. prot. a – Epworth Old Rectory, Lincolnshire [EPWOR 2009–285] oil on board 45.6 x 61.0 cm. – E Prints

The great majority of the considerable number of prints of Wesley originate in paintings. While many are cited in the iconography above, there were also in many cases derivative images, so the relationship of some prints with a prototype artwork becomes remote. The brief selection here comprises prints which became significant for the imagery and for which there is no known antecedent in paint or pencil. 1 Anon.  1741

Line engraving, prob. on copper Inscr. ‘IOHN WESLEY, M.A’ in box ‘Publish’d according to act of Parliament Oct. 7 1741’ notes – Telford gives this as by Vertue.159 However its crudity and anonymity make this questionable and it is unsigned.Wesley’s (approximate) dating of Downe’s first engraving (‘thirty years ago’) is suggestive, also that this was done as Wesley was shaving, which the unlikely pose of the head might indicate.160 Against that, the engraving pre-dates Downe’s first known meeting with Wesley in 1743, when he became his travelling companion for a while.161 example.  Bridwell Library, Dallas, TX; MARC. 2  Sylvester Harding (1745–1809)  1788

notes – Wesley’s diary records sittings for Monday 25 and Tuesday 26 February, 1788. Although Curnock suggests these sittings were for the portrait by Hamilton [A.6], it seems as likely to have been to Harding.162 A painted copy in private ownership, [U.K.], apparently late eighteenthcentury (o/c 68.5 x 64.0 cm., provenance unclear), may be a painted prototype. ‘A rather fine painting of John Wesley after Zoffany, which appears to have been done by Sylvester Harding’ was in private hands in the 1940s.163 Either could be the picture previously owned by Rev. Marmaduke Riggall (1851–1927).164 There has been a repeated association of this portrait with Johann Zoffany (1733–1810). However, Zoffany was in India from 1783–9, making this association unsustainable. engr. – i – Francesco Bartolozzi (1727–1815), c.1788. Inscr. ‘The Rev.d John Wesley, M.A. Aged 85’. Wright suggested collaboration with (ii).165

188  Appendix A

Bartolozzi ‘enjoyed an international reputation as one of Europe’s finest line and stipple engravers . . . possessed of good looks which he evidently used to his advantage in his vigorous pursuit of the opposite sex’.166 ii – William Nelson Gardiner, (1766–1814), (‘S. Harding delin.’) ‘The Revd. John Wesley, M.A./Aged 85. Published 10 March 1788’ (example NPG D2978). Gardiner, an Irish engraver, bookseller, painter and eccentric, worked for the Hardings from c.1784; ‘his style was similar to that of Bartolozzi, and Gardiner claimed some of the plates bearing Bartolozzi’s name as his own work’.167 Both were sold by Edward Harding (1755–1840), the artist’s brother, who ran a successful London print-shop. 3  The Arminian Magazine: frontispieces 3.a  January 1778

engr. – ‘Bodlidge sculpt. King St, Upper-Moorfields’. Inscr. ‘The Revd. John Wesley M.A.’ Line with stipple. notes – It is a matter of some curiosity that the image of Wesley which faced the title page of the launch issue of his groundbreaking magazine was so self-evidently poor and caricatural.168 3.b  November 1783

notes – Anon., line. Inscr. ‘The Revd. John Wesley M.A., Aged 80’. 4  John Kay (1742–1826) s. ‘Kay Fecit 1790’

JOHN WESLEY WITH DR. JAMES HAMILTON AND REV. JOSEPH COLE, RETURNING FROM PREACHING AT CASTLE HILL, EDINBURGH engr. – etching, 12.3 x 7.3 cm., s. ‘KAY fecit 1790’. notes – In 1790 Wesley undertook a lengthy tour of many Methodist societies, including visiting Wales and Scotland. In Edinburgh in mid-May he presided, for the last time, over the annual conference of his connexion. His diary records several sermons between 13–16 May, which this may have been is not recorded. Kay was apprenticed as a barber in his native Dalkeith but had his own business in Edinburgh from 1771. Self-taught, he produced portrait sketches which both captured the likeness of the person, but were also quaintly amusing. By 1785 he was able to work fully on caricature portraiture. He produced over 900 such etchings, mostly of noted individuals, including

Appendix A 189

local characters as well as ‘almost every notable Scotsman of his time’.169 His prints demonstrate well the immediacy of etching, capturing the qualities of a pencil sketch. These he sold singly from his shop, and many were published in a collected edition after his death.170 Kay’s caricatures provide light relief in the field of portraiture at the end of the eighteenth century. He quickly and deftly summed up the characters of those living in a very prosperous Georgian Edinburgh.171 In 1837–8 and 1842 editions of his plates were published by Hugh Paton, Edinburgh. The plates were then acquired by A. & C. Black of Edinburgh, who produced a further edition before destroying the plates. Copies of his etching of the ‘Methodist triumvirate’ were produced by other printers. 5 Anon.  1791

JOHN WESLEY/that Excellent Minister of the Gospel carried by Angels into Abraham’s Bosom/Well done, good and faithful Servant. Enter thou into the Joy of thy Lord. St Matthew Ch 23/Published 1st Augt. 1791 by ROBT. SAYER & Co, Fleet Street, London. notes – Sayer had a substantial business selling prints and maps, which had previously been with the Overton family. His ‘principal area of expansion [was the] humorous mezzotint or ‘droll’, a characteristic portrait of the 1770s and 1780s’.172 In 1775 Sayer listed 161 ‘miscellaneous and humorous . . . posture size [14’ x 10’] mezzotints’. His drolls sold for 1/- plain, 2/- coloured. The composition is a customary apotheosis formula, linked to pictures such as Benjamin West ‘The Apotheosis of Prince Octavius’ (1783).173 Wesley’s likeness derives from Romney; the position of the hands and feet is formulaic. The angelic form had been feminised by the late eighteenth century and these may be likened to the work of Flaxman. 6 Tomkinson & Dean  1838

‘From a Bust modelled from the Life by Enoch Wood Esqr. Of Burslem To whom this Print is respectfully dedicated by THE PUBLISHERS’ notes – Published 10 July 1838 by a Stoke upon Trent bookseller. At this time, Wood was approaching his 80th birthday and the factory was run by two of his sons. Not only a leading pottery manufacturer but an important and respected civic figure, when Enoch Wood died in 1840 it was reported that vast crowds attended his funeral, and Burslem came to a standstill that day. engr. – Steel?, 42.8 × 32.5 cm.

190  Appendix A

Two oil paintings of this image are known (Private collections: Essex; Oxfordshire), since the print does not refer to a painted prototype it seems likely that these were derived from the print. 7  S. Lipschitz.  1870

notes – Based in Hamburg and London, this printer-publisher issued a series of popular prints depicting Wesley scenes. Some are related to scene paintings, others appear to be imaginary. Standard size of 70.4 x 54.8 cm. F  Unauthenticated likenesses 1 Anon. c. 1714

notes – Generally described as of Wesley while a gownboy at the Charterhouse school, the authenticity of this picture has been questioned by F. Baker and others. In its favour, there are strong physiognomic facial similarities with later likenesses.The costume may be appropriate for a Charterhouse boy of the time which Telford notes was a ‘gown of broad cloth lined with baize’, although he also suggests that the sitter does not wear this.174 Against it is the lack of provenance or early authentication. At the least arguably an approximation of Wesley’s appearance as a schoolboy. a – John Street Chapel, New York Oils on (?) panel, ?? x ??. Known to have been the property of Rev. Marmaduke Riggal (1851– 1927).175 At John Street Chapel, New York since c.1930.176 2 Anon.

notes – Discovered at MARC 2016. Inscr. (c. nineteenth century?) ‘John Wesley 1726’ on lower stretcher. A primitive painting of a clergyman, probably eighteenth century, with some physiognomic likeness to Wesley. Provenance unknown. descr – h/s, oils on panel 27 x 34 cm. 3 Anon.

The ‘Aristocratic Wesley’ Known as the ‘Aristocratic Wesley’, formerly the property of Rev. Marmaduke Riggal now at John Street Chapel, New York.177 descr – H/s, profile. 4  [attrib.] George Romney [A.7]

Portrait of a Gentleman (formerly known as ‘John Wesley’) notes – Bought at auction in 1920s by George Buckston-Browne, a London doctor as ‘portrait of a gentleman in a red coat’. Presented by Buckston-Browne

Appendix A 191

to the Methodist theological college in Cambridge, Wesley House, around its opening in 1926 as being of John Wesley, the initials ‘GR’ on the canvas being thought to signify it as by Romney.178 The identities of both Wesley and Romney were quickly and solidly challenged, nonetheless the attributions long persisted. a – Wesley House, Cambridge [4] o/c, painted oval, 76 x 60 cm. 5  Johann Zoffany

[see E.2, Sylvester Harding] notes – Recorded by Telford as in the collection of Rev. Marmaduke Riggall. Now unknown.179 6  [attrib.] Francis Hayman (1708–76)

John Wesley preaching in the Chapel of Ease, Old Cripplegate Church [London] notes – Although John Wesley and Dr Johnson met at least once, there is no record of Wesley preaching before Johnson and Goldsmith, nor is Wesley known to have preached at St Giles, Cripplegate after 1739.180 The preacher depicted does not resemble Wesley in facial or other physiognomy. He seems to wear a Geneva gown whereas Wesley would probably have worn his Oxford M.A. gown over a cassock to preach. The church interior is not architecturally identifiable as either St Giles’s, Cripplegate or St Luke’s, Old Street, which Wesley attended as it was close to the Foundery. Nor is the depiction of church services a feature of eighteenth-century British painting. Hayman is not known to have painted such a picture and neither the composition nor the technique support such an attribution.181 The picture seems more likely to be associated with a seventeenthcentury northern European origin, possibly in the north or west of the Netherlands.182 descr. – Church interior, preacher in high pulpit, with clerk below, beadle in opposite pulpit; congregation in pews. a – Dr Johnson’s House, 17 Gough Square, London [120] o/c 90 x 96 cm. Presented by T. B. Benton’s family, 1921. b – Methodist Archive and History Center, Drew University, Madison, NJ Copy painted c.1930 in E. S. Tipple collection.

Notes 1 See London Evening Post, 8–10 Sept 1743. 2 John Ingamells, The English Episcopal Portrait 1559–1835, a catalogue (n.p.: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art [published privately], 1981), p. 153. 3 PWHS, vol. xx (1935), pp. 51ff. 4 Ibid., p. 52. 5 Following the closure of the college in 2013 the picture has been in storage.

192  Appendix A 6 Letter from R(ichard) Green in MR, 26 December 1889. Print in Magazine, June 1903 ‘The original portrait by Williams, now at Didsbury College’. 7 PWHS vol. II (1899), p. 51. 8 W. Bardsley Brash in MR 29 January 1948. Thomas Hayes to George Morley, 23 Dec 1862, in Wesley College, Bristol archives (WCB D6/4/6). 9 Joseph Wright in PWHS, vol. III (1902), p. 186;Thomas Hayes, Recollections of Sixty Three Years of Methodist Life (London: Charles Kelly, 1902) pp. 26–7. 10 Jewin Street was adjacent to St Giles Church, Cripplegate, London, now disappeared. William Beardmore, Magazine, 1896, p. 27; Anon, Pictures at the Mission House (London: The Methodist Church, n.d.), p. 6. 11 PWHS vol. II (1899), p. 51. Not now visible. 12 Receipt in Lincoln College archives MS/WES/D/4; see also letter from R(ichard) Green in MR, 26 December 1889. 13 Wright in PWHS, vol. III (1902), p. 186. 14 J. Herbert Slater, Engravings and Their Value (London: Exchange & Mart, 1921, 6th edition), p. 307. 15 London Evening Post, 8–10 Sept 1743. 16 Slater, Engravings, p. 648. 17 Journal, 4 November 1774. 18 Susanna Fisher, ‘Sayer, Robert (1724/5–1794)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2008 www.oxforddnb.com. oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/50893, accessed 20 Aug 2016. Timothy Clayton, The English Print, 1688–1802 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 153. 19 PWHS vol. II (1899), p. 51. 20 Ibid. 21 Notes on correspondence between G. F. Urling – Rev. Jabez Bunting, March–April 1841, re Wesley family paintings owned by Mrs Green, Charles Wesley jnr’s executrix in Baker ms., Duke University. See pp. 95–6. 22 See Magazine, 1907, pp. 518–19. 23 Journal, 1 July 1765. 24 W. G. Beardmore, ‘Portraits of our Founder’, in Magazine, 1898, p. 343. 25 PWHS, vol. III (1902), p. 187. W. Carey, Some Memoirs of the Patronage and Progress of the Fine Arts in England and Ireland (1826), p. 226.W.B.S.Taylor, The origin, progress and present condition of the fine arts in England and Ireland (1841, 2 vols.), vol. 2, p. 284. 26 L. H. Cust,‘Hunter, Robert (d. after 1803)’, rev. Anne Crookshank, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes. idm.oclc.org/view/article/14229, accessed 16 March 2016. 27 John Kerslake, Early Georgian Portraits (London: H.M.S.O., 1977), p. 298; PWHS, vol. III (1902), p. 187. 28 SPJW, p. 202. 29 Slater, Engravings, p. 669. 30 Horace Walpole, (ed. W. S. Lewis), The Complete Correspondence of Horace Walpole (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937–83, 48 vols.), vol. XXXV; p. 119; quoted Arthur Chamberlain, George Romney (London, Methuen, 1910), pp. 155–6. 31 John Wesley, Explanatory Notes on the Old Testament (Bristol: William Pine, 1765). 32 Michael Kassler and Philip Olleson, Samuel Wesley (1766–1837), a Source Book (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), p. 715. 33 ‘NPG135 Registered Packet’, in Heinz archive, NPG; Kerslake, Early Georgian Portraits, pp. 297–8. See also p. 96. 34 Hayes, Recollections, p. 161. 35 Kerslake, Early Georgian Portraits, p. 298. Archives, Christies, London. 36 Drew University catalog, http://depts.drew.edu/lib/books/200Years/gallery/gallery. htm, accessed December 2015.

Appendix A 193 37 See Daily Telegraph, 13 Apr 1928. Horace Brooks Marshall (1865–1936), 1st Baron Marshall of Chipstead. 38 ‘Miss Macaroni and her Gallant’ (1773) (BM 1902,1011.7988); ‘Spectators at a Print Shop. . .’ . (1774), (BM 1935,0522.1.16). See ‘Notes’ in The Connoisseur, November 1903, pp. 187–8, November 1904, pp. 177–80.‘A real scene in St Paul’s Churchyard on a windy day’ (1783/4), (BM 1935,0522.1.30). 39 Anon, ‘Greenwood, John (1727–1792)’, Rev. Richard H. Saunders, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/11438, accessed 15 Aug 2016 40 Slater, Engravings, p. 357. 41 Journal, 30 December 1771. 42 G. J. Stevenson, Memorials of the Wesley Family (London: Partridge, 1876), p. 476. 43 Peter Forsaith, ‘Charles Wesley Junior, a Portrait by John Russell’, in PWHS, 52 (1999), pp. 15–17. 44 SPJW, pp. 98, 242. PWHS, vol. x, p. 67ff. G. C. Williamson, John Russell R.A. (London, 1894). 45 In WJW, vol. 23, p. 488. 46 F. F. Bretherton ‘Portrait of John Wesley by Thomas Horsley of Sunderland’ in PWHS, xxiii, (June 1941), pp. 31–6. 47 List of Freemasons, Seacaptains Lodge, Sunderland. www.victoriacountyhistory.ac.uk; marriages from the Sunderland Registers (1785–99) http://genuki.cs.ncl.ac.uk both acc. 4 January 2014. 48 see Bretherton, ‘Portrait of John Wesley’, p. 31. 49 Ibid., p. 35. 50 See Andrea Milburn, ‘A Portrait of Wesley’, in Methodism from Tees to Tweed, Wesley Historical Society North-east Branch bulletin 80 Spring 2004, pp. 19–20. 51 Ibid, also SPJW, p. 119, see also Magazine, 1908, pp. 517ff. 52 Journal, 22 December 1787. 53 JWJ, vol. vii, p. 349n. and see L. H. Wellesley Wesley, ‘The Wesley Coat of Arms’, in PWHSi, (1898), pp. 96–100 and Arthur W. Saunders, ‘The Wesley Family and its Coat of Arms’, in PWHS, 35 (1966), pp. 110–12. 54 Slater, Engravings, p. 319. 55 Note by artist on rear of canvas. 56 See Alex Kidson, George Romney: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 2015, 3 vols). 57 Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 36, 40. 58 See Kidson, George Romney, A Complete Catalogue; Robert R.Wark, The Drawings of Romney (Alhambra, CA: Borden RJB Co., 1970). 59 Quoted by Wright in PWHS, vol. iii, p. 189. Curnock (JWJ vol. vii, p. 461n) extends the quotation to include the comment on the bulk of the body. See John Lenton, John Wesley’s Preachers (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009), pp. 10, 382–3. 60 Wright in PWHS vol. iii, p. 189. 61 Correspondence in NPG Heinz archive, Iconographic Notes 2/4. 62 See John Wesley to Mrs Tighe, 7 February 1789 (in JWL, viii, p. 115). 63 Kerslake, Early Georgian Portraits, p. 299. 64 J.W. Hamilton et al., John Wesley’s Rooms in Lincoln College, Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press/ New York: Methodist Book Concern, 1927), p. 32. 65 A. Wallington, ‘Romney’s Portrait of Wesley’ in PWHS, xiii, pp. 182–4. See A.7.ii. 66 Ibid. 67 see P. Forsaith, ‘The Romney Portrait of John Wesley’ in Methodist History,. XLVII/4 (July 2004), pp. 249–55. 68 Hamilton, John Wesley’s Rooms, p. 31. PWHS, v, p. 251. Leslie Howsam,‘Butterworth, Joseph (1770–1826)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004);

194  Appendix A online edn, May 2005. www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/4233, accessed 12 Feb 2016. Williamson noted a picture of Wesley’s colleague, Rev. John Fletcher, recovered through law from the Butterworth family in 1838 (Barry Williamson, ‘The Spilsbury portrait of John Fletcher’, in PWHS, xlvii (May 1989), pp. 46–8. 69 Christies catalogue in National Gallery archives, London, lots 44–67 ‘the property of J. H. Bullock Esq.’, though referred to elsewhere as from Rev. J.H.H. Butterworth, ‘Yet the Certain Provenance of the Portrait Goes Back Only to . . . 1873’ (Richard Dorment, British Painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (London:Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986), p. 337). ‘. . .[T]he original portrait by Romney . . . is hanging upon the wall of Mr.Walter Cassell’s house in South Kensington’. (W. G. Beardmore, ‘Portraits of our Founder’, in Magazine, 1898, p. 851). 70 Agnew ledger, ‘Pictures, 8’ p. 64. ‘2024|30 June (1906)|Romney|John Wesley the Founder of Methodism|30x25|62 Christies|(£756)’. (National Gallery archive, London) also Dorment, British Painting, pp. xii–xvi; 335–8; and PWHS, v, p. 251. 71 Kerslake, Early Georgian Portraits, pp. 299–300; Hamilton, John Wesley’s Rooms, p. 31. 72 For fuller exhibition details, see Dorment, British Painting, p. 338. 73 Hamilton, John Wesley’s Rooms, p. 32. 74 Kate Gray (c.1864–1931), was Charles Wesley’s great-granddaughter. 75 See Susan Sloman,‘Spilsbury, Jonathan (bap. 1737, d. 1812)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2008 www.oxforddnb.com. oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/26154, accessed 28 Aug 2016; Slater, Engravings, p. 599. 76 see NPG D37653. 77 Slater, Engravings, p. 662. 78 Magazine, 1825, p. 704. 79 Ibid. 80 Minutes of the Wesleyan Book Room Committee, 20 September 1827 in MARC [MAW MS 642]. 81 SPJW, p. 186. 82 SPJW, p. 131; see also Kerslake, Early Georgian Portraits, p. 304. Telford gave ownership as Mr Guy M. Walker, New York, by purchase from a Mr Smith who had it from his mother’s brother Mr Simpson. He acquired it on a visit to England. Walker found a card in the frame ‘Rev. John Wesley, painted at Doncaster, a little time before his death. Bought by Mr A. Moir, Mildmay Park, March 1863’. 83 Dorinda Evans, ‘West, Benjamin (1738–1820)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2008 www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/29076, accessed 12 Aug 2016 84 R.J.B. Walker, ‘Bone, Henry (1755–1834)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/ view/article/2836, accessed 23 Sept 2016. 85 PWHS, vol. vi, p. 142. 86 PWHS, vol. xxviii, p. 168. 87 Museum of Methodism, London; Methodist Archives and History Center, Drew University, Madison NJ; Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. 88 Richard J.Westall, ‘Westall, Richard (1765–1836)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/ view/article/29106, accessed 15 Aug 2016 89 Richard P. Heitzenrater, ‘A Tale of Two Brothers’, in Christian History (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today International), XX/1, p. 12. 90 Diary, 13 September 1788; 2 March, 1 October 1789. 91 Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, online www.pastellists.com, accessed September 2014. 92 SPJW, pp. 170–1. 93 www.npg.org.uk, accessed 19 February 2016.

Appendix A 195 94 Simon Houfe, ‘Edridge, Henry (1768–1821)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2008 www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/8513, accessed 12 Aug 2016 95 Michael Bryan, George C. Williamson, Bryan’s Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1964, 5th edition). 96 Wright, ‘Further Notes’, in PWHS, vol. iv, p. 3. 97 Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: a complete dictionary of contributors and their work from its foundation in 1769 to 1904 (‘Royal Academy Exhibitors’) (London: Graves Bell, 1905–06, 3 vols.), vol. I, pp. 132–3. 98 Letter from G. J. Stevenson, The Watchman, 21 May 1873, p. 169; but see William L. Presly, The Life and Art of James Barry (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981), pp. 113–17, 296. 99 G. J. Stevenson, City Road Chapel London and its associations . . . (London: George J. Stevenson, 1872), pp. 103–4. PWHS, vol. xvi, p. 5 [n. 4]. Arts. ‘Marriott Family’, ‘Osborn, Dr. George’, ‘Bretherton, Francis Fletcher’ in DMBI. 100 Wright, ‘Further Notes’, in PWHS, vol. iv (1903), p. 3. 101 Kerslake, Early Georgian Portraits, pp. 301, 304. 102 SPJW, pp. 186–7. 103 Journal, 1 May 1790. 104 Journal, 25 December 1774 and see JWJ, vol. vi, pp. 53–4n, and see L. Walker, Manuscript genealogical notes on the Walker and Grimaldi families. 105 See W. Beardmore, ‘Portraits of our Founder’ in Magazine, 1896, p. 848. For Coutts see Ian Sumner, The Claxtons:The Preacher – The Painter 1779–1881 (unpubl.Typescript, 1982). 106 Ibid. 107 Richard P. Heitzenrater, An Exact Likeness (Nashville: Abingdon, 2016), p. 74. 108 Benezit, vol. 5, p. 751. 109 Minutes of the Wesleyan Book Room Committee, 14 June 1827, in MARC [MAW MS 642]. 110 W. Beardmore, ‘Portraits of our Founder’ in Magazine, 1896, p. 23. 111 Wright, ‘Notes’, in PWHS, 3 (1902), pp. 190–1. Richard P. Heitzenrater, The Elusive Mr. Wesley (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984, 2 vols.), vol. ii, p. 180. 112 Magazine, 1828, p. 700. 113 Quoted Hugh Honour, ‘John Jackson R.A.’, in The Connoisseur Year Book 1957, p. 91. 114 Museum of Methodism, London (LDWMM/1993/1643). See Minutes of the Wesleyan Book Room Committee, 14 October 1824, 11 December 1828 in MARC [MAW MS 641, 642]. 115 World Parish, 8/2 (October 1960), p. 51. 116 Richard P. Heitzenrater, Faithful Unto Death (Dallas: Bridwell Library, 1991), p. 40. 117 Correspondence with Christopher Storey (headmaster) in NPG iconographic notes 2/8, also in W.H.S. Library [‘Wesley Portraits’ file]. 118 Slater, Engravings, pp. 622–3. F. M. O’Donoghue, ‘Thomson, James (bap. 1788, d. 1850)’, Rev. Greg Smith, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/27308, accessed 15 Aug 2016. 119 PWHS, xix, p. 129ff; Anna Onstott, Biographical Portraiture of John Wesley in Microscopic Script by Glück Rosenthal, (1850) (Typescript, 1933). 120 http://national.gallery.ca, accessed 23 January 2014. 121 The three main British Methodist denominations (Wesleyan, Primitive and United – the last the result of a 1907 merger between three smaller churches) came together in 1932. 122 Charles Francis Annesley Voysey (1857–1941), was descended from Susanna, John and Charles Wesley’s sister, ‘from whose family he gratefully acknowledges what little moral courage and independent spirit he happily inherits. . .’ (quoted Wendy Hitchmough, C F A Voysey (London: Phaidon, 1995), p. 11, see also p. 53 for physical appearance.

196  Appendix A 123 Frank O. Salisbury, Portrait and Pageant (London: John Murray, 1944), pp. 97ff. A letter from Salisbury with an account of this survives in Museum of Methodism archives. 124 Maurice Bradshaw, ‘Salisbury, Francis Owen (1874–1962)’, rev. Charles Noble, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2014 www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/35912, accessed 12 Feb 2016. 125 Inscr. on Raeburn print. 126 Salisbury, Portrait and Pageant, p. 99. 127 Also chaplain to William Charles, Earl of Portmore from 1785 www.theclergydatabase. org.uk, accessed January 2015. 128 C. Ryder Smith, ‘The ‘Olave’ Portrait of Wesley’ in Magazine, 1925, pp. 310–12. 129 Ibid. 130 SPCW, p. 236. 131 Label on rear of frame, noted in survey by Granville & Burbidge 1997.Verse at p. 6–7. 132 Information to the author, 22 January 2003: the tree was still standing. 133 Charlotte Yeldham, ‘A Regency Artist in Ireland’, in Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, vol.VIII (Irish Georgian Society, 2005), pp. 186–219. 134 J. Taylor – unknown, 24 July 1815 (John Wesley’s House & Museum of Methodism archives). P Forsaith, ‘Every Picture tells a Story’ in City Road Magazine, (London: Autumn 1997), n.p. 135 See Henry D. Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (London: Epworth, 1989), p. 57; Heitzenrater, Elusive Mr.Wesley, vol i, pp. 37–43. 136 PWHS, vol. xix, p. 207. 137 Amy S. Green, ‘The Rescue of John Wesley’, in Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, (Spring 1989), pp. 55–61. 138 James Everett, H.P. Parker’s Historical Wesleyan Centenary Picture. . . . (London: Newcastle, 1839). 139 At Grace Darling Museum, Radcliffe Road, Bamburgh, Northumberland, (RNLI:GD.2002.478). 140 Henry Perlee Parker Exhibition (exhibition booklet) (Newcastle upon Tyne, Laing Art Gallery, 1969). 141 JWJ, viii, pp. 131–44&n. 142 PWHS, xiii (1922), p. 158ff. 143 JWJ, viii, p. 140. 144 Sumner, The Claxtons; Hayes, Recollections, p. 26; Wesleyan Missionary Committee Minutes, 10 September 1872. 145 Slater, Engravings, p. 338. 146 William Feaver, The Art of John Martin (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973);Thomas Shaw, Gwennap Pit: John Wesley’s Amphitheatre, A Cornish Pardon (n.p., n.d.), pp. 40–1. 147 Shaw, Gwennap Pit, p. 40. 148 Belden, George Whitefield – the Awakener (London: Rockcliff, 1953, 2nd edition), facing p. 22. See V.H.H. Green, The Young Mr Wesley (London: Edward Arnold, 1951); Richard P. Heitzenrater, Mirror and Memory (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989). 149 PWHS, ii (1899), pp. 28–9. 150 MR, 1 June 1995, p. 1. 151 Thomas Holloway (1748–1827), pastellist and engraver, ‘Engraver to the King’ From 1792. See Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800 www.pastellists.com, accessed 29 February 2016. 152 Inscription to print. See also Magazine 1885, p. 420. 153 National Geographic Magazine print, c.1949. 154 Information from Bonhams (successors to Phillips), Leeds, August 2016. 155 David Tovey, W. H.Y. Titcomb, Bristol, Venice and the Continental Tours (Tewkesbury: Wilson, 2003), p. 29, Pl. 10. 156 Ibid., p. 29, pl. 4.

Appendix A 197 1 57 See Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village. 158 Green, Young Mr.Wesley, pp. 110ff. 159 SPJW, p. 63. 160 Journal, 4 Nov 1774. 161 Journal, 18 July 1743, 16 April 1744. 162 JWJ, vii, p. 357. 163 SPJW, p. 86–7. N.M.[?Dunn] – F. Baker, n.d. (c.1941–44), Frank Baker papers, Duke University, NC. The signature is difficult to read. 164 SPJW, pp. 86–7. 165 Joseph Wright in PWHS, III (1902), p. 187. 166 ed. Martin Postle, Joshua Reynolds, The Creation of Celebrity (London: Tate Publishing, 2005), p. 202. Clayton, The English Print, p. 210. 167 L. H. Cust, ‘Gardiner, William Nelson (1766–1814)’, Rev. E. M. Kirwan, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2008 www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/10369, accessed 28 Feb 2016. 168 See p. 49–50 for a discussion of prints in the early Magazine. 169 Lucy Dixon, ‘Kay, John (1742–1826)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/15195, accessed 28 Feb 2016; Donald H. Ryan, ‘The Edinburgh Wesley Portraits’ in PWHS, 55/1 (Feb 2005), pp. 1–13. 170 John Kay, A Series of Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings with Biographical and Illustrative Anecdotes (Edinburgh: H. Paton, 1837–38, 2 vols., probably issued as monthly parts). 171 Dixon, ‘Kay, John’ in OxDNB. 172 Clayton, The English Print, pp. 220ff. 173 Royal Collection (RCIN 405404). 174 John Telford, Life of John Wesley (London: Epworth, 1925), p. 25. SPCW, p. 228. 175 SPCW, p. 228. 176 Onstott, Biographical Portraiture. 177 SPJW, p. 178. 178 George Buckston Browne, A Vindication of the Wesley-Romney Portrait at Wesley House, Cambridge (London: Privately published, 1926), Harry Webb Farrington, ‘It Is A Romney. Is It Wesley?’ in The Christian Advocate, 13 (December 1928), pp. 1528–30. Also F. F. Bretherton’s file in W.H.S. library (archives) and see Forsaith, ‘The Romney Portrait of John Wesley’. 179 SPJW, p. 86. 180 Journal, 18 December 1783. 181 See Brian Allen, Francis Hayman (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1987). 182 Email correspondence with Marc de Beyer, Catherinjeconvent, Utrecht, November 2016.

Day

JWJ

WJW

Notes

14 April 1783 d

(23) vi: 445

Monday

4 November 1774 j vi: 404

Behold, what frailty we in man may see His shadow is less given to change than he.1 Friday vi, 46 (22) v: 436

In Dublin ‘11 sat for my picture’

(Death of John Downes) Wesley noted Downes’s likeness of him taken ‘thirty years ago’, and two engravings.

Monday 30 December 1771 v, 422 (22) v: 303 John Russell (London) ‘At my brother’s request I sat again for my picture. This melancholy employment always reminds me of that natural reflection:

11 April 1741 d Saturday (19) ii: 457 Vertue 3 June 1741 d Wednesday (19) ii: 463 9 At Mr Vertue’s 12 At home . . . 5 June 1741 d (19) ii: 463 8.45 At Mr Vertue’s 11 At Mrs MacCune . . . Friday March–July 1755 here are no references in the Journal or diaries to Wesley sitting to Joshua Reynolds. See p. 9 ff. v, 139(22) (22) v: 15 [In Dublin] 31 June 1765 j Wednesday ‘At the earnest desire of a friend, I suffered Mr. Hunter to take my picture. I sat only once, from about ten o’clock to half an hour after one; and in that time he began and ended the face, and with a most striking likeness’.

Date

d – diary entry j – Journal entry

Appendix B: References in John Wesley’s journal and diaries to portraits and painters

vii: 459 vii 461 vii: 463 vii: 464 viii: 42 viii: 44

viii: 43

Monday Monday

Monday Monday

Saturday (Monday)2

d

Romney portrait (London) 29 December 1788 d 5 January 1789 j d 12 January 1789 d 19 January 1789 d

Barry portrait (London) 13 February 1790 d 22 February 1790 j

vii: 357 vii: 357

possibly Sylvester Harding (London) 25 February 1788 d Monday 26 February 1788 d Tuesday

(23) vi: 488

(24) vii: 309

(24) vii: 308 (24) vii: 166

(24) vii: 268 (24) vii: 118 (24) vii: 268 (24) vii: 269 (24) vii: 270

(24) vii: 237 (24) vii: 237

‘7.30 tea . . . the Painter; 12 walk’ ‘I yielded to importunity and once more sat for my picture. I could scarce believe myself – the picture of one in his eighty-seventh year!’ ‘10 Painter; 1 writ narrative’.

‘8.30 chaise, Painter! Walk; 10.30. . .’ ‘Mr Romney is a painter indeed’. ‘9 painter; 11.30 Chapel [West St]’ ‘8.30 chaise, Painter, 12. . . ’ ‘9.30 Painter’

‘10 Painter’s, select society, . . .’ ‘10 at the Pai[nter’s]’

(Continued )

in Sunderland ‘2 visited some; 3 on business, picture! 5 tea, conversed. . .’ 8 April 1786 d Saturday vii: 154 (23) vi: 556 Manchester area. ‘5 Ill . . . 8 Tea . . . the painter. 12 slept . . . 4 the painter. 5 tea’ 22 Dec 1787 j Saturday vii: 349 &n. (24) vii: 68 [possibly Hamilton] ‘I yielded to the importunity of a painter, and sat an hour and a half . . . the best that was ever taken. . .’ d (24) vii: 230 ’11 The Painter; letters’

vi: 513

Saturday

Horsley portrait 5 June 1784 d

Saturday

Saturday

13 March 1790 d

J. Butterworth profile (Leeds) 1 May 1790 viii: 64–65

viii: 62

viii: 48

viii: 44

JWJ

2

1

From ‘Upon His Picture’ by Thomas Randolph (1605–35). See pp. 31–32. Day ambiguous – appears to be Tues 23 Feb.

Thursday – Sunday

Monday

25 February 1790 d

J. Kay (Edinburgh) 13–16 May 1790

Day

Date

(Continued)

(24) vii: 175, 317

(24) vii: 175, 316

(24) vii: 311

(24) vii: 309

WJW

Recorded preaching four times; Sunday 16 May,11.00am may be most likely.

‘4 Prayed, Mag., letters; 8 tea, conversed, on business; 10 chaise; 12.30 Tadcaster’.

(Bristol) ‘11 at home, writ letters 1, dinner, Painter; 4 tea’.

‘10.15 The Painter; 12 writ. . .’

Notes

Bibliography

Archive sources Frank Baker mss., Duke Divinity School Library, Duke University, NC. Heinz archive, National Portrait Gallery, London. Methodist Archives and Research Centre, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. National Gallery archives, London. Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University.

Published works Anderson, Misty G., Imagining Methodism in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Maryland: John Hopkins University Press, 2012. Anon. (Sharp, Alfred), Catalogue of Wesleyana. London: Methodist Publishing House, 1921. Asfour, Amal; and Williamson, Paul, Gainsborough’s Vision. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999. Baker, Frank;Ward W. R.; Heitzenrater, Richard P. et al. eds., The Works of John Wesley (‘Bicentennial Edition’). Oxford: Oxford University Press; Nashville: Abingdon 1974– [WJW]. See particularly vols. 18–24 (eds. Ward, W. Reginald; Heitzenrater, Richard P., et al., Journals, pp. i–vii); vols. 25–7 (eds. Baker, Frank; Campbell, Ted A., Letters, pp. i–iii). Beardmore, W. G. ‘Portraits of our Founder’, in The Wesleyan Methodist Magazine (1898). Benezit Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs, et Graveurs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Bonewitz, Anna M., A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. Unpubl. M.A. thesis, University of Virginia, 2012. Brewer, John, The Pleasures of the Imagination. London: Harper Collins, 1997. Brown, Murray, ‘Satire and Spectatorship in Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg’s A Midsummer’s Afternoon with a Methodist Preacher: Wesley, Swedenborg, and the Gospel According to Luke’ in 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, 8 (2003), pp. 119–134. Carr, A. H., The True Likeness of John Wesley. London: Privately printed, 1930. Clarke, J.B.B., An account of the infancy, religious and literary life of Adam Clarke. London: T. S. Clarke, 1833, 3 vols. [Clarke, Mary], Mrs. Adam Clarke, Her Character and Correspondence. London: Partridge & Oakey, 1851. Clayton, Timothy, The English Print, 1688–1802. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 1997.

202  Bibliography Cross, David A., A Striking Likeness, the Life of George Romney. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. Curnock, Nehemiah, The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. London: Epworth, 1909–15, 8 vols. [JWJ]. Currie, Robert, Methodism Divided. London: Faber & Faber, 1968. D’Oench, Ellen G., “Copper into Gold”, Prints by John Raphael Smith 1751–1812. New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1999. Donald, Diana, The Age of Caricature, Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III. New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1996. Everett, James, H.P. Parker’s Historical Wesleyan Centenary Picture. (Seventh edition). London, 1862. Falkner, Frank, The Wood Family of Burslem. London: Chapman & Hall, 1912. Forsaith, Peter S., ‘A Brand from the Burning’, John Wesley, Religious Hero? Oxford: Applied Theology Press, 2004. ———. ‘The Romney Portrait of John Wesley’ in Methodist History XLII/4 (July 2004), pp. 249–55. ———. ‘The Curious Incident of Susanna Wesley’s Rosebud Lips’ in Angels and Impudent Women. Loughborough: for Wesley Historical Society, 2007, pp. 31–51. ———. ‘Pictorial precocity: John Russell’s Portraits of Charles and Samuel Wesley’ in British Art Journal X/3 (Winter/Spring 2009/2010), pp. 98–103. ———. ‘Methodism and its images’ in T & T Clark Companion to Methodism. London and New York: T & T Clark, 2010, pp. 350–68. ———. ‘A far greater genius than Sir Joshua: Did Joshua Reynolds (1723–1789) paint John Wesley (1703–1791)?’ in The British Art Journal XVI/3 (Winter 2015/2016), pp. 103–109. Gattrell, Vic, City of Laughter, Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London. London: Atlantic, 2006. Glen, Robert, ‘The Fate of John Wesley in English Satiric Prints’, in Tim Macquiban (ed.), Methodism in Its Cultural Milieu. Oxford: Applied Theology Press, 1994, pp. 35–43. Graves, Algernon, The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and Their Work From Its Foundation in 1769 to 1904 (‘Royal Academy Exhibitors’). London: Graves, Bell, 1905–06, 3 vols. Graves, Algernon; and Cronin, William Vine, A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. London: H. Graves, 1899–1901. Green, Amy S., ‘The Rescue of John Wesley: the Birth of Methodism and the Struggle for Temporal Perfection’, in Yale University Art Bulletin, Spring 1989, pp. 55–62. Green,V.H.H., The Young Mr.Wesley. London: Edward Arnold, 1951. Hampson, John, Memoirs of the Late Rev. John Wesley. Sunderland, 1791, 3 vols. Hargraves, Matthew, Candidates for Fame: the Society of Artists of Great Britain, 1760–1791. New Haven and London:Yale University Press (for Paul Mellon Centre), 2005. Hayes, Thomas, Recollections of sixty three years of Methodist life. London: Charles Kelly, 1902. Hegenbarth, Carly Louise, Religion and Representation: Methodism ‘Displayed’ In A Series of Seven Images Accompanying Six Anti-Methodist Publications, 1778–1779. M.Phil. thesis, University of Birmingham, 2011. Heitzenrater, Richard P., John Wesley and the Oxford Methodists, 1725–1735. Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1972. ———.The Elusive Mr.Wesley. Nashville: Abingdon, 1984, 2 vols. ———. Mirror and Memory. Nashville: Kingswood, 1989. ———.Wesley and the People Called Methodists. Nashville: Abingdon, 1995. ———. An Exact Likeness:The Portraits of John Wesley. Nashville: Abingdon, 2016. Hempton, David, Methodism, Empire of the Spirit. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005.

Bibliography 203 Hindmarsh, Bruce, ‘The Inner Life of Doctrine: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Calvinist-Arminian Debate Among Methodists’, in Church History 83: 2 (June 2014), pp. 367–97. Hitchcock,Tim; and Cohen, Michele (eds.), English Masculinities 1660–1800. London: Longman, 1999. Honour, Hugh, ‘John Jackson, R.A.’, in [ed.] H. G. Fell, The Connoisseur Year Book 1957 London: The Connoisseur, 1957, pp. 91–5. Hunt, Tamara L., Defining John Bull. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Ingamells, John, The English Episcopal Portrait 1559–1835, a Catalogue. London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (Published Privately), 1981. Jacob,W. M., The Clerical Profession in the Long Eighteenth Century 1680–1840. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Jeffares, Neil, Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800 www.pastellists.com Kay, John, A Series of Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings with Biographical and Illustrative Anecdotes. Edinburgh: H. Paton, 1837–38, 2 vols. Kerslake, John, Early Georgian Portraits. London: H.M.S.O. (for N.P.G.), 1977, 2 vols. Kidson, Alex, George Romney 1734–1802. London: N.P.G., 2002. ———, George Romney: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings. New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 2015, 3 vols. Krysmanski, Bernd, ‘We see a Ghost: Hogarth’s Satire on Methodists and Connoisseurs’, in Art Bulletin 80 (June 1998), pp. 292–310. Langford, Paul, A Polite and Commercial People, England 1727–1783. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Le Harivel, Adrian, Nathaniel Hone the elder, 1718–1784. Dublin: Town House in Association with the National Gallery of Ireland, 1992. Lee, Roger, Wesleyana and Methodist Pottery, a short guide. Weymouth: Sloane, 1988. Lenton, John, John Wesley’s Preachers. Milton Keynes and Colorado Springs, CO: Paternoster, 2009. Lyles, Albert M., Methodism Mocked. London: Epworth, 1960. Mannings, David, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings. New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 2000, 2 vols. Mayo, Janet, The History of Ecclesiastical Dress. London: Batsford, 1984. McKechnie, Sue, British Silhouette Artists and their Work 1760–1860. London: Sotheby’s, 1979. McMurray, Nigel, Frank O. Salisbury “Painter Laureate”. 2003, 1st Books. Miller, John, Religion in the Popular Prints 1600–1832. Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1986. Newport, Kenneth G. C. and Lloyd, Gareth (eds.), The Letters of Charles Wesley Vol. I. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Onstott, Anna, Biographical Portraiture of John Wesley (in Microscopic Script) by Glück Rosenthal, (1850) Typescript, 1933. Penny, Nicholas, Reynolds. London: Royal Academy, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1986. Piper, David, The English Face. London: N.P.G., 1978. Pointon, Marcia, Hanging the Head. New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1993. Postle, Martin (ed.), Johan Zoffany RA, Society Observed. New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 2011. Pudney, John, John Wesley and his world. London: Thames & Hudson, 1978. Rack, Henry D., Reasonable Enthusiast, John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism. London: Epworth, 1989. Rauser, Amelia, Caricature Unmasked. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008. Reynolds, Joshua (ed. Robert R.Wark), Sir Joshua Reynolds; Discourses on Art. New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1959.

204  Bibliography Rogal, Samuel J., The Historical, Biographical, and Artistic Background of Extant Portrait Paintings and Engravings of John Wesley (1742–1951). Lewiston, Queenstown and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003. Ryan, Donald. ‘The Edinburgh Wesley Portraits’ in PWHS 55/1 (February 2005), pp. 1–13. Salisbury, Frank O., Portrait and Pageant. London: John Murray, 1944. Sargisson, C. S., ‘John Wesley Busts in Staffordshire Pottery’, in The Connoisseur XIX (September–December 1907), pp. 11–17. Slater, J. Herbert, Engravings and their value. London: Exchange & Mart, 1921. Stevenson, George J., Memorials of the Wesley Family. London: Partridge, 1876. Sumner, Ian, ‘The Claxtons; the Preacher – the Painter 1779–1881’ Typescript, 1982. Telford, John, Sayings and Portraits of Charles Wesley. London: Epworth, 1927. [SPCW]. Telford, John, The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. London: Epworth, 1931, 8 vols. [JWL]. Telford, John, Sayings and Portraits of John Wesley. London: Epworth, 1924. [SPJW]. Tovey, David, W.H.Y.Titcomb. Tewkesbury: Wilson, 2003, 2 vols. Tyerman, Luke, The Life and Times of John Wesley. London: Hodder, 1878, 3 vols. Vaughan, William, British Painting:The Golden Age. London: Thames and Hudson, 1999. Vickers, John (ed.), A Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland. London: Epworth Press, 2000 [DMBI], online http://wesleyhistoricalsociety.org.uk/dmbi/. Wendorf, Richard, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1996. Wesley, John, see Baker, Curnock, Telford for editions of Wesley’s Journal and Letters. Note: John Wesley published extracts from his ‘Journal’ as well as some letters during his lifetime (as well as much other material): these have gone through many editions since. This work has used the ‘standard’ or ‘bicentennial’ editions as cited above. Wesley Historical Society, Proceedings of the, 1897– [PWHS] Wright, Joseph, ‘Wesley Portraits’, in PWHS (1899), pp. 49–51. ———. ‘Notes on Some Portraits of John Wesley’, in PWHS iii (1902), pp. 184–92. ———. ‘Further Notes on Some Portraits of John Wesley’, in PWHS iv (1903), pp. 1–5. Yeldham, Charlotte, ‘A regency artist in Ireland: Maria Spilsbury Taylor (1776–1820)’, in Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies viii (2005), pp. 187–219. Young, Ruth, Father and Daughter, Jonathan and Maria Spilsbury 1737–1812; 1777–1820. London: Epworth, 1952.

Plate acknowledgements

Plates Ashmolean Museum, Oxford Figure 8.1 © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford Bolton Victoria Methodist Church, Lancs. Plate XLVII Courtesy of Bolton Methodist Mission Boston Guildhall Museum and Art Gallery, Lincs. Plate XLIV Boston Borough Council, Boston Guildhall Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX Plates I, XVa, XXIX Bridwell Library Special Collections, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. Bristol Museum and Art Gallery Plates L, LI Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Bristol Culture British Museum, London Plates XIVa,b, XVb © Trustees of the British Museum Campbell Fine Art, Tunbridge Wells, Kent Plate XLII Michael J. Campbell (Campbell Fine Art) Epworth Old Rectory, Lincs. Plates V, XXXVI, XXXVII, LIV Reproduced with the permission of the Trustees of Epworth Old Rectory John Rylands Library, Manchester Plate IXa Copyright of The University of Manchester John Wesley’s Chapel, the New Room, Bristol Plates XXIVb, XXXIV Permission given by the Trustees of the New Room/John Wesley’s Chapel, Bristol

206  Plate acknowledgements

Kathy Priddis Plate LV By kind permission of the artist. Kingswood School, Bath Plate XIII By permission of the Governors of Kingswood School Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, CT Plates XIb, XVIa,b Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library,Yale University Lincoln College, Oxford Plates IIIb, IXb PCF 63, 64, 65; by permission of the Rector and Fellows of Lincoln College, Oxford Museum of Methodism, London Plates VIII, XVIII, XIX, XXXI, XXXVIII, XL, XLV, XLVIII, XLIX, LII, LVIIb Reproduced with the permission of The Trustees of Wesley’s Chapel, City Road, London National Gallery of Art, Washington DC Plate XLIII Courtesy National Gallery of Art,Washington National Portrait Gallery, London Plate IIIa, X, XX © National Portrait Gallery, London Old John Street Methodist Church, New York Plate LVI Courtesy of John Street Methodist Church, New York Philadelphia Museum of Art Plate XXII George Romney, portrait of John Wesley, Philadelphia Museum of Art Salford Museum and Art Gallery Plate XLIa Salford Museum & Art Gallery Westminster Abbey, London Plate XLVI Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, London Plate LIIIa By permission of the Trustees of Methodist Central Hall,Westminster, photograph, the author. World Methodist Museum, Lake Junaluska, NC Plate LIIIb Used by permission of the World Methodist Museum where the painting is located, Lake Junaluska, NC USA All other images, including cover, courtesy of: The Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History (Wesley Historical Society library), Oxford Brookes University/the author.

Index

Page references in italics refer to illustrations. Adams-Acton, John 45, 62 – 3, 67 – 8 American Revolution 78 – 80 Arminian Magazine 49 – 50, 53, 83, 88, 188; launch 19, 39, 79 – 80, 87 Arminianism 5, 29, 78, 86 – 7 Barry, James 37 Barry, John 10, 37, 41, 172 – 3; exhibiting at the Royal Academy 37 Bayes, Alfred Walter 63, 184 Beardmore, William G. 44, 70, 75 Bowles, Carington 48, 73, 76 Bradford, Joseph 66 – 7 Britain, socio-political change in 23 – 4 British Methodist Union (BMU) 46, 64 Brooke, Henry 9 – 10, 15, 26 Brownlow, George Washington 62, 182 Bunting, Rev. Jabez 9 – 10, 95 – 6 Butterworth, John 37 – 8, 174 – 5 Calvinism 77 – 8, 86 – 7,  100 Cennick, John 10 Centenary Hall 58, 91, 95 – 6 Clarke, Adam 43 – 4, 69 – 70, 88 – 9,  102 Claxton, Marshall 60, 170 – 1, 174, 181 – 2; exhibiting at the Royal Academy 59 – 60; prints 181 – 2; Wesley paintings 59 – 61, 180 – 3 Constable, John 43 Cornwall and Methodism 14, 33, 60 – 1, 64 Dalrymple, Miss (‘Miss D–ple’) 78, 78 Douglas, Richard Gilmore 186 – 7 Downes, John 47, 162 Edridge, Henry 37, 171 – 2 engraving 5, 11, 18, 34, 41, 51 Everett, James 58 – 9, 97

Faber, Johann 25, 47 – 8, 162 Faed, John 63, 183 Fittler, James 35, 87, 167, 173 Fletcher, Rev. John 44, 66, 77 Forster, J.W.L. 46, 177 Fry, William Thomas 44, 165, 175 Gainsborough, Thomas 5, 24, 36, 70 – 1, 86 – 7 Geller, William 60 – 1,  181 Great Exhibition of 1851 57 Grimaldi, William  174 Hamilton, William 35, 72; exhibiting at the Royal Academy 35; prints of Wesley portrait 34, 51 – 2; Wesley portrait 34 – 5, 72, 87, 167 Hampson, John 70, 88 Harding, Sylvester 34 – 5, 51 – 2, 187; exhibiting at the Royal Academy 34 Harley, John 10, 47 – 8, 96, 163 Hatherell, William 63 – 4, 184 – 5; exhibiting at the Royal Academy 64 Hayman, Francis 3, 72, 191 Heitzenrater, Richard 4, 12, 44, 69 Hempton, David 2, 4 Hepple, Wilson 61, 183 – 4 Hogarth, William 48, 71, 76 – 7, 79 Holloway, John 52 Holloway, Thomas 38, 51 Hone, Nathaniel 18, 27 – 8, 71 – 2, 164; portrait of Wesley 2 – 3, 23, 29, 96, 100; portrait published 17, 26 – 7, 26, 164; prints of Wesley portrait 18, 28, 48 – 9, 164 – 5; scorn of Reynolds 18, 26 – 7, 70, 164 Horsley, Thomas 34, 166 – 7 Hunt, Alfred 62, 182

208 Index Hunter, Robert 26, 51, 72, 100, 163 Huntingdon, Countess of (Selina Hastings) 17, 18, 28, 166 Jackson, John 3, 43, 60; influence of Enoch Wood 66; prints of Wesley portrait 3, 45 – 6, 67, 92, 100; synthesised portrait of Wesley 3, 44, 69, 91, 175 – 6 Jackson, Thomas 95, 97 Johnson, Dr Samuel 15, 35, 76; and Wesley 3, 16, 35, 72, 78, 191 Kay, John 38, 71, 188 – 9 Kerslake, John 1, 3 Knole, Kent 83 – 4, 87 Lewes, Edward Goldwyn 63, 184 lithography 45 Martin, John 58, 61 Methodism 35, 66, 75 – 9, 86, 91 – 3, 97; and architecture 57; ‘connexion’ 4, 15 – 16, 58, 87 – 8, 97; controversiality/marginality 25, 62 – 3, 75; internationally 29, 44, 46, 59, 61; its impact and spread 2, 4, 25, 61, 67, 93; its veneration of Wesley’s image 2 – 3, 5, 18, 30, 53, 60; origins/early growth 47, 58, 64, 93; power struggle 58 – 9, 80 – 1, 94; separation from Church of England mooted/achieved 13 – 14, 43, 59, 61 – 2, 91; sympathizers 28, 43; Wesleyans 58 – 9, 61, 71, 91; see also Cornwall and Methodism Methodists 18, 41, 43, 64, 69, 95 Napoleon, Emperor 1 Napoleonic wars 41, 45, 91 – 2 National Portrait Gallery, London 3, 35, 96 Olave, Rev. Thomas 6, 33, 178 Oxford movement 56, 61 – 2, 75, 92 Parker, Henry Perlee 58 – 9, 61, 91, 179 – 80; Epworth Rectory fire painting 58 – 9, 61, 91, 97, 179 – 80; exhibiting at the Royal Academy 58 portraiture: in England 5, 23, 56, 69 – 70; nature of 1, 71 Priddis, Kathy 178 print-shops 5, 41, 48, 72, 76, 165 Pugin, A.W.N. 45, 57 Rack, Henry D. 4, 72, 87 – 8 Raeburn, Sir Henry 46, 71

Renton, John 44, 174 – 5 Reynolds, Sir Joshua 9, 36, 70 – 1, 83, 86 – 7; on aesthetics 83, 87; Discourses 5, 27, 70, 84, 86; his ‘Pocket Book’ 10 – 14, 19; leader of ‘the golden age’ 5, 24; methodology 15 – 16; as President of the Royal Academy 9, 18, 70, 170; and Romney 168; and Wesley (or not) 9 – 20, 27, 70, 96, 100, 162; see also Hone, Nathaniel Richardson, Jonathan 24, 70, 86 Ridley, William 41, 42, 50, 172 Romney, George 15, 18, 24, 168; catching Wesley’s likeness 9, 16, 42, 69, 72; copies 41, 43 – 4, 168, 178; ownership of the portrait 43, 56; paints Wesley 2, 17, 19, 35 – 7, 168, 179; portrait attributed to 3, 72, 168, 190 – 1; prints 43 – 4, 46, 52, 56, 69; technique 35 – 6; template for others 56, 168, 174 – 5, 179, 189; and Wesley 72; Wesley’s view of (or not) 9, 12, 18, 36, 42 Rosenthal, Glück 45 Rouquet, Jacques-André 5, 18, 24 Royal Academy 15 – 16, 51, 72, 87; boycotted by Gainsborough 70; elections to 29, 72; exhibiting at 67, 76; founded 5, 24, 27, 51; members 43; move to Somerset House 84; Schools 34; submissions to 27; see also Barry, John; Claxton, Marshall; Hamilton, William; Harding, Sylvester; Hatherell, William; Parker, Henry Perlee; Reynolds, Sir Joshua; Russell, John Russell, John 28 – 9, 51, 72, 86, 95, 165 – 6; exhibiting at the Royal Academy 28; portraits of Charles Wesley family 29, 70, 95 – 6, 165, 180; prints 48, 51; and Wesley 2, 23, 29, 35, 72, 165 – 6 Salisbury, Frank 3, 45 – 6, 66, 177 – 8 satire 75 – 81, 100 – 1 Sayer, Robert 41, 72 Smetham, James 57 Society of Artists of Great Britain 24, 26 – 7,  51 Spilsbury, Jonathan 36, 52, 56, 168 – 9; alters Romney portrait 72; Romney portrait given to Mary Clarke 43, 69 Spilsbury, Maria 56, 168, 179 Sterne, Laurence 11, 71 Telford, John 4 Tighe, Sarah 72, 168 – 9; commissions Romney portrait 9, 17, 36, 42; patron to

Index  209 Maria Spilsbury 56; Wesley preaches at her home 36, 56, 179 Titcomb, W.H.Y. 64, 185 – 6 Toplady, Augustus 78 – 9 Vaslet, Lewis 171 Vertue, George 23, 25, 47 – 8, 87, 162 Victoria, Queen 1, 57 Walpole, Horace 25 Ward, William 43 – 4, 46, 169 Washington, George 1 Wellington, Duke of (Arthur Wellesley) 1, 10 Wesley, Charles (John’s brother) 2, 4, 29, 62, 67 – 8, 97; correspondence 13; differences with John 13 – 14; his children 70, 94 – 7; Hymns 3, 44; painted by Russell 29; and portraits of John 25, 34, 70 Wesley, John: aesthetic judgment 83 – 9, 101; A Calm Address to Our American Colonies 78, 80; and common sense 85 – 6; controversy 23, 25, 47, 60; correspondence 9 – 10, 12 – 13; death 41; diaries 12 – 13, 23, 34, 47; Epworth parish church 43, 59, 62, 169, 182; Epworth Rectory 2, 4, 12, 59, 186; his achievements 2, 4 – 5; his standing 30, 33, 63; on homes and gardens 83 – 5; Journal 9 – 10, 12 – 13, 15 – 18, 23, 56, 88; Notes upon the New Testament 13, 17, 17, 18 – 19; Notes upon the Old Testament 17, 26 – 7, 26, 28; preaching from his father’s grave 61 – 2; relics  101 Wesley, John, representations of: busts 2; caricature/satire 3, 6, 38, 70 – 3, 76 – 81, 100; carving 2, 47; ceramics/pottery 3, 53, 66 – 7, 98; changed appearance 44 – 5, 101; copies 43; death mask 41; engravings 17 – 19, 36, 41 – 2, 45, 47 – 8, 61; Epworth Rectory fire allusions 47,

87; etchings 38, 43, 71; glass painting 51; lithographs 45, 62; mezzotints 25, 43, 48, 52 – 3; murals 3, 62 – 3; portraits of, generally 1 – 6, 18, 23, 33, 41 – 2, 100; posthumous 3; in product promotion 63 – 4; relief 45, 62, 67 – 8; scene painting 3, 45 – 6, 56 – 64, 101, 177 – 87; scene painting (moralistic) 2, 41 – 2, 53, 89; sculpture 67; shadow/silhouette profiles 2, 37 – 8; sketches 2; stained glass 3, 62 – 3, 98; in verse 6 – 7; ‘visual popularity’ 1 – 2, 48; woodblock 51; see also Adams-Acton, John; Claxton, Marshall; Geller, William; Hamilton, William; Harding, Sylvester; Hatherell, William; Hone, Nathaniel; Horsley, Thomas; Hunter, Robert; Olave, Rev. Thomas; Parker, Henry Perlee; Reynolds, Sir Joshua; Ridley, William; Romney, George; Russell, John; Salisbury, Frank; Smetham, James; Vertue, George; Williams, J. M.; Zoffany, Johann Wesley, Mary (John’s wife) 13, 78 – 9, 94 Wesley, Samuel (John’s father) 4, 43, 59, 62, 94 Wesley, Susanna (John’s mother) 3, 24 – 5, 93 – 4,  97 Wesleyans see Methodism Whaley, Thomas  183 Whitefield, George 29, 63, 76 – 7, 86; paintings of 25, 27, 48 – 9, 63, 71, 166 Williams, J. M. (John Michael) 24 – 5, 38; copies 10, 38, 96 – 8; portrait of Susanna Wesley 24 – 5, 93 – 4, 97; prints 17 – 18, 17, 25, 47 – 8; and Wesley 9, 23 – 5, 69, 101, 161 – 3 Wood, Enoch 15, 66 – 7, 70; bust of Wesley 3, 33, 44, 46, 87, 189; quoted 66 – 7 Wright, Joseph 3 – 4, 10, 18 – 19, 93 Zoffany, Johann 34 – 5, 191