Table Of ContentJohn Crome
the
Elder
Publication of this book
has been aided by a grant
from The Millard Mciss
Publication Fund of the
College Art Association
of America
The publication of this
book has been aided by
a grant from the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation.
NORMAN L. GOLDBERG
JOHN CROME
the
ELDER
I • TEXT AND A CRITICAL CATALOGUE
NEW YORK • NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS • 1978
|OJW I u. *
Copyright © 1978 by New York University
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-27046
ISBN: 0-8147-2957-6
Manufactured in the United States of America
Dedicated to my wife
for she herself has been a helper of many,
and of mine ownself.”
Romans 16:2
Contents
VOLUME I
Preface and Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations xvij
PART i
I The Artistic Background of Crome 3
The East Anglian Heritage 3
The Catton House Role 11
II The Aesthetic Theory of Crome: Origin and Application 15
Theory of Expression 15
From Theory to Methods and Style 20
Aesthetic Sources 33
III The Style of Crome: Growth and Development 35
1783-90 38
1790-92 38
1792-1805 40
1805-13 47
1813-21 59
IV Crome as a Draftsman 69
The Drawings and Watercolors 72
The Etchings 80
vii
V Copies, Imitations, and Forgeries 85
Discernment of Style and Standard of Quality 9°
Workshop Practices and Cromc Forgers 99
VI Crome and the Norwich School I05
Birth and Decline of the Norwich School of Artists and Annual Exhibitions 107
Impact of the Changing Attitude to Nature and Local Art Collections no
Lack of Recognition in the History of Art 114
Appendixes
A Biographical Summary IT9
B Works Exhibited Directly by John Crome or on his Behalf, 1805-1824 127
C Catalogue of Pictures in the Cromc Memorial Exhibition, Norwich, 1821 133
D Chronology of the Chief Events of the Norwich School 137
E Documents D1
Document Relating to Prices Paid for John Crome Pictures before 1819 151
A Holographic Invoice of John Crome for Pictures Sold to the Reverend
John Homfray r54
Document Showing a Holographic Invoice by John Crome 155
PART 11
A Critical Catalogue
I Notes on the Scope and Arrangement of the Catalogue 159
II Summary Bibliography, Exhibitions, and Abbreviations 165
III The Authentic Works in Oil 169
The Landscapes 169
The Portraits 232
The Inn Signs 233
IV The Authentic Works in Pencil, Ink, Chalk, and Watercolor 235
The Drawings and Watercolors 235
V The Authentic Works in Etching 275
The Etchings 275
The Soft-Ground Etchings 284
VI Concordances 287
Chronological Concordances of Paintings 287
Chronological Concordance of Drawings and Watercolors 289
Concordance of Paintings in the Cromc Memorial Exhibition, Norwich,
1821, and the Present Work 291
viii
Register of Places
293
Note on the Problem of Authenticity
299
Index
301
VOLUME II
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Frontispiece
VII
The Landscapes
IX-82
Figs. 1-60,
Figs. 63-68,
Figs. 70-84,
Figs. 87-95,
Figs. 98-116
The Portraits
87
Figs. 122-123
The Inn Signs
9i
Figs. 124-126
The Drawings and Watercolors
97
Fig. 127
Figs. 129-211
The Etchings
147
Figs. 212-235
The Soft-Ground Etchings
161
Figs. 237-243
Work by Crome and John Berney Crome 82
Fig. 117
Work by Thomas Gainsborough
99
Fig. 128
Copies, Imitations, and Forgeries
83
Figs. 118-121
Comparative Illustrations by Copyists
43
Figs. 61, 62
47
Fig. 69
57
Figs. 85, 86
64, 65
Figs. 96, 97
Unpublished Etchings 284, 236
288, 244, 245
IX
Preface and Acknowledgements
The need for a book on John Crome which includes an up-to-date catalogue, as well as
critical and historical information that serves as a practical guide to connoisseurship is obvious.
C. H. Collins Baker’s fine monograph of 1921 is now antiquated. The Messrs. Derek and
Timothy Cliffords recent book of 1968 does not include a sustained analysis of Crome’s
style and development, nor does it present the artist’s range of brushwork and physical
structure of his works, and, more importantly, the catalogue of paintings and drawings is
considered unreliable by experts. Although additions have been made to the bibliography
of the master, it is still far from exhaustive or definitive. An appropriate bibliography is
cited in the notes to the text of this book and also in the catalogue.
Even after making so important contribution to Crome studies, Collins Baker was aware
thirty years later—when our correspondence first began—that there was a fresh need for
Crome to be better understood in the light of modern art-historical methods. Matters of
location, attribution, and dating of works remained in need of further study and clarification.
In 1954, he suggested to me that a revision of his catalogue was indicated, as he realized that
a number of earlier attributions to the master had been questioned and criticized. After some
two years of correspondence, prodding by Collins Baker fired my curiosity. From a list of
pictures he submitted to me I undertook to locate a number of Crome paintings first in
America and then in Canada, to study them for style and technique under his critical eye, and
then, as he advized, to inspect additional work whose whereabouts by this time I had re¬
discovered. As my work progressed under his long-distanced supervision—he in London
and I in St. Petersburg, Florida—until his death in 1959—new proceedures for pursuing my
Crome studies were proposed. Early in that year additional study in England, particularly
at Norwich and London, had been suggested by Mr. Creighton E. Gilbert, now the Jacob
Gould Schurman Professor of the Ffistory of Art at Cornell University, but at that time
curator of paintings at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida. The
same advice was reiterated a few months later by Mr. Daniel Catton Rich, now deceased,
xi
but at this juncture in my research, director of the Worcester Museum of Art, who kindly
introduced me to many scholars and museum officials in Great Britain, and from whom I
greatly benefited.
These introductions opened the way to far-reaching studies of pertinent documents,
paintings, drawings, and watercolors by Crome to which I would not have had access. For
this gesture by Mr. Rich I am most grateful. Aside from this assistance, Professor Sir
Anthony Blunt, now retired, but at this time director of the Courtauld Institute of Art,
London, furnished me with a complete list of Crome collectors and photographs from the
Witt Photographic Library collection, which provided a fruitful source for locating works
in advance of my initial visit to England.
A few individual paintings and watercolors have been the subject of iconographical
inquiry—notably by Mr. Francis W. Hawcroft—but much remains to be done. In i960
Mr. Hawcroft was the leading Crome scholar, and I thought it wise to head for his doorstep
in Manchester—and I did. I feel deeply indebted to Mr. Hawcroft, my generous friend of
long standing, keeper of the Whitworth Art Gallery of the University of Manchester,
but prior to i960, keeper of the City of Norwich Museums. Sensitive to problems of out-of¬
country research, Mr. Hawcroft arranged appointments with private collectors elsewhere
in England, gave freely of his time on the artist and his works, and was aware of problems
that beset the art historian.
Traveling the length and breadth of England, Scotland and Wales by automobile, and
flying to Ireland, in i960, to visit private collections, public galleries and museums, my
studies were done with some thoroughness. In the United Kingdom the effort sparked
fresh enthusiasm, it enlivened a new level of interest in Crome. The impact has been to arouse
a fresh curiosity in other artists of the Norwich School as a side effect, particularly in the
concern of historians, museum personnel, dealers in paintings, and private collectors in London
and the provinces of England, later spreading to Scotland and America. For the first time
within the present generation Crome began to communicate, but he had to communicate
his communication. My response has been continued study of the master’s work uninter¬
ruptedly to the present time, including return visits to England and the Continent in 1961
and 1968 and again in 1976.
I should like to make it clear that my text and and catalogue differs substantially from the
one published by Collins Baker more than fifty years ago, nevertheless I remain beholden
to his research and documentary discoveries, which have provided the foundation for all
subsequent studies of Crome’s work. There are, indeed, a few paintings and a sizable number
of drawings and watercolors, which were unknown to him or that he considered to be of
derivative character. On these individual works I have centered attention when able to locate
or examine them.
Since 1955 numerous works unknown to earlier writers have appeared, and other pictures
of questionable authenticity have passed through such a number of collectors, auction
houses, and dealers that their identities or correct histories are no longer certain. To the
problem of unraveling these conundrums and of determining the present locations of
authentic pictures formerly in the possession of other collectors, I have devoted much time.
In this connection, I am grateful to Professor Sir Ellis Waterhouse, Emeritus Professor at
Birmingham University, England, an expert on sales catalogues and the history of European
art in general; Mr. L. G. G. Ramsey; the late Mr. D. T. C. Baskett and Mr. J. Byam Shaw,
xii
formerly directors of P & G. Colnaghi & Company, Limited; Mr. Hugh Agnew and Mr.
Evelyn Joll, Directors of Thomas Agnew & Sons, Limited; Mr. Hugh Leggett, director
of Leggett Brothers, Limited; Mr. John C. Quilter, director of Hazlett, Gooden and Fox,
Limited, the late Mr. Oscar Johnson, formerly director of Oscar and Peter Johnson, Limited;
the late Mr. Arthur Tooth, formerly director of Arthur Tooth & Sons, Limited; Mr.
Frederick L. Wilder, formerly of Sotheby & Company, London; Mr. William A. Martin,
formerly of Christie, Manson & Wood, Limited, London; and my friend of long standing,
the late ist Viscount Mackintosh of Halifax, formerly treasurer of the Arts Council of Great
Britain.
The first volume of the present book is divided into two major sections: an interpretative
analysis of Crome s work correlated with the artist s life and movements and a critical
analysis of authentic works. The second volume is devoted to illustrations. In the text of the
first section are included the local and regional artistic background of Crome, a discussion
of his aesthetic sources and their application in painting, the growth and development of the
master s style throughout his career, and a chapter on his draftsmanship, another on copies,
imitations, and forgeries, and finally one on his relation to the foundation and life of the
Norwich Society of Artists and the Norwich School. Crome s biographical summary and a
chronology of the chief events of the principal artists and activities of the Norwich School
are provided in the Appendixes A and D, respectively. It should be pointed out however that
the sources of the dates of Appendix D are many and vary greatly in reliability. Filling in
gaps and checking these dates, which have not been drawn from primary sources, is con¬
tinuous so that while the list is a true mirror of our knowledge today, it could easily become
out of date within a short time. In this regard, I am deeply indebted to Dr. Miklos Rajnai,
keeper of paintings of the City of Norwich Museums, for providing a number of dates
included in the chronology which otherwise would not be available. On many occasions
Dr. Rajnai has been most cooperative in allowing me to consult archival files and the in¬
valuable volume of early newspaper clippings under his jurisdiction in the museum.
The catalogue consists of Crome’s extant oeuvre, and is based on a first-hand examination
and analysis of each work of art. The analysis, critical and historical in character, is intended
to serve as a frame of reference for my opinion on individual works. My conclusions may
differ from those scholars whose opinions I otherwise respect and from whom I have
learned. But connoisseurship of Crome is a subject to which I have devoted much time and
thought. It is, moreover, according to my view, basically dependent on criteria embedded
in the accouterments of style and technique, Crome’s handicraft. Nor is it based solely on
what historians like to designate as the “interpretive approach” to the history of art, which
otherwise may be applicable to other painters of landscape, portraiture, or genre. Such an
approach applied to Crome leads to fragile attributions. Obviously, Crome’s brush strokes
are one with his images and composition, while those of pupils and followers, imitators and
forgers are not. These uncreative fellows are unable to acquire or counterfeit the master’s
sustained manner, his sentience of touch, and hence of naturalist vision and image, on which
we depend for aesthetic impact and understanding of his art, nor translate the meaning of
his brushwork.
I have criss-crossed America and Canada on three occasions, and traveled wide and long,
back and forth, in Great Britain and on the Continent, for the material of this book, the
manuscript of which I began as early as 1963. Corrections and additions were made in
xiii
