Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves (8 page)

A century later, however, the French Revolution changed the old systems of power and reinvented its strongholds. The emphasis now at the Louvre was on creating a national collection that belonged to the people and an institution that was open to everyone. Masterpieces ‘which were previously visible to only a privileged few. . . will henceforth afford pleasure to all: statues, paintings and books are charged with the sweat of the people: the property of the people will be returned to them,' asserted Abbé Grégoire, one of the most influential Republican leaders.
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The Louvre began a long period of development as a genuinely public site, opening in 1793 as the Musée Central des Arts, displaying paintings which had been confiscated from royal and aristocratic families, including the
Mona Lisa
. Admission was free, and large
amounts of state money and energy were devoted to building collections that would be esteemed throughout France and beyond.

In practice, it was not always easy for the newly empowered citizens to view their artistic heritage: at the beginning of its life, the museum was only open to the public at weekends, and artists were always given priority over ordinary visitors. But gradually more of the building was opened as the French collections expanded, and extensions were also added to create more gallery space. The Louvre was as important to the Republic as a symbol of state power as it had been to the monarchy as a royal palace. Its public collections signified national unity and the regeneration of the people, while the display of the nation's new-found artistic wealth was also a means of displaying the political success of the new government; it was hoped that the galleries would forge a visible link between the care and display of respected works of art and the perception of responsible Republican rule. Between 1794 and 1813, treaties with Italy as well as the spoils of Napoleonic conquests swelled the collections: three huge convoys of marbles and paintings from Rome, central Italy and Venice were sent to Paris, with the arrival of the last, in July 1798, prompting a spectacular celebratory festival. Throughout the period, ongoing confiscations from aristocratic families further swelled the Louvre's acquisitions. After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815, some of the works looted from Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy and Spain were, grudgingly, returned. For the next couple of decades, until 1830, the unsettled politics around the brief restoration of the monarchy also meant that attention drifted from the Louvre, funding faltered and the galleries were neglected. But this still left plenty to see. By the time of Robinson's visits during the early 1840s, the displays included Egyptian antiquities, ancient bronzes, medieval decorative arts,
Etruscan vases, rooms devoted to ‘modern' sculpture and a gallery of Spanish art.

Robinson was fortunate to be in Paris at the beginning of a period of active expansion of the Louvre collections. From 1848, in particular, with the birth of the Second Republic, the government invested heavily in the building and the collections, allocating two million francs for repair work. And as the French economy grew during the middle of the century, so too did the number of works on display: over 20,000 works were added between 1852 and 1870. But even in the years before this, it was a unique resource for a young artist. The Revolution and its aftermath had made it possible to view, in one place, a range of artworks from many periods and in many styles arranged specifically to instruct students like Robinson. The emphasis was on works that could be usefully copied, and on hanging pictures chronologically and by national schools of artists (with French painting given pride of place) to explore the historical evolution of style and technique, ‘a character of order, instruction and classification', as one of the early museum directors explained.
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This was a relatively untried way of displaying works, with only a handful of German galleries experimenting with similar principles; the National Gallery, in contrast, modelled its displays on the domestic traditions of private country-house collections.

In Britain, art was crammed into rooms from floor to ceiling and displays were arranged according to the aesthetic judgements of the organizers, the size and shape of works – or just to accommodate the space. It was unlikely Robinson could have profited from the type of education he received in France. ‘Nothing has so much retarded the advance of art,' suggested John Ruskin, ‘as our miserable habit of mixing the works of every master and every century. . . Few minds are strong enough first to abstract and then to generalise the characters of paintings
hung at random.'
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Moreover, British royal and aristocratic collections were still fiercely private, and Robinson's routine of drawing and studying from private collections could not have been easily achieved: ‘The country was indeed rich in works of art, richer perhaps than any other,' Robinson admitted, ‘but these treasures were the possessions of private individuals, scattered broadcast in a thousand places and town and country houses, for the most part hidden treasures, often unappreciated by their possessors even, and but casually revealed to the world at large.'
⁵
Even aside from such scattered country-house collections, there was very little for the student. Sweden had had a national gallery of art since 1794; in Amsterdam the Rijksmuseum opened in 1808; and in Madrid the Prado was founded eight years later. London's National Gallery, in contrast, was in its infancy. It did not move into its permanent building until the late 1830s and even then, as we have seen, its development was unsteady; its slowly expanding collections remained a matter of debate and disagreement. In addition, the French Revolution, the turbulence of the Napoleonic Wars and the violence and revolt across Europe in 1848 were fresh in the Victorian imagination. The tendency to public access and universality that was evident in France was in stark contrast to something of a backlash among the English establishment. Haunted by the prospect of unrest and revolution spreading to Britain from the Continent – and further stoked by the progress of the working-class Chartist movement during the mid-century – the British ruling classes tended to tighten their grip on power. This showed itself in a variety of ways, from increasing restrictions on women to a greater emphasis on the doctrines of the established Church. It also meant that, while government select committees and initiatives like the Schools of Design voiced the ideals of greater public access to art, in reality those who owned or controlled most of the works were more interested in closing ranks against the perceived threat of the masses. The French
model of universal access, born out of the principles of the First Republic, was still some way off across the Channel.

The only real British alternative lay with a number of exhibition societies that flourished in the second half of the century. While these did not show historic masterpieces, they did offer support to many artists considered too progressive to please the conservative members of the Royal Academy, and they welcomed visitors who wanted to view new work in a sympathetic environment. Many of these societies had open membership and modest subscription rates: the Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts founded in 1858 held lectures and debates and organized visits to private galleries for an annual subscription of £1.1s. Several specialized in encouraging artists who worked outside the oil painting tradition favoured by the Royal Academy – these included the Photographic Salon which met at the Dudley Gallery Art Society in Piccadilly and the Bookplate Society based at the nearby John Baillie's Gallery – while others provided studios, study rooms and drawing classes, or even allocated grants to young artists. But such opportunities were limited. The exhibition societies were largely confined to the capital and were without real influence or prestige. Perhaps more significantly, their open membership policy and resistance to selection meant that the quality of exhibits could be poor. Displays frequently failed to inspire the serious student, and Robinson would have stood little chance of seeing many significant works of art at first hand.

In France, it was the Louvre's Italian Renaissance masterpieces that most captivated Robinson's interest. He learned quickly and before long he was an expert. Eventually, he studied other periods and schools of art – he particularly came to value the workmanship of the medieval craftsman and to admire the detail of eighteenth-century composition – but his first love was for the extravagance of the Renaissance. It was never to leave
him. Inevitably, when his years at the Paris ateliers were over, he brought it with him back to England. In time, this enthusiasm would influence his work at the South Kensington Museum, and have an impact on the type of collections he developed there. But there was more to Paris than the Louvre, and alongside Robinson's education in the public galleries he threw himself into the more informal training of the private collector. The lure of the hidden and the mysterious took him deep into the network of backstreets as well as into the smarter districts of the 7th
arondissement
where the curiosity shops were clustered. He became known to a number of successful and influential dealers, noting a preference for Monsieur Delange on the Quai Voltaire, opposite the Louvre and the Tuileries Gardens; he regularly bought the more reasonably priced wares of Mister Evans, who owned the next-door shop; and he was a frequent visitor to the small but packed showroom of Monsieur Couvreur, on the rue Notre Dame des Victoires, in the crisscross of streets around the fashionable Opéra.

By 1846, hopeful visits to the most promising dealers had already become an integral part of Robinson's life. A young man of twenty-two, he was collecting in earnest, haggling over the spoils of war and revolution, travelling to Orléans and Tours as well as keeping an eye on bargains to be had in Paris. For the next sixty years, his letters, diaries and published articles, and even his account books and official museum minutes, would show a man completely captivated by the idea of collecting. In Paris, the opportunity to visit several thriving and inspiring collections rooted in private connoisseurship provided a touchstone for what he might go on to achieve, proving what could be done with dedication and commitment. Perhaps most important of these was the collection of Alexandre Du Sommerard in the atmospheric medieval Hôtel de Cluny. Open to the public on Sundays from 1832, the elaborate rooms drew
on the influence of the
Wunderkammer
, evoking the cluttered, treasure-trove effect of the impassioned collector and drawing crowds as large as those at the Louvre.

By the time of Robinson's visits, the state had taken over the collection, arranging the pieces more systematically and allowing more frequent public access from 1844. The Musée de Cluny was already making news among English politicians and commentators as a resource for educating taste and encouraging the skills of artisans and manufacturers, being held up as a model for British projects like the Schools of Design. Robinson had probably heard of the collection in this light. But it was also a scholarly celebration of collecting the medieval and Renaissance decorative arts. Du Sommerard published a highly illustrated, five-volume catalogue (1838–46) with an emphasis on the pieces as ‘strange and rare history' instead of as evidence of design standards, and it was this sense of the more idealistic possibilities of collecting that Robinson seems to have found most inspiring.
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Du Sommerard had a dull day job in the French Audit Office, but his heart was in collecting and for an impressionable young visitor like Robinson this enthusiasm was in itself exhilarating.

Robinson was already finding his way into the circle of collectors. A recommendation from a fellow connoisseur would have granted him access, via three flights of steep stairs, to the tiny apartment of Charles Sauvageot, in rue du Faubourg-Poissonière in an outlying district of northern Paris. Sauvageot lived completely surrounded by his things. ‘The objects were so crowded that I tucked in my sleeves from fear,' wrote another English visitor, clearly afraid of accidental breakage. ‘It is evident that he buys articles from real love of the beautiful.'
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Sauvageot, like Du Sommerard, had a ‘normal' career, working at the Customs office, and his rooms were small and cramped. He had little money, but he was an indefatigable scavenger, alert to the possibilities for
acquiring unusual and valuable works in the long aftermath of the Revolution. His collection showed that with patience and spirit it was possible to achieve a great deal. Robinson took such models to heart. He became acutely aware of the variety and beauty of the objects on offer. He developed a taste for Limoges enamels and an enduring fascination with textiles. He bought sixteenth- and seventeenth-century silks, with their colours still bold, an ornamental carpet and a magnificent altar cover. He became voracious in his collecting, developing a sense of urgency and competitiveness that was to last a lifetime. But late in 1846, after a period of intense collecting, Robinson's money finally ran out. He was forced to return home to Nottingham in the middle of an English winter, complaining in his diary that the city was ‘desolate'.
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Back in Nottingham, Robinson missed desperately the romance of Paris and the thrill of making contacts there. He continued to paint, but could not find a way of supporting himself as an artist. For a while, his life seemed dull and miserable. His years in France had made an enormous impact on him, inspiring his collecting and offering glimpses of what could be. Short of money and lonely, these possibilities suddenly seemed all too distant. But Robinson was lucky. On 1 June 1847, he was appointed to work at the Nottingham School of Art, before moving just two months later to a post as Assistant Master at the government School of Design in Hanley, where he doubled his salary to one hundred pounds a year. At first glance, teaching drawing skills in the industrial smog of the Midlands potteries was not a glamorous job. But one of Robinson's first tasks was to return to France, to report on the state of pottery and design, and on the teaching of art. He was delighted to be back in Paris, and he was convinced that he had found a quick route to promotion. He was confident that, with his inside knowledge, his report would get him noticed, releasing him from the stagnancy of his provincial backwater and into a more
vibrant life in London. In the meantime, he could stroll again by the Seine and rummage in junkshops.