WILLIAM FREDERICK YEAMES, R.A.

WILLIAM FREDERICK YEAMES, R.A.

Biographical sketch of W. F Yeames

c. 1884

Frederick George Stephens (1828-1907), author and editor

F. G. Stephens, Artists at Home, photographed by J. P. Mayall and reproduced in facsimile by photoengraving on copper plates; edited, with biographical notes and descriptions, by Frederick George Stephens (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington; New York: Appleton & Co., 1884), pp. 53-56.

Yeames, William Frederick (1835-1918), English painter

June 1884

W. F. Yeames was born in Russia, where his father was British Consul. The elder Yeames recognized his son's talents and took the entire family to Rome when Yeames was only seven, simply to acquaint his son with the art treasures there. Upon the family's return to London, Yeames studied with J. S. Westmacott and Sir George Scharf. Failing to gain a place in the Royal Academy Schools, he returned to Italy and entered the Academy at Florence. Finally, in 1858, Yeames settled in London and the next year exhibited a painting for the first time at the R.A. From that point on, Yeames produced large numbers of historical and domestic romances, most of which were exhibited at the Academy, though some were shown at the British Institution, Suffolk Street, the French Gallery, and the Dudley Gallery. He was elected an A.R.A. in 1867, the year after exhibiting his important Queen Elizabeth Receiving the French Ambassadors after the News of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; and in 1877 his Amy Robsart was purchased by the Royal Academicians with the Chantrey Fund. But Yeames's best picture is "When did you last see your father?, showing a small boy standing up to interrogation by an intimidating line of commissioners and soldiers of the Long Parliament; the picture was such a success that Yeames's election as an R.A. in 1878 was almost a foregone conclusion.

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W. W. Fenn, "William Frederick Yeames," Magazine of Art (1881): 196-99.

The online edition of this work in the public domain, i.e., not protected by copyright, has been produced by the National Gallery of Art.

NGA_Yeames.pdf

Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Omeka record contributed by Linda Merrill

September 25, 2016

MR. WILLIAM FREDERICK YEAMES, R.A.

 THIS painter, although he is one of the more distinguished members of the Royal Academy, differs from many of his fellows in owing none of his technical training to that institution, which, although the public takes small notice of the circumstance, devotes the larger portion of its means to the gratuitous education of artists, and is even more energetic as a teaching than as an exhibiting body.  Mr. Yeames is, so far as his native country is concerned, a pupil of the late Mr. J. S. Westmacott and the present Director of the National Portrait Gallery.  Passing from the hands of these advisers, having, during a brief sojourn in this island, not obtained admittance to the schools at Trafalgar Square, he went to Italy and entered the Academy at Florence, where he remained two years under the charge of Professor Pollastrini and of Raffaelle Buonajuti, while his great natural powers ripened, so that he was soon on the way to distinction.

            Returning to the outset of his career, let me say that Mr. Yeames was born in December, 1835, at Taganrog, where his father, a man of culture and warm artistic sympathies, was British Consul.  The family, in which the painter is the fourth son, belongs to Norfolk, and, as Mr. Fenn, to whose biography of his friend I am indebted for a few details of this sketch, states, both his parents zealously promoted the early declared artistic inclinations of their son.  The student was not more than seven years old when his father took the whole family to Rome, on purpose, it is said, that they might become familiar with the treasures of the metropolis of bygone design.  Between 1843 and 1848, a sojourn at Dresden favoured the general education of my subject.  Removed to England, he, while a pupil of Messrs. Westmacott and Scharf, attended the anatomical classes at University College, London.  After this he returned to Italy, and prosecuted his studies in Florence and Rome until 1858, when he settled in London, where he had determined to bring to fruit the labours of his youth.  The effects of these Italian studies are always observable in his works.

            Mr. Yeames’s first exhibited pictures were at the Academy in 1859, and consisted of a {54} portrait of Mr. B. Wishaw of Cheltenham, and a humorous and pathetic example called “The Staunch Friends,” which, by representing a jester and his monkey, attracted a certain amount of attention in artistic circles, and heralded a wider success.  It initiated a series of historical and domestic romances in art, the number of which already approaches a hundred.  Of these, the majority were at the Academy; half-a-dozen, including the noteworthy “Trystinge Houre,” were at the British Institution; one, called “Sophy and Lionel,” was at Suffolk Street in 1861; many more were at the French Gallery and at the Dudley Gallery.  Of the managing society of the last-named exhibition our painter was, during several years, a prominent, and, I believe, an active member.  The more important of his productions have been seen in Trafalgar Square and at Burlington House.  Of these the leading examples are as follows.  Omitting the exhibition of 1860, when Mr. Yeames did not appear at the Academy, he made a considerable mark in 1861 with “The Sonetto,” which excelled in showing a young Italian bard (Petrarch) pacing up and down a long external gallery of an ancient Florentine house, where he had put aside his large lute, and maintained rapt in the act of poetic composition.  The character of the face and the spirit of the attitude, the effect of morning on the house-tops seen from the gallery, the general representation of light in the whole work, and above all, an impression of originality in its sentiment and technique, commended this picture to painters.  Therefore Mr. Yeames’s next year’s work was looked for with much interest.  “The Toilette,” a comparatively unimportant example, accompanied “The Sonetto.”  The picture of 1862 was styled “Rescued,” and showed a child fallen into the sea whom a bold sailor has rescued, and is now clinging for life to a jetty with the little one in his arms.  The lookers-on are full of expression.

            In 1863 we had “The Meeting of Sir Thomas More and his Daughter,” the scene of which is a courtyard, after Sir Thomas had left the place of trial for that of his brief imprisonment.  His daughter has broken through the line of the guards and struggles with two of them; her arms are extended towards her father, who has turned round for a last embrace; his pale and sad face showed profound tenderness and a heart-worn dignity; especially expressive emotion pervaded his undemonstrative attitude, and contrasted with the passion of the woman.  The subordinate figures of the design were studied with quite as much care as those in chief; they included the children Margaret had left standing behind her, the soldiers, their officers, and several spectators.  In 1864, the Academy contained “La Reine Malheureuse,” an interesting but less vivid example than the above of the artist’s power of dramatizing his themes.  It represented Henrietta Maria taking refuge from Admiral Batten’s cannonade of Burlington Quay; the lady and her attendants shiver in the cold and snowy landscape; their aspects are woe-begone, while the rendering of their emotions and conduct was not without humour.  The Jesuit Confessor of Her Majesty crouches in front of that terrified group, while behind her is Jermyn, her reputed lover.  In {55} 1865 the subject chosen for delineation contrasted with the last in being a chivalric one; it was named “Arming the Young Knight,” and illustrated an “Old Ballad” beginning: --

 “God speed thee, then, my own brave boy,

Sith thou must forth in armour dight.”

             A much more important picture came from Mr. Yeames’s hands in the following year, and, with exceptional spirit and effectiveness, represented “Queen Elizabeth receiving the French Ambassadors after the news of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.”  Her Majesty sits on her throne facing us; the ambassador’s figure, with his back towards us in front, was the most important element in the design, and placed where his splendid satin dress gave a powerful and brilliant spot of light.

            It was doubtless owing to the strong impression made by the above-named works that Mr. Yeames, although he had exhibited so few examples of his skill, was elected an A.R.A. in 1867, a year in which he sent to the Academy “On Bread and Water,” and thus displayed an odd interior with figures, including that of a boy under punishment, seated, and sulkily munching meager food at the extreme end of a long table which is elsewhere loaded with rich viands; a serving-woman goes out of the room.  “The Dawn of the Reformation” was with the above in the same gallery; it showed Wycliffe at the door of his parsonage at Lutterworth addressing some young men and youths, his disciples, and giving them copies of the Scripture he had translated.  “The Chimney Corner” comprised a boy sitting by the fire in a convent chamber, or hospital, and wrapped in a blanket; a man approaches him.  This picture was at the Academy in 1868, and with it the more important “Lady Jane Grey in the Tower” while listening to the argument of Feckenham, the Queen’s Confessor.  The former significantly held the Bible in one hand, and grasped that hand with its fellow, as if to make doubly sure of the object of her trust.  Her face was marked with pain, as if the mind within was pressed by physical fear, and yet held on bravely.  The figure of the confessor was hardly inferior to that of the lady.  “The Fugitive Jacobite,” which followed the above in the Academy of 1869, showed such a person about to hide in the chimney of a bedroom of an ancient house, while the family of the host are gathered in the chamber; a lady looks from a window as if to watch the arrival of the pursuers.  The companion to this noteworthy piece of melodramatic genre  was called “Alarming Footsteps,” and derived this title from the figure of a little boy approaching a corridor, and, boy-like, jumping from step to step of a staircase.  Two lovers linger at a window, and are startled by the noise.

            1870 saw three pictures of Mr. Yeames’s at the Academy: they were “Maundy Thursday,” a lady washing the feet of poor women in a castle hall; “Visit to the Haunted Chamber,” which, to their terror and that of the rats they disturb, some damsels have entered; and “Love’s Young Dream.”  The remaining exhibited works of the painter will be remembered by my readers.  They were “Doctor Harvey and the Children of Charles I.” {56} and “The Prisoner and his Guests” (1871); “The Old Parishioner” and “A Rest by the River Side” (1872); “Pleading the Old Cause,” “The Morning Rehearsal,” and “The Path of Roses” (1873); “The Appeal to the Podestà,” a Florentine incident, “Flowers for Hall and Bower,” “Pulpit Decorations for Harvest Home,” and “The Christening” (1874); “Pour les Pauvres” and “The Suitor” (1875); “La Contadinella,” “The Last Bit of Scandal,” and “Campo dei SS. Apostoli, Venice” (1876); “Waking,” “Amy Robsart,” the corpse of the lady lying at the foot of a staircase, two men staring at it from above with horror—this picture was bought by the Academicians with the Chantrey Fund—“The Fair Royalist,” a pastel study, and a portrait (1877).

            “When did you last see your father?” a picture which is, on the whole, our painter’s best, represented commissioners and soldiers of the Long Parliament questioning the inmates of a manor-house as to the whereabouts of its master.  A commissioner addresses a question in the terms of the title to a handsome little boy who, standing on a stool at the foot of a table with his hands behind him, hesitates, with charming ingenuousness, to answer the perilous demand.  The man sits looking at the child, and rests his chin upon the backs of his hands, which are folded together.  A young girl, who is weeping, stands behind her brother, and is under the charge of a stalwart, not pitiless, soldier.  The mother of these children and their elder sister are in the background watching the event; the former turns her face towards us with mingled hope, pride, and fear for the noble little fellow.  The painter’s election as a Royal Academician on the 19^th of June, 1878, was considered a foregone conclusion when this capital piece was exhibited.  The force of pictorial and pathetic melodrama could no farther go.

            In 1879 we noticed at the Academy “By the Sea-side, portraits,” and “La Bigolante:  Venetian Water Carrier.”  The pictures of 1880 were “The Finishing Touch:  green room at private theatricals,” and a portrait of “Thomas Turner, Esq., late Treasurer of Guy’s Hospital.”  1881 produced at Burlington House, “Here we go round the Mulberry Bush” and “Il dolce far niente;” 1882 gave us “The March Past,” “Prince Arthur and Hubert,” and “Welcome as Flowers in Spring;” the picture shown in 1883 was called “Tender Thoughts.”  The Academy now contains “The Toast of the Kit Cat Club” and two portraits.

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