EDWARD JOHN POYNTER, R.A.

Grandson of an eminent sculptor and son of a distinguished architect, Poynter began training as a child at Mr. Leigh's academy in Newman Street. Later, traveling abroad for his health, he concentrated on landscape painting until he met Frederic Leighton in Rome in 1853 and, under his influence and instruction, shifted his interest to the figure. He was admitted to the Royal Academy schools in 1855 but soon thereafter went to Paris, entering the atelier of Charles Gleyre as well asworking at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and in a studio of his own. Poynter first exhibited a painting in London in 1859, when hecame to the attention of William Burges, who employed him to paint medieval designs on custom-made furniture; at the same time, he produced cartoons for stained glass windows by Messrs. Powell of Whitefriars. Settling in London in 1860, Poynter painted panels for Walltham Abbey church and made designs for woodcuts for the Dalziel Brothers' Illustrated Bible. He made his début at the R.A. in 1861, but was hardly noticed until 1864, with the exhibition of On Guard in the Time of the Pharaohs. He has continued to exhibit at the Academy ever since, receiving special praise for Israel in Egypt in 1867. He worked as an illustrator for Once a Week, among other papers, and on the strength of The Catapult was elected A.R.A. in 1869. Subsequently, Poynter designed mosaics for the South Kensington Museum and the Houses of Parliament; his decorations for the Grill Room at South Kensingtonare perhaps the most accomplished.
In 1871 Poynter was appointed the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at University College, London; in 1875 he became Director for Art at South Kensington and the next year was elected an R.A. Poynter's acknowledged masterpiece is A Visit to Æsculapius of 1880. His studio portrait shows the artist with one of the designs he is currently executing for the dome of St. Paul's.

Edward J. Poynter, Ten Lectures on Art. 2d ed.. (London: Chapman & Hall, 1880). http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t50g3mj36

MR. EDWARD JOHN POYNTER, R.A.,

MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF PAINTERS IN WATER COLOURS, AND OF THE BELGIAN SOCIETY OF PAINTERS IN WATER COLOURS

THIS painter in oil and water colours, draughtsman on wood, decorator in glass and mosaic, etcher, and teacher of and lecturer on art, is the great grandson of Thomas Banks, R.A., who was one of the most learned and vigorous of the English sculptors, one of the first group of Students admitted (1769) to the Royal Academy, the first sculptor who (1770) won the Gold Medal of that body, the first Travelling Student of his profession who (1772) went to Rome; and, having been elected just a hundred years ago one of the earliest A.R.A.’s.  Thomas Banks was not only a contributor to the Free Society of Artists’ Exhibitions in 1767—his first appearance before the Academy was founded—but he was favourably represented at the second gathering of the last-named body in 1770.  His distinguished career ended in 1805.

            Mr. E. J. Poynter was born in Paris on the 20^th of March, 1836, and was brought to England while yet an infant.  His father is a still-living architect of distinction, who, in the practice of his profession, resided during several years of his son’s childhood at Poet’s Corner, Westminster, close to the Abbey and that famous school where out painter obtained part of his early education.  Considerations affecting his health induced his removal for some time to the Grammar School at Ipswich.  Young as he was, it appears that during the holidays he drew at Mr. Leigh’s academy in Newman Street, Oxford Street, and thus acquainted himself with the antique and fine types of life.  Originally intended under his father’s guidance, to become an architect, the younger Poynter determined, in 1851, to prefer the career of a painter, and continued his studies accordingly.  The winter of 1852-3 was spent in seeking strength at Madeira; meanwhile he familiarized himself with the magnificent contours and coloration of the landscape of that island, and sketched diligently from nature.  Returning to London, he persevered in draughtsmanship, and, his health requiring a softer winter than England offered, he went to Italy at the end of 1853.  Here he continued to study landscape until, meeting the present P.R.A., who was then in Rome and hard at work on “The Procession in honour of Cimabue’s ‘Madonna,’” {78}  the influence of this artist directed Poynter’s studies to the figure, to profiting by which the senior painter gave every friendly aid, setting draperies—as Mr. Hamerton, to whom I am much indebted, has told us—on his lay-figure to be drawn from by the tyro, and allowing him to use the models employed for the large painting.

            Returning to London with the returning spring, Poynter resumed his practice in Newman Street, and, for a year, became a pupil of Mr. W. C. T. Dobson, R.A.  He was admitted a Student of the Royal Academy in 1855, but did not work long in the schools at Trafalgar Square ere he went to Paris, and, during the Universal Exhibition of the last-named year, his choice of styles being still unmade, he was profoundly impressed by the dramatic energy of Decamps’ design, his vigorous chiaroscuro, and grand feeling for colour.  The art of this great master was then at its zenith; his serious and picturesque motives could not but have their influence on the mind of our student, which was always gravely bent, and full of sympathy with majestic and dramatic themes.  From the spring of 1856, when he entered the atelier of Gleyre, then greatly in vogue with English students, Poynter, with intervening visits to London, spent the greater part of four years in Paris.  In this period he worked in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and in a studio of his own, where, in 1859, he painted a small picture from Shelley’s translation of the Homeric “Hymn to Mercury,” and an illustration of Dante.  “The first of these pictures was offered to the British Institution, and rejected; the second was sent to the Royal Academy,” where it had a similar fate.  “Instead of being discouraged by this failure, young Poynter sent the Dante picture a second time to the Academy in 1862, when it was accepted, but hung at the top of the room.”  It is named below.

            In 1859 Poynter contributed to the British Institution his first exhibited picture, painted in Paris the year before, in “The Wandering Pifferari,” the price of which was forty guineas.  W. Burges, since an A.R.A. and deceased, employed Poynter to paint panels of mediæval designs on cabinets such as the architect was accustomed to produce.  Poynter’s works of this kind are now, doubtless, at the house in Melbury Road.  He likewise drew cartoons to be produced in stained glass by Messrs. Powell of Whitefriars, including four windows for the Maison Dieu at Dover, which Mr. Ambrose Poynter had restored, and two similar works in the Chapel of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London.  Two more windows were subsequently executed for the Maison Dieu.

            Quitting Paris to settle in London in 1860, our artist painted sixteen life-size panels of architectural character—being Signs of the Zodiac, Labours of the Year, and the Elements,—or the ceiling of Waltham Abbey church, which Burges was then restoring.  These works were finished in the summer of 1860.  Attracted by a drawing he had made of two girls carrying waterpots near the Nile, Messrs. Dalziel Brothers, who were then preparing their “Illustrated Bible” for publication, induced Poynter to make designs on wood for this work, and he selected incidents in the lives of Joseph and Moses. {79} This turned his attention to Egyptian biblical subjects, and evoked some of his very best designs, such as that of the “Triumphal Song of Miriam.”  At the Academy his début was made in 1861, and in that unpretending North Room which contained architectural drawings, miniatures, and all sorts of works.  His contribution was a small drawing, since destroyed, called “Alla Veneziana.”  “Heaven’s Messenger,” the Dantesque subject above referred to, and “The Bunch of Blue Ribbons” were at the same exhibition in 1862.  “A Day Dream” was the painter’s sole contribution of 1863.  In this year was published “The History of our Lord,” by Mrs. Jameson and Lady Eastlake, enriched with etchings by Mr. Poynter.

            Hardly any attention was vouchsafed to either of the pictures I have mentioned, but the admiration of experts and critics in search of merit was arrested by the contributions of the following year, i.e. “On Guard in the Time of the Pharaohs,” a soldier on the roof of a frontier fort looking over the sea, during blazing sunlit weather, and “The Siren,” a nude figure holding a harp, an illustration of the Laureate’s poem of the same name.  After this Poynter’s pictures were exhibited at the Academy in the following order:--  “Portrait of a Lady,” and “Faithful unto Death,” a soldier staying at his post in Pompeii during the destruction of the city, one of the most moving of the artist’s designs (1865); “Offerings to Isis” (1866); “Israel in Egypt,” the largest and most elaborate work until then produced by the artist, which chiefly occupied him nearly four years, and was exhibited in 1867 with great applause, and secured public attention for anything which might follow it from the same hands.  At this period Poynter made many designs for “Once a Week” and other illustrated papers.  He carried out the promises and enhanced the success of “Israel in Egypt” by means of “The Catapult” of 1868, in which equal learning, as much fruitful study, and greater skill had been applied to a more effective and epical subject than any of its forerunners possessed.  “The Catapult” was, among the younger painters’ contributions, the picture of the year.  It insured the A.R.A.ship of the artist, who was elected in January, 1869.  He exhibited in this year “The Prodigal’s Return,” a portrait of “A. Walker, Esq.,” and a charming figure of “Proserpine,” which was repeated for a royal patron.  A visit to Italy, in order that he might study the ancient use of mosaic, was made in 1868, and brought fruit the next year in a design for a large work in that material intended for the Lecture Room at the South Kensington Museum, but not yet executed.  A mosaic of “St. George” was designed at the same period and has since been set up in the Central Hall of the Houses of Parliament.  The cartoons for this work were at the Academy in 1870, and included that illustrating “Fortitude.”  In the same exhibition was the oil picture of “Andromeda,” which is a lovely and pathetic instance of the artist’s finer powers.  In this year six drawings of a larger series designed to illustrate Keats’s “Endymion” were executed; the book was published with these drawings only, and is thus far incomplete.  Figures of “Phidias” and “Apelles” by {80} Poynter and executed in mosaic, were, about this time, placed above the arcade of the South Court at the South Kensington Museum, and are among the first completed modern works of the kind in this island.  In May, 1871, he was elected a member of the Belgian Society of Painters in Water Colours, and in the same month he was chosen the first Slade Professor of Fine Art in University College, London, a post he occupied with exceptional advantage to others.

            “The Suppliant to Venus,” the subject of which is due to Mr. W. Morris’s “Earthly Paradise,” appeared at the Academy in 1871, accompanied by “Fording the Sacred Ibis in the Halls of Karnac.”  “Perseus and Andromeda,” one of the large pictures now decorating the drawing-room at the Earl of Wharncliffe’s house called Wortley Hall, near Sheffield, was shown in 1872.  At this time Poynter began to execute for Mr. Palmer the frescoes of “St. Stephen accused,” and “St. Stephen stoned,” which are in the church dedicated to the Proto-martyr at Dulwich.  The picture exhibited in 1873 is the second of the Wortley Hall series, and represents the “Fight between More of More Hall and the Dragon of Wantley.”  At or about this date the decorations were finished for the Grill Room in the South Kensington Museum, which Poynter had designed with great spirit and originality, combining panels of earthenware in camaïeu, representing subjects appropriate to the place, and decorative works of novel character.  This is one of the most elaborate and fortunate examples of interior decoration known in this country, and, in its way, unsurpassed abroad in modern art-craft.

            1874 produced at the Academy the small figure of “Rhodophe.”  “The Festival,” Greek girls decorating a building, and “The Golden Age,” Greek young men gathering fruit from an apple tree, were shown in 1875.  In this year, Mr. Redgrave having resigned the post he had long held as Inspector-General of the Art-Department, our artist was invited to succeed him with some change of duties, and, as Director for Art, he was employed to reorganize part of the curriculum of the Government schools at South Kensington, the Head-Mastership of which became vacant at the same period.  Accepting this trust, the painter gave up the Slade Professorship he had held for two terms of three years each.  On the 29^th of June, 1876, he was elected a Royal Academician.  He sent to the exhibition in this year, a “Portrait of Cecil Wedgewood,” with “Atalanta’s Race,” the third and most important of Lord Warncliffe’s pictures, which was engraved in line by Mr. Joubert, and published in 1881.  A portrait of “Mrs. Archibald Milman,” and “The Fortune Teller,” were at the Academy in 1877.  The latter is the artist’s diploma work.  “Zenobia captive,” and a portrait of “Mrs. Langtry,” were exhibited in 1878, and followed in 1879, by a portrait of “A. Baldwin, Esq.,” and “Nausicaa and her Maidens playing at Ball,” the last of Lord Wharncliffe’s pictures.

            The painter’s masterpiece, so far as the world has yet seen, is the picture of 1880, called “A Visit to Æsculapius,” which the Academicians honoured themselves by buying {81} with the Chantrey Fund.  A portrait of the “Earl of Wharncliffe,” “Helen” of Troy, and a portrait of “Mrs. R. Bell” were shown in 1882, “In the Tepidariam,” a small example, appeared in 1883, with a model showing the proposed decorations for the dome of St. Paul’s, the large painted cartoons for which now (1884) occupy the artist.  “Psyche” sustained Mr. Poynter’s reputation in 1883, with “The Ides of March.”  “Diadumenè,” a Greek damsel standing naked at the side of a bath while adjusting a fillet about her hair, a portrait, and medallions in bronze were shown in the present year.  There is more than one version of “Diadumenè.”

            In 1883 Mr. Poynter was elected an Associate of the Society of Painters in Water Colours; in the present year he has been made a full member of the same body.  He has contributed to its exhibitions.  He frequently sent works to the Winter Exhibitions of Cabinet Pictures in Oil since the first gathering at the Dudley Gallery in 1867, when “Adoration to Ra” appeared.  He was an active promoter of the General Exhibition of Water-Colour Drawings in the same gallery, since 1865, when he sent six examples, including some of his early landscapes drawn in Wales, Kent, Devonshire, France, and elsewhere.  He was likewise a member of the Committee of the Black and White Exhibition, Dudley Gallery, and a contributor to the gatherings of that category.  In 1878 he published “Ten Lectures on Art,” which are among the soundest and most effectual works of their kind.  He wrote for Messrs. Sampson Low and Co., the larger portion of a concise “History of Classic and Italian Painting,” 1880.

            On the largest easel represented in the portrait before us is one of the designs for the dome of St. Paul’s; on the next easel is a small version of “The Ides of March;” on the third easel is a similar version of “The Meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba,” an important work which is to be shown when it is finished.