Edwardian Opulence: The Art of Empire
“Elgar withdrew from conducting ‘The Crown of India’ in March 1912...when in April, the sinking of the Titanic seemed to portend a more general disaster.”
--Tim Barringer, “Elgar’s Aesthetics of Landscape”
“Of course, of course.”
--Henry James, on being told that Rupert Brooke had been buried on the Greek island of Skyros, 1915
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Portrait of a Lady. Giovanni Boldini. 1903. Dublin City Gallery.
(dig the fan)
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Sir Frank Swettenham. John Singer Sargent. 1904
Oh, my. This is something worth getting lost in...giving yourself into this sense overload with the last days of a grand empire in its own setting sun...
This exhibit, which was shown at the Yale Center for British Art in 2013 (and I attended again and again), coincided with the highly popular “Downton Abbey” TV series. It was quite well received in the NY Times, Boston Globe and Wall St. Journal.
Viewing this show about an era one hundred years ago, we of course know what happened after its brief period, roughly corresponding with the reign of King Edward VII (1901-1910) and immediately prior to the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. The last link to this era, as we know it, was the death and royal funeral of the Queen mother Elizabeth at age 102 in 2002. But a look back couldn’t hurt, as we ponder our own empire’s progress and where the Edwardian’s went horribly wrong...examined in its “particulars” -- that is, what was of value and important to the rich who purchased those fabulous “particulars.”
For example:
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the ostrich fan of Lady James de Rothschild
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The Manchester tiara, Cartier, made for Consuela, Duchess of Manchester
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Lady Curzon’s House of Worth silk gown with silver and gold bullion thread work, which she wore when she was presented in the royal court to his majesty.
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and on to the Royal Collection’s extravagant Carl Faberge bell push, ca. 1900
courtesy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
And another “particular” for many Americans is the music of Edward Elgar, most generally known by his “Pomp and Circumstance”...for us ever linked with happy graduation days all across our country. It was Elgar himself who claimed that the musical piece was inspired by his country ramble through Gloucestershire when, in fact, it was on a drive with his chauffeur...I guess modernity intruded upon his pleasant recollection of leafy ambling in pastoral glory.
The music of Edward Elgar (and Ralph Vaughan Williams) was unashamedly dedicated to England’s rural and pastoral ambiance (as well as its global empire) and, in Elgar’s words, to a“broad, noble, chivalrous, healthy and above all an out-of-door sort of spirit...” (Both composers were knighted for their musical contributions to England’s empire, although Williams declined it)
Britain was wondering nervously about what would happen next. The international humiliation and dire cost of the Boer War(s) had shaken the otherwise confident and triumphant 60 year reign of Queen Victoria. But it still maintained the supremacy of its Royal Navy and its empire, extending over 11 million of square miles around the globe. There truly was no place to go but down.
Technological advances -- cinema, recorded sound, the motor car, powered flight -- were coming on fast. At the same time, there were warning signs of the menacing rise of Germany as a new nation with formidable military power. Yet these elegant Edwardians were sleep-walking toward their catastrophic century’s events...two devastating world wars with a Great Depression in between, followed by the privation suffered by the British people into the 50‘s.
Politically informed art historians worry because that age and ours have ominous similarities -- and here I am referring to globalization, technological advancement and social movements that are shaking beneath our feet just as they were for the oblivious Edwardians.
This exhibition was, of course, very careful to explain such things as the gruesome process that was used to obtain the South African ostrich feathers for the ladies to flaunt in their fans and does not downplay the social problems of the underclass. It is a frank exposition of art reflecting the era, but it is in fact the art of the “upper shelf.” The portraiture and the sheer choice of what was painted reveals its bias.
What the art doesn’t represent is the groaning of the overworked city people, the noise of the city and its pain and complete exhaustion. Meanwhile, art in other European cities was strikingly different and reflective of the anxiety, confusion and worry of the modern age. It is hard to believe that Britain’s Edwardian period happened in the same decade as the opening of Picasso and Bracque’s first exhibit in Paris in 1910 where Cubism was unveiled. When you see Picasso’s “demoiselles” with their terrifyingly bold and apprehensive faces, it suggests an undercurrent of sexual anxiety, and such anxiety is not present in the pleasant landscapes, luxurious jewelry and beautiful portraiture of British art. Nor is there a “woman in green hat” that was painted by Matisse in 1905, who briefly projected Fauvist emotional churnings in brilliant color.
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Modernism was like an unwelcome guest at your door to Britain. There was no use for it. In fact, it was disagreeable.
But there was also a need to recall the decade as one “we tend to look back on as a sort late summer afternoon of poignant innocence,” in the words of Sebastian Smee, the art critic for the Boston Globe, since obviously we have the hindsight of what horrors were to come, after the assassination of that obscure archduke in Sarajevo. Smee reminds us of its similarities with the “playful , decorative sensibility that takes its lead from the rococo art of France’s Ancien Regime” of Bouchon and Watteau. And we all know what happened to that regime...
The exhibit concludes (entirely appropriately) with William Orpen’s sombre “To the Unknown British Soldier in France”
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Fittingly, the final paragraph in the program’s booklet expresses outright disgust for how negligent a generation the Edwardian one was
“By comparison with the nightmare of an industrialized slaughter to which an entire generation of British, colonial and, latterly, American servicemen was consigned, the charmed Edwardian decade --together with its excesses, its luxuries, its jingoism, its languor, decadence, and inequities, and the almost inconceivably misdirected preoccupations of its ruling elite -- took on the quality of a weird dream, at best implausible, more usually inexplicable, and at times inexcusable.”
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ravishing visuals and thought provoking text 
way bigger than what I have shown here. You can see it online if you google Edwardian Opulence, Yale Center for British Art, 2013. The whole thing, as it were...that's why I had to keep going again and again...that Yale, always trying to be better than Harvard...
I am so pleased you are up to posting like this. 
and I had the time. The extra week allowed me to do some extra research and include the music part of it (which I hadn't included before but felt I had left out an important piece of the arts). I consulted with my husband, who had at one time a music major and he helped me). In a way, I hate to leave it because of a terrific book I found at a library that gave me the Elgar/Williams history and a lot more essays that were delightful to dig into...
Next up is Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergere." Still doing some research on it tho. I am so fascinated by that painting...I'll have it up on DU either next week or the following week...
Still having some painful days but I'm sick of complaining about it on DU...I thank you for being so thoughtful to me, tho...
