Field Talfourd: Gymnast, Artist, "Lovely Flower"

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, by Field Talfourd

I’ve been quiet, but only because I am waiting to hear back from some archives in regards to potentially relevant holdings. In the interim, I’m thinking of writing something on Field Talfourd, neighbour to Sutherland, and one of the founders of Froomfield (with his brother Froome, of course). In particular, I suspect he was key to the Ruskin-Sutherland connection. Talfourd lived in Upper Canada briefly, before returning to England where he gradually transitioned from making his living as a civil engineer to a career as an artist. Elizabeth Barrett Browning thought his portrait of her the best of them all (then again, she didn’t really like having her portrait done). In some ways, I wonder to what degree her approval was due to Field’s personal charm. Smart ladies apparently found him quite compelling, including Ada Lovelace (daughter of Lord Byron) and Sophia Peabody (wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne). Mrs. Hawthorne practically swoons when describing him as “a lovely flower”—after commenting on both his “high breeding” and “marvelous power as a gymnast.” Despite such successes Talfourd appears to have been a confirmed bachelor (though you can interpret that however you would like).

My question for anyone who stumbles across this: a travel diary Talfourd kept in the 1850s survived into the early part of the twentieth century at least, and appears to have been passed down among his brother’s descendents, or the descendents of Grace Sutherland and Dr. Thomas Johnston in Canada. If anyone is aware of its current whereabouts, I would be very gratified to hear of it.

Sutherland China

George Montag was kind enough to send me photos of the china plates he inherited which once belonged to Thomas Sutherland (1772-1850) and his wife Grace (abt. 1777-1853). This is one of three plates George owns, marked on the back “Rose Medallion, 1840.” Family stories document that Thomas and Grace Sutherland brought china with them when they first arrived in Upper Canada. This was not uncommon, and such china was treasured not simply for its functionality, but also for its rarity. One only has to recollect Susanna Moodie’s distress when the sleigh carrying all her “household goods and chattels” overturned. Moodie writes of the event:

Alas, for my crockery and stone china! Scarcely one article remained unbroken.

“Never fret about the china,” said Moodie; “thank God, the man and the horses are uninjured.”

I should have felt more thankful had the crocks been spared too; for, like most of my sex, I had a tender regard for china, and I knew that no fresh supply could be obtained in this part of the world....

A year after the Moodies’ sleigh accident, Grace Sutherland unpacked her own china. The date on the plate affirms this was not part of her original collection, but rather acquired later. Legend has it that it was brought back from England, most likely the Sutherlands' trip to the UK in 1842. However, it could also have been acquired in Canada or the US.

This plate is not representative of the Rose Medallion pattern, which generally features a central gold medallion with a bird and flower inset. Flanking the medallion are four or more panels featuring people, birds, and/or butterflies. The plates generally boast five colors. In fact, the “Rose” in “Rose Medallion” refers not to the flower—indeed, peonies were the flower of choice—but to the color rose, which dominated. Instead, this plate and the others appear to be Rose Canton. That said, this distinction is minor: Rose Canton does not feature people or birds, only flowers. (To complicate things, Rose Mandarin features flowers and people, but not birds.) They are all in the same color family, feature the same aesthetic, and were produced by the same factories; it is simply a distinction in subject matter that determines what the pattern is called—and it is a distinction made primarily by contemporary collectors and appraisers, less relevant to consumers of the mid-nineteenth century.

Rose Medallion and its counterparts were first created in eighteenth-century China for the export market. By the mid-nineteenth century it had lost its cachet in England, and was being shipped primarily to America. The United States and Canada relied on such imports to fill the void Moodie lamented. As one historian notes, “most antebellum homes contained some blue-painted Canton china. Wealthier householders purchased the florid Rose Medallion, Rose Mandarin, and Bird and Butterfly wares during the middle years of the century.” Such wares continue to be handed down and treasured in North America as nowhere else.

For Sutherland to purchase such china is telling. It was not meant to be used, but rather intended for display. As such, it made clear to visitors that the owners had disposable income, as well as exhibiting the value they placed on fine things. Overall, it seems to have been a marker of upward mobility and class position. And yet I have also found references to Rose Medallion and its counterparts as “gaudy,” “garish,” and “gloppy,” as well as “crowded and fussy.” (I’ll admit I had to look up “gloppy,” which apparently means “soft and soggy; mushy.”) I’ve been thinking a lot about these descriptions. In part, I think such an assessment is a reflection of the turn in many early nineteenth-century Britain elite households away from imported to China to British firms like Wedgwood. And Wedgwood’s early aesthetic, drawn from classical antiquity, is deliberately stately, and might make Rose Medallion and its counterparts appear busy or sentimental (which is what seems to be implied by “gloppy”) when juxtaposed. That said, Wedgwood was not immune to the charms of chinoiserie, as evidence by their some of their productions in the early nineteenth-century.

The somewhat-derisive adjectives did make me consider the possibility that Thomas Sutherland was prone to the nouveau riche tendency to not recognize the distinctions so clear to their more established counterparts. But I dismissed this rather quickly: it appears that Rose Medallion simply signified something different in the Americas, exuberant with the expansion of trade routes and the products they supplied, than it did in England, where goods from China were no longer a novelty or luxury. And, quite frankly, if I was decorating a house in 1840s Canada—knowing the long winters ahead—I think I might go for a bit more color.

Thank you to George Montag for the photo, as well as permission to post it.

Sutherland Memorial Service

This Sunday is the Annual Sutherland Memorial Service at St. Stephen's Anglican Church in Courtright, Ontario. Unfortunately, the original Mooretown church built by Thomas Sutherland (1772-1850) proved to be unsound, and was abandoned in 1863 (to be taken down in 1881). St. Stephen's was the eventual successor. This sketch of the original church was completed by Sutherland's daughter, Grace, during a visit to England in the 1840s.

A very kind gentleman, Paul, of St. Stephen's has been quite helpful to me in my research into the artifacts inherited from the original church, and has generously invited me to contribute a statement for the Sutherland Memorial Service. This is the statement I have sent--though I leave it to Paul's discretion to decide whether it is appropriate:

After so much research, I have come to feel that I know Thomas Sutherland. The stories preserved about him suggest he was a dynamic man, kind, funny, ambitious, and inventive, though—like many of us—proud and possessing a bit of a temper. But he was not small minded, welcoming visitors and traveling clergymen, regardless of denomination, into his home. His personal generosity and hospitality was notable: he shared the contents of his well-stocked wine cellar, just as he loaned out books from his library. While he relocated to upper Canada to secure additional advantages for himself and his children, he believed financial gains alone were not sufficient without a strong community to enjoy them in. This is evident in the institutions he founded and sponsored, including the church at Mooretown. For him, the church was a fundamental part of his world, a belief he passed onto his children. Thank you to all who have participated in his legacy, preserving the stories and artifacts which have made him come alive for me.

The Nineteenth-Century Teenager

I found this blog recently. The idea of blogging about the teenage years in nineteenth-century Britain and the UK appeals to me for multiple reasons. That said, it's primarily relevant if you are interested in the lives of more privileged individuals. The tweeny, scullery maid, or Lowell Mill Girl are (as they in fact were) secondary to the well-bred young mistress.

Painting Thomas Sutherland

This is the third image of Thomas Sutherland (1772-1850) I have posted. The first was also a painting; the second, a silhouette by his daughter, Grace. This image is included in Sutherland Centennial: The Commemoration of One Hundred Years of the Ministrations of the Anglican Church in the County of Moore (1941).

We know that Sutherland arranged for David Scott to do paintings of himself and his wife. My assumption is, based on the quality of the work and the lack of stylistic similarity with the portrait of Grace Hogg, that this is not the work by Scott. Nor does it appear to be by Field Talfourd, Sutherland’s neighbor in Upper Canada for a period, who is the same Field Talfourd who famously sketched Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Regardless of who painted it, that Sutherland arranged to be painted twice late in life seems somewhat remarkable. Commissioning two paintings in such a short period would be seen at best as a foolish extravagance, at worst as a marker of vanity. But Sutherland was careful to appear neither extravagant nor vain. Indeed, the garb, accessories, and pose in each portrait convey both solidity and respectability. That each work includes either a book or a letter, and that Sutherland wears glasses in each signals his education, literacy, and appreciation of culture. The written works appear secular not sacred suggesting he is a man of the world; at the same time the absence of excess testifies that he is not falsely worldly. His clothing and pose attest that he is a gentleman, not a laborer, even as he does not appear to be strictly a man of leisure, but a man of business. While these markers may be conventions of the time, they are not universal. Consider, for instance, the famous John Singleton Copley painting of Paul Revere; Revere foregoes the standard trappings of the period such as wigs and stately poses, instead sitting at his work table, a silver teapot of his own crafting in hand. He is, in this instance, aligning himself with the innovations and standards of the new world. Sutherland, by contrast, remains oriented towards the formality of the old.

The possibility does exist, of course, that the painting featured above is a copy of the other, revising it, and might have been commissioned by a child of Sutherland who wished their own copy. But this is all speculation, and without access to the painting I have nothing to go on. At least one of the Sutherland family paintings was in the possession of Grace Ann Minty Robinson (1875-1951) of Minneapolis, as of the 1930s—where it is now, I have no idea. Any leads would be more than welcome.

Reading with Grace Hogg

It should come as no surprise that Grace Hogg (abt. 1777-1853), wife of Thomas Sutherland, was a keen reader, given the earlier described habits of the colony. According to a story passed down in the family, Grace was staying with her daughter (Thomas-Ann) and had assumed responsibility for the grandchildren for the day:

“She gave them their breakfast and sent them off to school. Then she sat down on a hassock beside the hearth to brush back the ashes. Beside her was a book she had been reading, she picked it up for just a minute. When the children came running in she chided them for not going to school. They had quite a time convincing her that it was noon, they were home for lunch. She had read through the morning and there were the breakfast dishes still on the table. The ability or fault to lose ones self in a book has come down through the generations.”

As someone equally capable of becoming absorbed in a book, I appreciate the precedent. What intrigues me, however, is that the behavior exhibited by Grace—the wife of a church founder—is exactly that the American Tract Society cautioned women against; namely, throughout the nineteenth century women were warned against novel reading by the pulpit and religious press, as it would prevent them from focusing their energies on the maintenance of their families and households (for examples, see especially Tracts 493, “Beware of Bad Books” and 515, “Novel-Reading”). That the family placed so much importance on books, especially novels, actually tells us a great deal about the kind of Christians they were in their historical moment: respectably devout, but not evangelical.

Grace Sutherland

While her brother, Thomas Sutherland, Jr. (1797-1880), concerned himself with writing poetry, Grace Sutherland (1826-1861) turned to art. Her sketch of the Sutherland church has been preserved, as has a rather bucolic scene of a pasture, and--of course--the silhouette she completed of her father, Thomas Sutherland (1772-1850), featured above (apologies for the substandard reproduction). The silhouette was a popular form of portraiture in the early nineteenth-century, and just one of the forms in which Sutherland was memorialized, in this instance some time around 1849.

It is not known how Grace acquired her artistic instruction; Field Talfourd of nearby Froomfield was an artist, but he did not remain in Canada long enough to have been acquainted with Grace. We do know, however, that an English governess (Miss Clark) was brought over by Captain William Elliott Wright for the benefit of his four daughters; Grace was said to have joined their classes, and was known to be friends with his daughter Catherine (who would marry senator Alexander Vidal). As drawing was considered an appropriate accomplishment for a young lady of the time, it is possible her instruction began at Wright's home, "Oaklands."