JOHN "SPANISH" PHILLIP, ARTIST

The fleeting nature of fame is well illustrated by the fate of Victorian painters. Prolific and talented, held in public esteem, many are disparaged or quite forgotten now. This neglect is undeserved and I here celebrate John Phillip whom no less than Queen Victoria rated as the finest portrait painter in the land and whose wide-ranging works found an admiring public.

John Phillip, self-portrait

John Phillip (1817-67) was born in my home-town of Aberdeen, the son of a poor retired soldier turned shoemaker. He showed early promise as an artist and he found a patron in Dundee-based Lord Panmure, who generously sent him to learn portraiture under Thomas Musgrave Joy and paid for his artistic education at the Royal Academy in London. In the late 1830s Phillip joined The Clique, a group of artists who were critical of Classical academic art. The Clique was led by Richard Dadd, the painter of supernatural subjects who was committed to Bedlam in 1843 and then Broadmoor after murdering his father whom he believed to be the Devil. Unwisely in 1844 Phillip married Dadd’s sister Maria, who also went mad after a few years (trying to strangle their infant son) and she was confined from 1855, comfortably enough, in an Aberdeen asylum until her death in 1893.

Phillip soon earned a good living as an artist, initially of Scottish subjects;

Presbyterian Catechising

Baptism in Scotland

By 1850 Phillip had come to the attention of Queen Victoria and he started to receive royal commissions – about 50 – and the Queen also bought some of his paintings. Albert was patriotically portrayed in a rather lurid kilt (dig that sporran!) and royal weddings had to be commemorated.

Albert, Prince Consort by John Phillip

     

These commissions made Phillip rich but he was not artistically fulfilled and he needed to escape his matrimonial troubles.  In 1851 he made the first of many visits to Spain whose vibrant colours and outside life-style enchanted him. The contrast with solid but grey Aberdeen or misty if imposing London must have been striking. Over the years he travelled in Seville, Cadiz, Murcia and Valencia, often depicting low-lifers, gypsies and busy street scenes. He soon became known as “Spanish” Phillip and his fame burgeoned.

Life among the Gypsies in Seville

The Dying Contrabandista

La Bomba

La Gloria (a Wake for a Dead Child)

Phillip considered La Gloria his finest work and his Spanish works were received with great enthusiasm at the Royal Academy exhibitions. Phillip died, aged 50, of a stroke while visiting a friend’s Kensington studio in 1867.

One of Phillip’s friends in The Clique was Augustus Egg. Evelyn Waugh, who collected Victorian paintings, thought Egg was a supreme painter: I’d put him among the highest. Who today has heard of Egg? Phillip is equally neglected and his works are obscurely hung in provincial galleries. Waugh reckoned that there was no “real” painting after 1870 but Waugh was famously reactionary. Yet there is no doubt that the artistic community began to lose its popular following by the late 19^th century – a tragedy for national culture, which should never be elitist and must always seek to touch the heart of every citizen.

SMD

15.12.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015