4 - Paint and Painting: The Virtues and Trials of Practices Exchanged by Word of Mouth

Summary

BRITISH ARTISTS IN THE mid- to late nineteenth century tended to occupy a social circle that included fellow artists who were simultaneously friends and rivals, more established artists whom they regarded as mentors, and current or potential clients. Those who lived in London networked with one another through personal contacts, common suppliers of materials, and shared workspaces, using each other's studios in turn as fortune favoured or expelled an owner. The practical, day-to-day details of their individual approaches to painting often took second place in their diaries and correspondence to discussions about whose work was accepted for exhibition, whose had sold, how much effort and revision the painting in hand was taking, and how much time and mental energy were being devoted to family obligations or concerns about health. Hence, The Boyce Papers provide clear and unique insights into the trio's artistic world, and their serious strivings for artistic excellence and also recognition, but a sketchier sense of the practicalities of their painting practice, on which this chapter will shed some light.

Joanna Mary Boyce exemplifies the fleeting nature of mentions of technical matters in The Boyce Papers: in the early to mid-1850s domestic demands and family relationships account for a larger percentage of the word count and hence have greater weight in her letters to her brother, George Price Boyce, and suitor and later husband, Henry Tanworth Wells, than in their letters to her. Following their marriage, domestic arrangements dominated her correspondence with Wells: nonetheless, we find, at times, that she wrote a few sentences about technical matters that sound like the continuation of a verbal discussion now articulated with more measured thought. Partly because Wells destroyed many of his own letters, what is missing from her writings is a dimension of live discussion; just as biographers today must miss a significant dimension of contemporary personality that is expressed on social media, never backed up and all too soon deleted from memory too. Thus, we are reliant on documentary scraps from her writings and two precious surviving paintboxes, rare surviving items amongst much now lost.