Letters from a Young Painter Abroad: making the private public in print

ABSTRACT

This article examines the travel letters of James Russel (c.1720–63), an aspiring painter, separated for many years from his close-knit family in England while he studied in Rome. His letters powerfully and poignantly convey the importance to him of maintaining family ties. They also offer a rare opportunity to trace how he came to fashion them for public consumption, while still retaining personal affect. This is seen especially in the glimpses they give of his growing realisation that he lacks the necessary level of “proficiency” to succeed as a painter of the first rank. Russel’s role as a cicerone influenced the composition as well as the content of his correspondence, best illustrated in his letters to his sister Clemmy, another aspiring artist, but one who lacked her brother’s opportunities to train abroad. The letters also enrich and expand our understanding of the conventional Grand Tour narrative.

KEYWORDS:

• Artists in Rome
• James Russel
• travel letters
• family ties
• cicerone
• professional female painters

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A search of the 2697 travel-related titles published before 1800 and listed on the English Short Title Catalogue found only Russel’s Letters. The painter and antiquary, Richard Dalton, studied in Rome around the same time as Russel and published a collection of his drawings of classical statues in 1751 (Ingamells 1997).

2 According to Jones (Anon 1946–1948), Romans classified English visitors into three degrees: “The first Class consisted of the Artisti or Artists, who came here, as well for Study and Improvement, as emolument by their profession”. The second class were the “Mezzi Cavalieri […] those who lived genteely, independent of any profession, kept a Servant perhaps” while the third class, “the true Cavalieri or Milordi Inglesi were those who moved in a Circle of Superiour Splendour – surrounded by a groupe of Satellites under the denomination of Travelling Tutors, Antiquarians, Dealers in Virtu, English Grooms, French Valets and Italian running footmen” (April 1778, 70). A recently completed thesis by Philippe Prudent (2020) examines the British “community” of travellers, artists and other residents in Rome in the second half of the eighteenth century. 

3 The majority of these previously unpublished family letters are in BL Add. MSS 4u69; other letters to patrons are preserved in the National Library of Ireland, Wicklow MSS 38628/9; Warwickshire Country Records Office, L6/r 406; and Devon County Records Office, Exeter, Quicke Family Papers, 64/12i2IIIII35.

4 I draw on Ingamells’ entry and Kelly’s (2012) account for details of Russel’s life. There is no entry for James Russel in the ODNB, although there is for his father, Richard.

5 Imperiali was master to many British painters, including Alan Ramsay (1713–84). He died in November 1740 so Russel had to find another master but he does not name him in his letters.

6 He thanked his father for the “remittances you so kindly made me from time to time” (Russel 1750, Letter XXXVIII, 20 July, 1745 from Florence, 1: 248).

7 A number of other British painters had careers as art agents and antiquaries in eighteenth-century Italy including Gavin Hamilton, Jacob More, James Byres and Thomas Jenkins.

8 This small painting, part of the Tyrwhitt-Drake private collection, is reproduced in an article by Ralph Edwards (1951).

9 Edwards (1951, 126) describes Russel as “mainly dependent on his activities as a guide to English visitors in Italy”.

10 Russel spent several months before he died at San Casciano dei Bagni, where the natural springs were believed to have curative powers for liver and other diseases. His death there is recorded in the list of visitors to Rome between 1753 and 1775 known as Hayward’s List (Stainton 1983).

11 The vast majority remained unpublished as Ingamells’ list of titles attests. Of the 21 published works that were written as letters from Italy, including Russel’s, only seven were published in the eighteenth century. “A letter from Robert More, Esq., […] containing several curious remarks in his travel through Italy” appeared in Philosophical Transactions, No. 495 in 1751 (Hagglund 1998). Painter Jonathan Skelton’s letters from Rome and Tivoli in 1758 were published by the Walpole Society in 1960.

12 Russel attempted to keep up a regular correspondence although not frequently enough to satisfy his father. As late as January 1752 the father mentions receiving “a paquet of Letters to each of the family”, brought by a returning traveller (Kelly 2012, 133).

13 Russel’s father complains several times that his son’s letters commonly take six weeks to reach London. Similar concerns are discussed in relation to letters between England and India by Bell and Parfitt (2016, 339–355).

14 The patron of this British Academy in Rome was James Caulfeild, the Earl of Charlemont, who spent eight years in Italy from 1747 to 1755, five of them in Rome (ODNB).

15 Russel critiques one of these accounts, “intitled, A short Account of a late Journey to Tuscany, Rome and other parts of Italy”, published in London in 1741 – and probably sent to him by his father or Billy, or perhaps brought by a visitor to Italy – pointing out the “chief blunders and falsehoods” in the anonymous author’s description of Rome (1750, Letter XXX, 1: 194). In the Preface to volume 2 Russel presents his account of Herculaneum by explaining that “Such a full and authentic account has been long necessary, to efface the false notions concerning this place, which have been propagated by fabulous relations in News-papers etc” (1750, 2: vi).

16 This Russel completed but it was never published (Kelly 2012, 70) and was lost some time after his death.

17 Russel’s account of the Capitol and its treasures was sent from Rome in three letters in April, May, and June1747 (1750, Letters XLIII, XLIV, XLV, 2: 7–57).

18 Russel sent to his father the account of Florence referred to here on August 28, 1745 (1750, Letter XXXIX, 1: 256).

19 In the event, the reprint of volume 1 ran to 296 pages, excluding the Index, and volume 2 to 412 pages, including a lengthy Appendix, but excluding the Index.

20 In 1750, three other accounts of Herculaneum were published and reviewed, like Russel’s Letters, in the Monthly Review and interest remained strong over the decade (Hagglund 1998).

21 The letter appeared in the November 1747 issue of The British Magazine. The trip to Naples was called off after Russel senior learned that a new account of Herculaneum was soon to be published by Marquis Venuti and asked his son to send a translation for inclusion in volume 2 of Letters. “Expedition in this affair is of the utmost consequence, lest some Book-seller here should get the start” (Kelly 2012, 97).

22 According to Ingamells, George Pitt sat for his portrait by Carriera by April 1741, then went to Rome where he stayed until Easter 1742. He had returned to England by June (722).

23 Clemmy’s letter was likely written shortly before 22 September, 1742 when Edward Holdsworth left London, so although it was composed within a few months of receiving Jemmy’s first letter, it was almost a year before her brother received it (Ingamenlls 1997, 312).

24 “Women achieved proficiency through copying masterpieces and through constant practice […] It is unfortunate that identified examples of their art, and especially their portraiture, do not in general survive” (O’Day 2008, 347). Rosalba Carriera (1673–1757), who started her career painting miniatures for snuff boxes, pioneered pastels in her portraits (West 1999, 60).

25 See Modesti (2014) for an excellent study of Sirani and women’s cultural production in early modern Bologna.

26 BL. Add. MSS.41169 ff. 3r–4v, edited by Kelly (2012, 92–93).

27 Princess Maria Clementina Sobieski (1702–1735) lived in exile in Rome with her husband, Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, and their two sons, Charles Edward (aka Bonnie Prince Charlie) and Henry Benedict Stuart. Russel provided detailed accounts and illustrations of the monument erected to the Princess in St Peter’s Cathedral in two of letters to his mother.

28 “Recipients, not the sender, had to pay for the cost of a letter […] postal rates were calculated according to the distances traveled and the number of sheets that comprised a letter.” The Postal Service in 18th Century Britain: Letters and the Penny-Post, 9 September 2009, https://janeaustensworld.com/2009/09/09/the-postal-service-in-18th-century-britain-letters-and-the-penny-post/

29 Russel mentions sending a letter to his father through Miss Gavine’s mother, when she accompanied her daughter home from Rome. Miss Gavine remains unidentified.

30 Painted between 1743 and 1747, showing Russel, Dr Thomas Townson, William Drake, James Dawkins and Edward Holdsworth.

31 If not Griffiths then this most likely another male reviewer. Hagglund (1998, 1) has established, so far as this is possible, that in the first forty years of the Monthly Review only two of the reviewers were women and that their reviews were not of travel books.

32 According to Smith (1998, 81) the reviewer covered the four main areas eighteenth-century readers had come to expect: “style, the writer, the authenticity of the letters, and the value of the content”. See also Leask (2019, 96) on “readerly expectations and rhetorical norms” generated by eighteenth-century travel writing.

33 Griffiths’ assessment of what did and did not appeal to “the general taste” was probably accurate. No further editions of the Letters were published. Russel senior’s health declined and he died in 1756.

34 Read’s painting, British Gentlemen in Rome, features on the home page of Stanford’s Grand Tour Project (https://grandtour.stanford.edu/). It was once attributed to Russel https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:767