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ABSTRACT
Nathaniel Hone’s three portraits of Sir John Fielding establish a public image for the magistrate and a visual language for representing his blindness. Fielding is represented in 1757 as a family man, in 1762 as a sociable member of the Republic of Letters, and finally in 1773 as the embodiment of Justice. The movement across the portraits from empiricism to allegory not only conveys his increasing social status and celebrity, but also the mingling of philosophical and poetic ideas about blindness in Enlightenment thinking. This paper argues that Hone’s construction of Fielding’s vision impairment in the latter two portraits reflects changing attitudes to blindness resulting from Lockean sensationalism and the widespread success of cataract operations. The more academically ambitious final portrait, however, also draws on iconographic tropes of blind justice, casting Fielding in allegorical guise that confers upon him heightened powers of reason and impartiality. For Hone, Fielding’s blindness is a crucial part of his status and identity, but it also provides opportunities to push portraiture beyond its association with the imitation of the visible and into the realm of invention.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful commentary. Jennifer Milam, Chris Mounsey and Kate Tunstall in different ways challenged me to develop the ideas and refine the argument. John Pennells of the Middlesex Guildhall Art Collection provided valuable information on the 1773 portrait. Especial thanks to Michael Hill for reading and talking through everything.
Notes on contributor
Georgina Cole is an art historian specialising in eighteenth-century art and art theory. Her research interests include the social and artistic meanings of architectural space and the representation of sensory deprivation in French and British painting. The present article belongs to a larger research project on depictions of blindness in British painting, graphic art and sculpture. She is lecturer in Art History and Theory at the National Art School, Sydney.
Notes
1 See De Bolla, The Education of the Eye, 14–41; Jay, Downcast Eyes, 21–82.
2 Reid, An Enquiry into the Human Mind, 120–1; and Addison, “Pleasures of Imagination,” 83–7, 83.
3 On sensory vibration see Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility, 3–36. For the role of feeling in epistemology and literature, see Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability. On the valency of touch in the visual arts, see Sheriff, Fragonard, 117–52 and Lajer-Burcharth, “Pompadour's Touch,” 54–88.
4 For the intersection of blindness with philosophies of sense, Skepticism and Epicureanism see Tunstall, Blindness and Enlightenment, 47–68. See also Zupancic, “Philosophers’ Blind Man's Buff,” 32–49; and Packham, “Disability and Sympathetic Sociability in Enlightenment Scotland,” 423–38.
5 For a modern examination of blind viewers of art, see Kleege, “Blind Imagination,” 227–39.
6 My attempt to relate the subject of blindness to visual strategy and philosophy is informed by Jennifer Milam's work on disordered seeing and participatory beholding in Jean-Honoré Fragonard's paintings of aristocratic play. See Milam, Fragonard's Playful Paintings, 52–72.
7 Blacklock, himself blind, claimed that the blind can only “parrot” ideas about sight; see Blacklock, “Blind,” 1192. Reid likewise emphasized the dependence of blind scholars on the discoveries of others, An Enquiry into the Human Mind, 126. Blindness and mimesis in nineteenth-century poetry is discussed by Tilley, “Frances Brown, the ‘Blind Poetess’,” 147–61, 148.
8 Monbeck, The Meaning of Blindness, 2.
9 Rodas, “On Blindness,” 115–30.
10 Bolt, The Metanarrative of Blindness, 20–1.
11 Monbeck, The Meaning of Blindness, 48–53. Barasch argues that the metaphysical meanings of blindness dominate art until the seventeenth century. Barasch, Blindness, 147–8.
12 See Tunstall, Blindness and Enlightenment, 1–11; Weygand, The Blind in French Society, 57–79; and Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility, 19–67.
13 Degenaar, Molyneux's Problem, 17–19.
14 Ibid., 17.
15 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 144.
16 For a critique of the “hypothetical blind man” see Kleege, “Blindness and Visual Culture,” 522–5.
17 Locke, Essay, 144. On the positive answers to Molyneux's problem, see Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility, 25–31.
18 Aristotle, De Anima, 168–87. Following Locke, Condillac prioritized the role of touch in epistemology: Condillac, Treatise on the Sensations, 84–90.
19 Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility, 20.
20 Degenaar, Molyneux's Problem, 58–9.
21 See Cheselden, “An Account of Some Observations Made by a Young Gentleman,” 447–50; Taswell, “A Full and True Account,” 384–5. Cheselden, however, was a better publicist than eye surgeon; many thanks to Chris Mounsey for sharing his work on the history of eye clinics in eighteenth-century London.
22 The results, however, were hotly debated. See Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility, 31–52.
23 Diderot, Letter on the Blind, 170–227.
24 Ibid., 171–2.
25 Tunstall argues that conversation is crucial to the structure of the Letter and its lack of message, Blindness and Enlightenment, 141–2.
26 Diderot, Letter on the Blind, 179–80.
27 Ibid., 204.
28 Tunstall, Blindness and Enlightenment, 77.
29 Gascoigne, “Sensible Newtonians,” 171–204, 179.
30 Nicholas Saunderson's biography was written by a group of his students and published as a preface to his posthumous Elements of Algebra in Ten Books (Cambridge, 1740), i–xix.
31 Ibid., xx–xxvi.
32 Diderot, Letter on the Blind, 198.
33 Diderot claims that the blind understand beauty and symmetry through touch, Letter on the Blind, 177–8. Blacklock argues they can access the sublimity and order of nature through scientific study, “Blind,” 1191, 1196.
34 The portrait was engraved for Faber's Worthies of Great Britain, 1710–1745 and the Elements of Algebra, 1740. It also circulated as a folio-sized mezzotint by George White made in 1719.
35 Reid, Inquiry into the Human Mind, 123.
36 Ibid.
37 Blacklock, “Blind,” 1190–1. This is also observed by Diderot of Saunderson in Letter on the Blind, 197–8. See also Hartley (a student of Saunderson's), Observations on Man, 147.
38 Blacklock, “Blind,” 1201; Elements of Algebra, xiii.
39 Blacklock, “Blind,” 1193. Diderot likewise claims “the man-born-blind perceives things in a much more abstract manner than we do,” Letter on the Blind, 183. See also Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility, 52–62.
40 Blacklock, “Blind,” 1193.
41 Ibid., 1189. This is confirmed in Joseph Spence's biography of Blacklock in Blacklock, Poems by Mr Thomas Blacklock, vii.
42 Phillips, The Blind in British Society, 33–4. Ephraim Chambers remarks on the “amazing sagacity” of blind people throughout history in A Supplement to Mr Chambers’ Cyclopaedia, vol. 1 (London, 1753). Bew remarked that the “genius” of the blind person, “if it approached to excellence, has been respected with a greater degree of reverence, superior to what is usually bestowed, on such as are possessed of the faculty of sight.” Bew, “Observations on Blindness,” 159–84, 159. Blacklock complained that the learned blind were “too often regarded as rareeshows,” “Blind,” 1193.
43 The representation of blindness in eighteenth-century art is little examined. Barasch considered Diderot's Letter on the Blind, but not its impact on images in Blindness, 147–57. Nicholas Mirzoeff touched on eighteenth-century French academic art in “Blindness and Art,” 379–90, but not its relationship to a wider social context. Derrida drew on examples of French works by Chardin and Greuze, but did not explore their relationship to contemporary ideas and attitudes. Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind, 72. For my own attempts to interpret representations of blindness in French genre painting, see Cole, “Rethinking Vision in Eighteenth-Century Paintings of the Blind,” 47–64.
44 Genre scenes appear to predominate in eighteenth-century France. See Cole, “Rethinking vision,” 47–64.
45 For example, Mary Ann Rigg after Thomas Gainsborough, John Stanley, stipple engraving, 1781, National Portrait Gallery, London; William Parry, The Blind Harpist (John Parry), c 1770, oil on canvas, National Museum Wales, Martin Ferdinand Quadal, Portrait of Henry Clemetshaw(?), 1777, oil on canvas, Tate Britain.
46 Le Harivel, Nathaniel Hone the Elder 1718–1784. Hone made a payment to St Martin's Lane Academy in 1752. See the Memorandum-books of Nathaniel Hone, portrait-painter and foundation member of the Royal Academy, 1752–1754. British Library, Add MS 44024–44025: 1752–1754.
47 Le Harivel, Nathaniel Hone the Elder, 15.
48 Leslie-Melville, The Life and Work of Sir John Fielding, vii–ix; also Styles, “Sir John Fielding and the Problem of Criminal Investigation in Eighteenth-Century England,” 127–49.
49 Beattie, “Sir John Fielding and the Public Justice,” 71.
50 Ibid., 82–5.
51 Armitage, The History of the Bow Street Runners, 1729–1829, 70.
52 See his numerous publications on crime prevention, including: Fielding, A Plan for Preventing Robberies.; A Plan for a Preservatory and Reformatory, for the Benefit of Deserted Girls, and Penitent Prostitutes (London, 1758); and An Account of the Receipts and Disbursements Relating to Sir John Fielding's Plan for the Preserving of Distressed Boys (London, 1769).
53 Leslie-Melville, Sir John Fielding, 112.
54 Fielding, Plan for a Preservatory, 5.
55 Fielding, The Universal Mentor, i.
56 Leslie-Melville, Sir John Fielding, 17.
57 Fielding, The Universal Mentor, iii.
58 Leslie-Melville, Sir John Fielding, 225.
59 Fielding's Jests; or New Fun for the Parlour or Kitchen (London, 1781).
60 Wilson, Biography of the Blind, 287.
61 Turner argues that jest books “satirised social responses to impairment” and “extolled the virtue of laughter as a coping strategy.” Turner, Disability in Eighteenth-Century England, 13.
62 On the history of the blindfold in the iconography of justice see Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, 109–10.
63 Samuel Curwen, American judge of Admiralty, said of Fielding “He is a venerable gentleman and blind (as justice is represented),” Leslie-Melville, Sir John Fielding, 229.
64 Beattie considers Fielding to have been the main attraction of the Bow Street court, “Sir John Fielding,” 77.
65 Leslie-Melville, Sir John Fielding, 6.
66 Ripa, Iconologia, 36; Resnik and Curtis. Representing Justice, 63.
67 Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery, 158.
68 The painting was in the collection of the Royal Female Orphanage (previously Magdalen House) when purchased by the National Portrait Gallery and it is possible it was displayed there.
69 Pasquin, who excoriated Hone's painting and personality, conceded it his “best production.” Pasquin, An Authentic History of the Professors of Painting, Sculpture, & Architecture, 9–10.
70 See the 1709 English edition of Iconologia, 19; and Richardson, Iconology, 22.
71 Brown and Vlieghe, Van Dyck 1599–1641, 314. See also Levey, “Van Dyck and the Motif of the Broken Column,” 335.
72 Blacklock, “Blind,” 1191. Joseph Spence, David Hume and Edmund Burke debated Blacklock's use of visual description and the relationship between sight and language. See Spence in Blacklock, Poems of Thomas Blacklock, xxxii–xxxvii; and Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, 322–32.
73 On the sympathetic reaction to Blacklock, see Packham, “Disability and Sympathetic Sociability,” 423–38.
74 Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, 109–10.
75 Resnik and Curtis, Representing Justice, 67. On the use of blindfolds in paintings of aristocratic play, see Milam, “Fragonard and the Blindman's Game,” 1–25.
76 Changing meanings of the blindfold are attributed by Resnik and Curtis to the separation of the judiciary from its government employer. See Representing Justice, 97.
77 Ripa, Iconologia, 47.
78 Ibid., 21. The Hertel edition of Ripa's Iconology of 1758–1760 also includes the blindfold among Justice's attributes, which suggests her reliance on reason rather than the senses. Ripa, Baroque and Rococo Pictorial Imagery, 120.
79 The portrait is in the collection of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the Middlesex Guildhall and may have initially hung in the Westminster Magistrate's offices.
80 Lee has described Reynolds as “a late and important exponent of humanistic doctrine.” See Lee, Ut Pictura Poesis, 68–9. For Reynolds's variations from humanist discourse, and the context of his interpretation of it, see Barrell, The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt, 69–162.
81 John Thomas Smith considered Hone “full of self importance.” See Smith, Nollekens and His Times, 131.
82 Reynolds, Discourse IV in The Discourses, 69–70.
83 Ibid., 71.
84 Reynolds, Discourse III in The Discourses, 47.
85 For the multiple discourses of vision see Clark, Vanities of the Eye.
86 Diderot likewise attributed to Saunderson “purity of morals,” Letter on the Blind, 203.
87 Reynolds, Discourse IV in Discourses, 66; Discourse III, 48.
88 On Hone's vexed relationship with Reynolds and his charges of plagiarism against him, see Butlin, “An Eighteenth-Century Art Scandal,” 1–9.
89 On the association of blindness with inner vision and creativity, see Larrissey, The Blind and Blindness in Literature of the Romantic Period, 1–32; Paulson, Enlightenment, Romanticism and the Blind in France, 167–98; and Mirzoeff, “Blindness and art,” 384–6.