HENRY WIGSTEAD (1760-1800)
The Country Vicar’s Fireside, c. 1786
Oil on canvas
In a period carved and gilded swept frame
63.5 x 76.1 cm.; (within frame) 81 x 93.8 cm.
Provenance:
Christie’s, King Street, where consigned on 20 March 1957; 3 May 1957, lot 81, as William Hogarth, ‘Figures before a fireplace’;
Private Collection, United States;
Sotheby’s, New York, Old Master & 19th Century European Art, 27 January 2012, lot 486;
Private Collection, United Kingdom.
Exhibition history:
The Royal Academy, London, 1786, no. 59
Literature:
Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and Their Work from Its Foundation in 1769 to 1904, 8 vols. (London: H. Graves and Company Ltd., 1905), p. 265
George Paston, Social Caricature in the Eighteenth Century (London: Methuen & Co., 1906), p. 137
The Royal Academy, The Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts, M.DCC.LXXXVI, The Eighteenth (London: T. Cadell, 1786), p. 4
Exhibited at the Royal Academy of 1786 and likely produced that same year, The Country Vicar’s Fireside is an exceedingly rare work in oil by the British caricaturist Henry Wigstead, belonging to the considerably small body of paintings produced by the artist, of which few remain. The work was conceived during the height of British caricature, culminating between the American Revolution and Waterloo, and typifies Wigstead’s ‘great feeling for ridiculous contrasts and the droll side of human relationships’, being a talented exponent of the art of ridicule that was satire (Old Print Shop, p. 223). The painting was engraved by E. Wilkins in 1788, though alterations in reproduction diverted from the original scheme: for example, whereas the Wilkins print shows a ‘Plan of the Parish of Barn’ over the hearth, Wigstead’s oil identifies it as that of Wakefield – an allusion to the 1766 novel, The Vicar of Wakefield. The work was until recently unknown, and was previously misattributed to the towering William Hogarth. It thus represents an important addition to the sparing oeuvre of an artist who, further to being a magistrate, publisher, and businessman, enjoyed royal patronage and friendships with the leading caricaturists, which placed him at the centre of London’s effervescent satire market.
A considered description of The Country Vicar’s Fireside is given by the literary critic George Paston (Emily Morse Symonds) in her 1906 commentary on 18th century caricature, who regards it as a fine example of Wigstead’s gentler mode of social satire. Paston writes, ‘In front of a roaring fire sits a stout old cleric in a powdered wig, with a clay pipe in his mouth and a pot of hot toddy on the trivet. On the other side of the hearth sits his old wife, and [...] a pretty daughter with a book on her lap, to which she pays more attention than to the curate or schoolmaster, who is making love to her in the intervals of using the billows’ (Paston, p. 137). The follies of youth play out in the distraction of the young gentleman, whose interest in his beautiful neighbour induces him to emit allusive expulsions of the billows which he pumps from his knee, tickling the ear of the spaniel at his feet. Wigstead employs juxtaposition with mocking though incisive effect, establishing a commentary of contrasts (young and old, beautiful and ugly, virile and docile) which suggests an inevitable degeneration within the human experience. The stout old clergyman and his big-breasted wife, now swollen with age, may themselves have engaged in such frivolity in their fairer years. Indeed, the placement of two books on the mantlepiece – in front of the conceivably neglected hunting rifles – might indicate the clergyman’s natural retirement from a younger man’s sport, substituted by a comfortable scholarly life.
Painted during a period of increased interest in individualism and personal subjectivity, Wigstead’s arrangement grasps human character with a theatrical poise, enclosed within the intimate glowing heat of the hearth by a folding screen. As the eye moves from left to right, so too does each figure become older, wider, more grotesque – an acceleration of the human lifetime imagined directly onto the canvas. The Detection, designed by Wigstead and engraved by Rowlandson in 1796, explores similar themes in a comparable arrangement, depicting a young woman engaging intimately with her piano tutor, startling an ugly elderly woman who sits opposite her dozing husband in front of a fireplace.
A credit to The Country Vicar’s Fireside was its inclusion in the Royal Academy of 1786, recorded as no. 59 in the official catalogue of the exhibition. Wigstead only exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1784-88, showing only eight works in that period. The Country Vicar’s Fireside was not offered for sale as part of the exhibition, as some were; it is possible that, having already been sold, Wigstead negotiated its inclusion in the exhibition as a significant accomplishment of his in oil painting.
Henry Wigstead was born in c. 1760 to John and Mary Wigstead, and was baptised in St Giles-in-the-Fields on 27 February 1760. Wigstead was bound to his father, a member of the Painters’ Co., on 11 March 1776. The family business provided high-class painting and decorating services, and was at that time located on Greek Street. It was living in Kensington that Wigstead became good friends with Thomas Rowlandson, the prolific artist and caricaturist whose astute talent for satire was one of a handful which defined his generation. Wigstead himself began to design social satires from 1774, and the majority were etched by Rowlandson. Wigstead had assumed the management of the family firm, and Samuel Alken designed and etched a number of trade cards for the address at Gerrard Street in Soho. In 1798, Wigstead was recruited as a magistrate – a particular endorsement of his social standing. He sat in the court in Bow Street. He married Mary Bagnall in St Luke’s, Old Street, on 24 September 1782, and they together had a number of children, who were baptised in St Anne’s, Soho, between 1783-88. Wigstead was buried at the same church on 7 October 1800. A man of good humour and generosity, he was known for playing tricks, one such being the substitution of sugar cubes for alabaster for unwitting supper guests.
Wigstead’s was one of many popular print shops centred around Piccadilly and Bond Street, which drew big crowds with colourful satires displayed in the front windows (see James Gilray’s Very Slippy Weather). Where social satire was generally accessible, political satire greater relied on political interest and learned allusions, which suited itself to the educated elite. Satire had flourished as an upper-class amusement since the 16th century, at which point Annibale Carracci had founded the exaggerated school of portrait known as caricatura. Indeed, satires were popular among the British royal family themselves, who were often intrigued and horrified by their base ridicule. Wigstead profited from his association with the Prince of Wales, later George IV, who assembled many thousands of caricatures at the Royal Library, Windsor Castle: ‘Some caricatures were purchased through Henry Wigstead, who stung the Prince with a mark-up. Bunbury’s Derby Diligence sold for a shilling on its issue in 1781, but Wigstead charged the Prince 2s for it in 1789’ (Royal Collections Trust, p. 40). Sir John Soane, who was auditing Wigstead’s accounts, noted a discrepancy arising from this practice: ‘The Painter’s Bills, by Henry Wigstead, amounting to £599.11.5 are overcharged in price by £22.4.4½’ (RCT, p. 40). Yet Wigstead’s royal services were not limited to selling satires, but also producing them. During George III’s illness of 1788-89, Wigstead and Rowlandson were paid by the Prince of Wales to produce and distribute a series of satires discrediting his father’s supporters, bolstering his bid to become prince regent. Working under the supervision of the Prince of Wales’ staff at Carlton House, Sir John Soane’s papers include a list of payments made to Wigstead and Rowlandson for the task. Around the same time, Wigstead’s firm was employed to work on the decoration of the Royal Pavilion at Brighton.
A defining friendship of Wigstead’s career was that of Thomas Rowlandson, who engraved many satires designed by Wigstead. The author and art collector Joseph Grego provides a neat description of the men’s fruitful working relationship: ‘There was his constant friend Henry Wigstead, a man of social standing, profusely liberal in house, a jovial companion out of doors; who, richly endowed in the vein of humorous invention allied to powers of observation, and […] a ready knack of seizing the comic features of a situation, entrusted his sketches to Rowlandson, that they might be produced in fitting form; and to the proper execution of these whimsicalities Rowlandson willing lent the full force of his own trained skill’ (Grego, p. 71). In 1784, Wigstead and Rowlandson journeyed together to the Isle of Wight, and produced amusing illustrations of their exploits. Five years later, the pair travelled together to fashionable Brighton, and published an illustrated account of their journey including 8 aquatints, which they dedicated to the Prince of Wales (whose personal copy survives in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle). Wigstead’s death in 1800 was said to have had a tremendous effect on Rowlandson.
Bibliography and further reading:
Alexander, David, A Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Engravers, 1714-1820 (London: Yale University Press, 2021)
Donald, Diana, The Age of Caricature: Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III (London: Yale University Press, 1996)
Grego, Joseph, Rowlandson the Caricaturist: A Selection From his Works, with anecdotal descriptions of his famous caricatures and a sketch of his life, times, and contemporaries (London: Chatto and Windus, 1880)
Old Print Shop, The Old Print Shop Portfolio, 7-9 vols. (New York, N.Y.: Old Print Shop, 1947)
The Royal Collection Trust, High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2013)