Married Life for Mary. 2 - Art & Her Profession

The Victorian ‘separate spheres’ idea behind Coventry Patmore’s Angel in the House (1854) was that women ruled, as ‘wifely queens’, their domestic domain, while the man worked and socialised in the outside world, as husband ‘kings’. This was, of course, only possible for middle- and upper-class women; the vast majority of women had to work for money at some point of, if not all, their life. As did Mary Severn who, according to a biographical essay by her niece, was making commissions by the time she was 17:

. . . and before her marriage she was making a considerable income (Gale, ‘A Victorian Artist’).

After Mary became Mary Newton (also referred to as Mrs C. T. Newton or Mrs M. Newton), Gale writes that Charles Thomas Newton did not want her to ‘work for money’, which would keep her in the ‘domestic sphere’. Although, she did not stop working. Deborah Cherry writes that:

After her marriage in 1861 Mary abandoned her practice of watercolour and chalk portraiture, taking up oil painting, in which she had been trained but had not practised professionally. She successfully exhibited several oils, including her self-portrait, shown at the Royal Academy in 1863. From 1858 she produced drawings which were used as illustrations to Newton's lectures and publications, archaeological studies which were valued less for their artistic merit than for their correctness. (Cherry 1993, 39)

Mary did do a great deal of work at the British Museum and for her husband’s new job as Keeper of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities. They are depicted working before 10 a.m. below:

Then leaving for the Museum together at 10 AM:

However, it seems that the only work Mary objected to was drawing bones and reading the work of Professor Owen – here she shows herself up early copying skeletons and frogs legs and crying from fatigue at 6.30 AM on a drak British morning. This sketch does rather suggest that Charles is forcing her to do work she does not want to do, but she wants to draw Greek vases not skeletons.

She also struggled with the early mornings her husband was accustomed to and in another sketch shows 'poor' CTN having breakfast alone while she is having a 'good sleep'.

Charles' job meant that Mary could now work on imaginative themes and in oils, rather than the portrait ‘coms’ she had to do to keep her family afloat. Arguably she entered the public sphere in a different way as she had time to work on her own material, rather than commissioned portraits, as well as travel:

Women novelists were an interesting exception to the rule that middle-class women could neither earn money nor enter the public sphere. (Steinbach, 2004, 78).

There were also a few female non-fiction writers, whom Mary knew, who could earn a living and work. Elizabeth Eastlake (nee Rigby) was one. Mary, Charles and Gertride Jekyll met her and her sister in Germany on their journey out to the Eastern Mediterranean in October 1863, when Eastlake was working on finishing Anna Jameson’s The History of Our Lord as exemplified in works of art (1864). Jameson had died in 1860 and Eastlake was asked to finish it for publication. In fact Mary was surrounded by many women who had to or who wanted to work – in art, writing and music – during the 1840s to 1860s.

The new direction for her work is illustrated in her exhibitions at the Royal Academy (RA) and posthumous display. You can find her work in the superb online resource The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition: 1769 – 2018 under Mrs C. Newton or Mrs Charles Newton. She exhibited the following work in her married years:

1863 – Mrs Charles Newton by Mrs C Newton [her self-portrait and below] and Elaine

1864 – Letty by Mrs C Newton

1865 – [Portrait of] Mrs Liddell by Mrs C Newton

In 1852 Mary exhibited the ‘Twins’ as Miss A. M. Severn and at other times as A. M. Severn. Unless you knew her different names, the continuity of her work is hard to trace. When her work was exhibited at the RA in 1863 it attracted a positive response from The Times, which described it ‘has something more than a graceful portrait of herself’ and:

[. . .] one of the best pieces of colour among the portraiture of the year, and is excellently drawn besides. The same lady’s Elaine (337), though hung too high for fair judgement, seems to have both beauty of face and grace of form.

The review listed Mary among several female artists who ‘should write R.A. after her name’. Elaine depicted the heroine holding the shield of Lancelot and was an Arthurian subject based on Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and a new generic venture for Mary.

She evidently continued working on portraits after her marriage too – Mrs Liddell was Lorina Liddell (see my earlier post here), whom Mary painted during a stay at their country house in Llandudno in 1864. Lorina was the mother of Alice – famously of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – and Mary also drew her. These sketches of Alice Liddell by Ann Mary Newton went to auction a few years ago.

Lorina was wife to Henry George Liddell, then Dean of Christ Church at Oxford and Charles' old tutor and friend and according to a blog by Mary Liddell (a family relation and also an artist), a painting of her was retrieved from a basement. How facinating if this is the one by Mary . . .

After her death in January 1866, some of Mary’s work was exhibited at the Dudley Gallery, of which her brother Walter Severn was secretary. Descriptions of the paintings that were unfinished at the time of her death give a glimpse of her new direction and the influence of travel upon her work. Arthur Munby, a friend of the family, describes going to the Newtons’ house shortly after her death with her brother Arthur and looking at her last drawings ‘sketches taken in the East – of Syrian women, of Scutari burial grounds – lovely all of them’. The Times reviewed the Dudley Gallery exhibition in April 1866 and commented on the ‘eastern drawings of the late and lamented Mrs Charles Newton’ describing the depiction of ‘Levantine Lady’ and the ‘Jewess of Smyrna’ as ‘leaving nothing unsupplied but what helps the imagination to the desired impressions of beauty and sorrow.’

Much more of this work can be seen in the list of Mary’s work included in Charles’ Will, which he made in 1889. The first bequest her long widowed husband makes in his Will is to leave the ‘portrait of my late dear wife painted by herself to the National Portrait Gallery’, which is still part of the national collection, though rarely on display in the London. Charles left most of Mary's work to a Mrs Mary Kemp Welch and his sister-in-law (Mary’s younger sister) Eleanor Furneaux. Very little can be found on Mary Kemp Welch, other than that she lived at

17 Rossetti Gardens in South Kensington and died on 27 November 1904, 10 years after Charles himself. All went to her husband Henry Kemp Welch in probate (£1430), but what happened to Mary’s work is, as yet, unknown. We know from a catalogue that one of Mary’s works from the Eastern Mediterranean was displayed in the 1896 Whitechapel Art Exhibition – 150. ‘An Eastern Mourner’ by Mrs C. Newton, lent by Mrs H. Kemp Welch – and Mary Kemp Welch also lent one of her own works to the same exhibition.

By the time that his Will was made, Charles lived at 2 Montaque Place on Bedford Square, not the house he had shared with Mary and then her siblings, on Gower Street. There were lists of drawing portfolios in the Will (one of which is in the Birkenhead - Severn family collection), as well as work by G. F. Watts, Mary’s brothers Walter and Arthur and a few other artists. Here I list Mary’s work that was hung on the walls of Charles' apartment to give a glimpse of her professional work, before and after marriage – most are from their trip to the Eastern Mediterranean in 1863 and I have added dates when I have a letter that corporates a portrait.

This list gives us a sense of how much of Mary’s work is lost.

Dining Room:

Three Greeks on Deck of a steamer

Miss Hanson in Greek Dress

Drawing portrait of M N by herself

Watercolour Caryatids Portico Erechtheum Athens

View across bay at Smyrna - Cypresses

Smyrna Jewess

Theater of Dionvsos at Athens

View of Cemetery Smyrna (small)

View across Smyrna Bay Greek

Watercolour Arthur and Eleanor Severn playing at Chess

Portrait of Miss Senior

Sketch in oil Eleanor sewing

Sketch of Gertrude Jekyll taken in her cabin at sea

Turkish Women and old Turks smoking, fancy design from panel of door in consulate of Mr Severn

Front Drawing Room:

Bearded Turk, Rhodes

Pencil sketch of Goldwin Smith 1863

Old Janissary Rhodes - A survivor from the massacre of Janissaries

A sketch of three children In one frame

Study in Chalk of head - Madle Nicholay

Sketch in watercolour - Greek on deck of Levant Steamer

Copy of Sir Joshua Reynolds Nellie O Brien

Family of Mordecai the Jew' at Rhodes

Archimandrite at Rhodes (see Travels)

A Kurd - brigand

Sketch in oll of three Turkish Women In Cemetery

Sketch of Greek women seated among Cypress Trees

Miss Fuller In chalk - a sketch

Chalk Head C T Newton January 1862

Two sketches on wood figures from frieze of Parthenon

Back Drawing Room:

Picture – Elaine from Tennyson’s Idylls

Three Turkish women In Turkish Cemetery of Smyrna

Copy of part of the Picture by Raphael representing St John preaching In the WIlderness

Jewish Cemetery Smyrna

Athens from the Stadium

The Harbour at Rhodes

A Kurd Robber Chief water colour taken at Smyrna

OiI Picture Sebaste

Copy in oil from a picture by Watts showing anchorage and Island of Orack at Budrum

View from the Acropolis Athens looking towards Salamis

Copy of a head by Raphael in the Louvre

Seven sketches on wood from frieze of Parthenon

Chalk drawing C T N

Copy of Watts’ Portrait in Chalk of Henry Prinsep

Another copy of Head by Titian

Unfinished portrait of CTN in oil begun in latter part of 1865

Watercolour copy of picture by Giorgione

Library or Housekeeper’s Room:

Sketch of Miss Lawson library at Addison Road

Fragment of Mausoleum Frieze

Chalk drawing of Mausolus

Head of Lion Mausoleum

Fragment drawn from Chariot Group Mausoleum

Greek Cavass of M A Billotte H B M Consul at Rhodes

Chalk Portralt of my Mother (the Mother of Charles Thomas Newton)

Study for picture of Letty painted for Mrs Woodhouse Currie

Five Greeks on board a Levant Steamer

Watercolour a little child, perhaps Mrs Marriotts

Sketch of Miss Fuller

Front Bedroom:

Eleanor now Mrs Furneaux In a Greek dress

Engravings of Princesses Helena and Louise from a chalk drawing by M Severn

Princess Beatrice as a baby

Sketch of one of the sons of G Richmond RA

Dressing Room:

Photograph from portralt of Mr Nassau William Senior

Photograph from portrait of the Reverend M. Lane of Wrotham Kent.

Photograph from portrait of bearded old man

Sketch of Clergyman (beardless head)

Chalk Drawings:

Study for Sebaste

Robert Wornum Boy (three quarters)

Mrs Marriotts child (girl)

Miss Fane

Miss Clark

Miss Fuller

Miss Foster

Staircase:

Four sketches of fruit and flowers on the panels: of doors from her father’s house.

Lots of landscapes by Arthur Severn listed too.

References:

Deborah Cherry (1993), Painting Women. Victorian Women Artists

Susie Steinbach (2004), Women in England 1760-1914: A Social History

‘Exhibition of the Royal Academy’, The Times, 09 April 1863 (25467), 12, Col. E.

Hudson (1974), Munby. A Man of Two Worlds

‘The Dudley Gallery’, The Times, 09 April 1866 (25467), 12 Col. E.

With thanks to Peter Bradford for details of the 1896 The Whitechapel Exhibition catalogue.