FRANCIS WHEATLEY RA (1747-1801)
The Ploughman: And leaves the world to darkness and to me
Oil on canvas, 154.9 x 215.9 cm
Signed F. Wheatley pinxt and dated 1793

Provenance: The artists...

FRANCIS WHEATLEY RA (1747-1801)
The Ploughman: And leaves the world to darkness and to me
Oil on canvas, 154.9 x 215.9 cm
Signed F. Wheatley pinxt and dated 1793

Provenance: The artists sale at his house at 14 Fitzroy Square, London, conducted by Mr James Christie, 13 January 1795 (lot 55, sold for £17 10s. 0d); James Daniell Esquire, his sale. Christies, London 25 February 1809, lot 83 as The Plowman (sic), from Grays Elegy, landscape in the style of Gainsborough Christies 13 May 1960 (lot 39); Montagu Bernard 1969; Private collection, England, until sold Bonhams London, 10 December 2003 (lot 15) where acquired by the family of the present owner

Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, Summer Exhibition, 1793, number 114 where entitled Ploughing

Literature: The Diary of Joseph Farington RA (ed. Garlick and Mcintyre, Yale University Press, 1978, volume II, p. 291), under 13 January 1795: Wheatleys drawings and pictures were sold today. The pictures sold low. A large picture of Plough Horses in a frame which cost 20 Guineas [i.e. £21.00 when exhibited at the Royal Academy] sold for £17.10;

Sale Catalogue: A catalogue of all the Capital Pictures, Valuable Drawings and other curious articles, the property of FRANCIS WHEATLEY, Esq., RA at his house Situate, No. 14, on the West Side of RUSSELL PLACE, FITZROY SQUARE Which will be sold at Auction by MR CHRISTIE, On the premises, On Tuesday, 13 January, 1795, At Twelve oclock;

Mary Webster Francis Wheatley (Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art / Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), illustrated page 104; Catalogue of the Oil Paintings, number no. 107, page 150, and also text pages 201 and 206.

Famous in an Irish context for the modern history paintings including the large work showing the Volunteers at College Green, Francis Wheatley was born in London in 1747, and died in the same city in 1801. He was initially self-taught, but subsequently trained at Shipleys Academy. He won prizes for drawing at the Society of Artists in 1762-3, and was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools aged 22 in 1769. He worked as an assistant to the Royal Academician John Hamilton Mortimer in painting the Saloon ceiling at Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire, in 1771-1773. From 1778 onwards he exhibited regularly at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy, being made as associate in 1790 and a full member the following year.

Wheatley seems to have been incompetent with money, and was frequently in debt, despite numerous commissions. He moved from London to Dublin to escape his debtors (and with somebody elses wife). Working here from 1779 to 1783, he painted numerous highly accomplished paintings. As the painter of suave portraits, accomplished landscapes and depictions of Irish rural life, Wheatley has an importance for art in Ireland far greater than the relative brevity of his visit might suggest; he contributed to Thomas Miltons topographical enterprise, involved himself in the voguish pursuit of antiquarianism and, later, was among the artists involved in James Woodmasons attempt to encourage Irish history painting. (William Laffan, in Art and Architecture of Ireland, Vol. 2, 503)

His masterpiece of these years is the remarkable The Irish House of Commons, 1780, now in the City Art Gallery, Leeds, which depicts a vast series of faithful portraits of all the members of Grattans Parliament in the chamber of the Irish House of Commons.

Wheatley was a versatile painter, executing straightforward portraits, conversation pieces, genre paintings and theatrical illustrations. He seems to have taken a particular interest in the depiction of rural life particularly from the 1780s onwards, and executed such pictures as The Industrious Cottager, The Return from Market and Evening, a Farmyard. The present painting is the culmination of this series and was painted in 1793. About this date the artist began to suffer from a debilitating attack of gout, which ultimately left him virtually unable to hold a paint brush. The last few years of his life saw a distressing descent into poverty, though he was frequently helped by his fellow Royal Academicians.

Wheatley at his best shows a remarkably fluidity and freedom of expression in his oil paintings, though his drawings are much more tightly controlled. Along with George Morland, he is the most accomplished English painter of the rural scene. His range, though, is much wider than that of Morland, and some of his conversation pieces rank with those of his friend and fellow-academician Johann Zoffany.

As Christie's catalogue of the collection of James Daniell in 1809 points out, the present painting has profound literary overtones. It is described there as from Grays Elegy with the landscape in the style of Gainsborough. The opening lines of Thomas Grays (1716-1771) masterpiece, An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard set the tone for the picture:

The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd winds slowly oer the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

The poem is the literary precursor of, and counterpoint to, the English artistic movement at the end of the eighteenth century which moved away from the grand manner of Reynolds and his followers to depict the attractions of rural life and domestic genre in a sympathetic manner. Picking up on a tradition pioneered by George Stubbs, the paintings of Morland, Wheatley and James Ward are, in their gentle way, revolutionary. They rely on acute observation of, and empathy with, the virtuous poor and evoke the simplicity and stoicism of their way of life which was unimaginable in British painting of a generation earlier. While many of the images of these paintings are obviously moral in their intent, they are not hectoring or cloying as so much Victorian sentimental painting would become. Instead, works such as this prefigure the quiet depiction of rural labour of later French artists such as Jean-François Millet and Jules Breton. The subject matter is treated as picturesque, in the sense that it is worthy of being rendered in oil on canvas, but it is not mawkish or theatrical. Here, for almost the first time in British art, we have a dispassionate depiction of the activities of the rural agricultural workers, as Gray put it in his poem the short and simple annals of the poor. Wheatleys treatment of the plough-team is entirely sympathetic and the grandeur of the conception and the very large size of the canvas contrasts with the modesty of the subject matter to query assumption of hierarchy and privilege.

 

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