“Cover, The Victoria Psalter” illuminated by Owen Jones, 1809-1874

Cover

Owen Jones, 1809-1874, illuminator

1861-62

43.7 x 30.2 cm.

Source: The Victoria Psalter

Beckwith, Victorian Bibliomania catalogue no. 5

Queen Victoria a allowed Owen Jones to dedicate his masterpiece of the 1860s to her, and hence his book was titled The Victoria Psalter. In general usage, Psalter is the name given the Old Testament's Book of Psalms. Robert Calkins has recently described the complex transformations of the Psalter in the medieval period and reports that it was the book most commonly use for private devotions in the Middle Ages until it was supplanted by the Book of Hours in the fourteenth century (Calkins, 207). [continued below]

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Collection of Ellen K. Morris

Commentary by Alice H. R. H. Beckwith

Jones and other mid-Victorians selectively revived the medieval practice of writing out and meditating on sections of the Bible, waiting until the 1890s before bringing back Books of Hours. John O. Westwood even excluded references to Books of Hours from his historical work of the 1840s. Illuminated Illustrations from the Bible (see cat, 15), because they exalted Mary, mother of Christ, and such Roman Catholic imagery was considered heretical. Jones and his contemporaries chose instead to illuminate Old Testament selections such as the Psalter, or The Book of Common Prayer, or New Testament books where the words or actions of Christ formed the theme, such as The Sermon on the Mount or The Miracles of our Lord (cats. 2, 9, 8).

In The Victoria Psalter Jones arranged the Psalms as a prayer book Psalter; this format related to English usage, and the dedication to Victoria avoided any suggestion of "Romanism" and appealed to his nineteenth-century British readership. The Victoria Psalter reached a wide audience, as shown by a wood engraving of the cover that appeared in the Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue of the International Exhibition of 1862 (McLean, Victorian Pubishers' Bindings, 16).

Although the organization and text of Jones's volume are historical, the ornament is not. Viewing the machine age as an advantage to the arts, Jones created in The Victoria Psalter a remarkable example of his abilities with the chromolithograph press and the relievo leather publishers' binding. Sunk central oval panels set in rectangles on the front and back are the major feature of the cover. Fern fronds fill in the ovals, and curving leaf forms spiral over the cover and cross the raised rectangular frame in a highly organized yet naturalistic surface. Each of the interior pages is decorated in gold, black, three shades of red, and three of blue. The graphic strength of Jones's page is such that even reproduction in black and white does not diminish its dramatic impact.

Related Material

Evening Prayer from The Victoria Psalter

References

Beckwith, Alice H. R. H. Victorian Bibliomania: The Illuminated Book in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Exhibition catalogue. Providence. Rhode Island: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1987.

Calkins, Robert C. Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages. London: Thames & Hudson, 1983.

McLean, Ruari. Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing. 2nd edition. [London]: Faber & Faber, [1972].

The Victoria Psalter. London, n. p., 1861-62.

Last modified 18 December 2013