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Commentary by Paul Crowther

This picture features an Image Boy – a person who made a living selling unglazed plaster or parian-ware models (often of classical or religiously significant figures). Such persons are motifs used by a number of other Victorian artists – including William Daniels, one of whose works was auctioned as Lot 56, Le Colporteur, by Brissonneau of Paris, 15th June 2006. Collinson himself first used the subject-matter in a large painting entitled Italian Image-Boys at a Roadside Alehouse – his first ‘official’ Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painting (exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1849). The boy in our present work, indeed, appears to be a different version of the one presented in profile standing on a chair, in the upper left-centre of the 1849 picture. He has a similar leather jacket, and trousers, and a hat that resembles the one hung on the hatstand in the far left of the 1849 painting. In our present work, the plaster image that the boy is carrying is of the classical figure Clytie – derived from a sculpture acquired by the British collector Charles Townley (1737–1805) in the course of his second Grand Tour of Italy.

The present picture is an excellent example of Collinson’s enigma studies. The boy seems nervous and uncertain as he approaches what may be the entrance of a grand house. Perhaps he is delivering an order that has already been placed, or is calling at the house in the hope of making a sale. Whatever the case, the viewer is invited to consider his insecure state of mind – an insecurity that is symbolically echoed in the remarkable visual contrast between the beautifully observed – almost luxurious – purity of the plaster model, and the boy’s own somewhat ragged appearance. In some of the enigma portraits, the suggested state of mind is whimsical or even downright puzzling. In others – such as the present work – it involves a pathos based on issues arising from the figure’s social identity.

Provenance: bought as Lot 1010 (under the title The Image Maker) Michaan’s Auctions, June 9th 2011. Labels to the reverse indicate that the picture had previously been sold by Christie’s. The work was exhibited as no. 537 in 1858 at the Society of British Artists in London (priced at £ 7).

Bibliography

Crowther, Paul. Awakening Beauty: The Crowther-Oblak Collection of Victorian Art. Exhibition catalogue. Ljubljana: National Gallery of Slovenia; Galway: Moore Institute, National University of Ireland, 2014.

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Last modified 26 November 2014