In April 1877 Archibald Michie, during his term as London-based Agent-General in for Victoria (1873–79), acquired at auction for the National Gallery of Victoria, for the moderate sum of eighteen pounds, seven shillings and sixpence, a small canvas by Robert William Buss, who had died just two years previously. Dispatching this painting, The monopolist, 1840, to Melbourne at the end of September, he noted enthusiastically that the work ‘has been engraved, and is generally recognised as an excellent specimen of this painter’s peculiar genius’.1Archibald Michie, letter to the Chairman of Trustees, 28 Sept. 1877, National Gallery of Victoria archive.
Buss had briefly worked as an illustrator for Charles Dickens’s classic novel Pickwick Papers in 1836.2For the full story of Buss’s relationship with Dickens, see Ted Gott, ‘Robert Buss, The monopolist and Charles Dickens’, Art Journal of the National Gallery of Victoria, vol. 50, 2011, pp. 21–7; also <www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/robert-buss-the-monopolist-and-charles-dickens>. Given this, it is not surprising perhaps to see echoes of the already legendarily stout and bespectacled Samuel Pickwick as the painting’s protagonist, who warms his bottom before a cheery fire in the Victoria Dining Rooms, blissfully oblivious to the plight of a cold and wet workman who reaches a shivering, mittened hand towards the warmth so amply hogged by this monopolist. A Pickwickian reading of this painting would certainly explain the mirth it afforded an art critic such as George Somes Layard, who argued of Buss that
it was human nature in its humorous attitudes that almost invariably attracted him … the satire [in his paintings] did not lie in his treatment or exaggeration of the subjects chosen, so much as in the truthful presentation of human nature discovered at ridiculous moments. I need only mention the oft-engraved pictures of ‘Satisfaction’ and ‘The Monopolist’ as evidencing what I mean.3George Somes Layard, ‘Our graphic humorists: Robert William Buss’, The Magazine of Art, no. 26, Jun. 1902, p. 361.
A more serious undercurrent to The monopolist’s humour was proposed by Buss himself. Commenting on the painting’s rotund protagonist, he wrote:
The man is a type of the class of persons who live by fattening on the poor. Such a fellow would buy up all the corn and coals in the country, if possible, and only sell at high prices, though the poor around him might die of starvation. ‘The Monopolist,’ true to his instincts, takes up The Times and the whole fire to himself, utterly regardless of the wet and shivering visitor who has just arrived.4Robert William Buss, English Graphic Satire and its Relation to Different Styles of Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving. A Contribution to the History of the English School of Art, The Author and Virtue & Co, London, 1874, p. 193.
Our interpretation of this work is today somewhat compromised by the deterioration of the paint surface that has occurred in the lower-left quadrant, obscuring the drenched newcomer’s umbrella (that can be clearly seen in contemporary engravings after the painting), and encouraging an incorrect reading of the narrative as an attempt on his part to pick the monopolist’s pocket, rather than an innocently bedraggled plea for a share of the fire’s warming comfort. What remains for us to enjoy, though, is Buss’s meticulous attention to detail in depicting the cosy setting and furnishings (the carafes, half-filled wine glass and cheerful advertisements for hot roast joints and Ramsbottom ale) that situate so captivatingly this vignette of selfishness in the Victoria Dining Rooms.5Kitton noted approvingly: ‘It may be said of Buss … that his works, whether in colour or black-and-white, are regarded as affording authentic information respecting costumes and other accessories; for he was exceedingly conscientious in matters of detail, preferring to incur infinite trouble to secure accuracy rather than rely upon his imagination’. Frederic Kitton, Dickens and his Illustrators, George Redway, London, 1899, p. 54. Buss’s care in preparing this composition is evident from the pentimenti that are visible under infrared photographic examination: the lowering of the tabletop at the right and new renderings of its carafe and glass; and an earlier clock face beneath and to the left of the painting’s final timepiece. One curious anomaly invades The monopolist however: the numbers on the portion of the clock face visible at the top of the composition are reversed, as though seen in a mirror; while the advertisements pasted to the walls are not. I am most grateful to John Payne, former Senior Conservator, NGV, and Michael Varcoe-Cocks, Head of Conservation, NGV, for their kind help with the technical examination of The monopolist.
The monopolist was shown at the seventeenth exhibition of the Society of British Artists at Suffolk Street, East Pall Mall, in 1840, where it was described by one contemporary journal as ‘a very humourous work’.6‘Society of British Artists’, The Polytechnic Journal, A Monthly Magazine of Art, Science and Literature, Polytechnic Institute, London, 1840, vol. II, p. 310. The painting was acquired, possibly from this exhibition, by the Scottish engineer and shipbuilder Robert Napier. Nicknamed ‘the father of Clyde shipping’ in the 1840s Napier had constructed West Shandon House, in the village of Shandon, on the Gare Loch, on Scotland’s west coast, to house his enormous art collection. Napier loaned The monopolist to the spectacular Art Treasures of Great Britain exhibition, held in Manchester from May to October 1857, which was an astonishing display of 16,000 works of art that attracted 1.3 million visitors during its five-month run. The work then remained in Napier’s collection until the dispersal of his estate at the Shandon sale organised by Christie Manson & Woods on 11 April 1877. Here, despite a typographical error in the auction catalogue that attributed lot 548 to ‘S. W. Buss’, it caught the attention of Archibald Michie and thus entered the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria.7See Catalogue of the Celebrated Assemblage of Works of Art and Vertu, Known as The Shandon Collection, Formed During the Last Half-Century by that Well-Known Amateur, Robert Napier, Esq., Deceased, Late of Glasgow. First Portion, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 11 Apr. 1877, lot. 548.
Ted Gott, Senior Curator, International Art, National Gallery of Victoria
