Among various anecdotes narrated by Pliny the Elder that reveal the illusionistic skills of the Greek painters, the one recounting how Zeuxis was deluded by the drapery painted by his rival Parrhasios stands out. The curtain was painted so realistically, Pliny writes, that Zeuxis requested it to be drawn aside and hence reveal the painting.1Pliny, in H. Rackham, Natural History, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1952, vol. 9, pp. 309–10. Similar stories, true or fabricated, have been circulated about paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby, which also are noted for their realism. According to one, John Holland of Ford Hall, a close friend of Wright and Mrs Moreword of Alfreton Hall, visited the artist’s studio in 1780. Mrs Moreword asked Mr Holland to remove a bird-cage that obstructed her view of the lower part of a painting of three children playing with a dove.2William Bembrose, The Life and Works of Joseph Wright A.R.Α., Bembrose & Sons, London, 1885, p. 52. We are told that the artist thanked Mrs Moreword for the compliment she had unwittingly paid him.
The painting* on which this anecdote was based, The Synnot children, now belongs to the National Gallery of Victoria (fig. 1). Signed by the artist and dated 1781, this enchanting portrait is important because one of the sitters, Walter Synnot, later became an Australian citizen, and the picture was presented to the National Gallery of Victoria by one of his descendants. The sitters were the children of Sir Walter Synnot (1742–1821), Knight Bachelor of Ballymoyer, County Armagh, who became the County Sheriff of Armagh in 1783.3Burke’s Irish Family Records, 5th edn, 1976, pp. 1091–2. The mother of the children, Jane Seton of Camberwell (d. 1803), was the maternal aunt of the Berry sisters – Mary (1763–1852), a well-known writer, and Agnes (1764–1852), an amateur painter – who became close friends and beneficiaries of the elderly Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford.4I wish to thank Mrs Sally Hood for drawing my attention to the relationship between the Berry sisters and the Synnot family. The facts about the relationship between Walpole and the Berry sisters can be learnt from W. S. Lewis et al. (eds), The Correspondence of Horace Walpole, vols 11–12, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1941; Lady Theresa Lewis (ed.), Extracts from the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry from the Year 1783 to 1852, 3 vols, Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1865.
On the left of the painting is Maria, the central figure is Walter (1773–1851), and the boy kneeling on the right is Marcus (1771–1855), the Synnot family’s elder son. Marcus, who became the High Sheriff in 1830, inherited the Ballymoyer House, which remained in the family until 1938. At that time the house itself was demolished and the glen and avenue given to the National Trust.5Letter dated 13 May 1981, Public Record Office, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
There is no mention of Maria in the official records, as daughters were quite commonly excluded from a pedigree; however, information can be gleaned from the correspondence. Her name is frequently mentioned in the letters from her maternal grandmother to her uncle in New York, in which she was praised for ‘her loving disposition, her beauty, her knowledge of French and Latin, music, drawing, painting, her graceful dancing, and other mental and social qualities’.6Robert Seton, An Old Family or The Setons of Scotland and America, Brentano’s, New York, 1899, pp. 259–60. From the correspondence of Horace Walpole we learn that she visited Strawberry Hill on 22 June 1793 with her parents.7Lewis et al., op. cit., vol. 12, p. 243. Although we know that she died young, her precise age is not very clear. A letter of 16 September 1800 indicates that Lady Synnot had ‘just lost her eldest daughter’.8Seton, op. cit., p. 290. In the painting dated 1781 she appears to be about six, and therefore would have been about twenty-five years old when she died.
Walter Synnot, the source of the Australian connections, joined the 66th Regiment of Foot as ensign, became a captain in 1797, and served in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Jamaica.9It is interesting to note that it was on the recommendation of Horace Walpole, perhaps at the request of the Berry sisters, that Walter Synnot was appointed to this ensigncy by Lord Amherst, Commander-in-Chief (Lewis et al., op. cit., vol. 12, p. 88, n. 14). After retiring from the army he emigrated to South Africa in 1820, held the office of Deputy Landrost of Clan William, Cape of Good Hope, but returned to Ireland after five years. In 1836 he set sail again, this time to Van Diemen’s Land with his third wife and nine children, while two sons remained in Ireland. He died at Canning Street, Launceston, Tasmania, on 31 December 1851.10Henderson’s Australian Families, Melbourne, 1941, vol. 1, p. 20.
Besides being endowed with an adventurous spirit that took him to various corners of the empire, Walter, like his mother and his cousin Agnes, was also a modest amateur painter. During his stay in South Africa he painted native plants, and an album of botanical interest is now in the Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne.
Two small, delicately-painted watercolours representing Ballymoyer, 1819, (fig. 2) and Tinderbox Bay, Tasmania, 1840, (fig. 3) are in the possession of a descendant of a Joshua Fergusson, lately of Tasmania but originally also from Ballymoyer, County Armagh. According to family tradition Joshua, who arrived earlier and became a prosperous merchant and property owner, had helped Walter financially, and these paintings were given to him in lieu of a debt.
The way in which the portrait of The Synnot children came to Australia is of interest. It remained in the family home in Ireland until 1918 when it was sold for probate purposes and lost trace of by the family. The painting was known to many members of the family through engravings that they had in their possession. Many years later, by a rare coincidence, Mrs Patricia Hawker, a descendant of Walter Synnot, chanced to see a television program featuring an interview with Lord Beaverbrook in which the painting was hanging on the wall behind the press baron. Lord Beaverbrook, who purchased the painting from Leggatt Brothers in 1958, had placed it on loan to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, Canada, at the time of its official opening in 1959. It remained on view until 1961, when, at the request of Mrs Hawker, Lord Beaverbrook sold it to her. She presented it to the National Gallery of Victoria in 1980.
From 1778 until 1794 Wright exhibited forty paintings at the Royal Academy, of which only four were portraits. The Synnot children was exhibited in 1781, the year that Wright was offered an Associate Membership. A press review on the ‘principal paintings in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy’ noted of this work ‘The flesh is well coloured, the forms beautiful, and the distress depicted in the face of the child who has lost her bird, and the corresponding action, are very natural’.11My thanks to John Ρ. Fuller of the Victoria and Albert Museum Library for the copy of the press cutting (Victoria and Albert Museum, Press Cuttings, vol. 1, p. 204). The fact that the painting was engraved and published just two years later by John Raphael Smith, an engraver greatly sought after by painters, is further indication of its high esteem at the time. Even in 1910 a stipple engraving in colours by Leon Salles was published by Messrs Graves, and in 1919 Greatorex galleries published a mezzotint in colour made by Macbeth Raeburn.12Roy Morris, ‘Engravings after Joseph Wright, A.R.A.’, Print Collector’s Quarterly xix, pp. 95–115.
In his scholarly monograph on Joseph Wright of Derby, Benedict Nicolson criticises this painting for being sugary, and the bird-cage alone receives his praise for its ‘lucidity and poetry’.13Benedict Nicolson, Joseph Wright of Derby, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1968, vol. 1, pp. 70–1. Although I share his admiration for the splendid treatment of the cage, I find his descriptive terms ‘sugariness’ and ‘simpering’ too harsh. It is a carefully composed portrayal of children at play, perhaps lacking in spontaneity and informality but expressing a variety of emotions – gaiety, concern and sorrow. If the striking attitudes and the declamatory gestures of the children appear contrived and affected, it is because the artist has attempted to introduce ancient motifs into his portraiture. He was merging the grand style with the informal.
Although Maria and Walter recall in pose and gesture the majestic forms of the Virgin and Christ in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement of the Sistine Chapel, the composition is loosely based on an Annunciation scene that has not been identified. The Leonardesque figure of Marcus was inspired by a figure of the Archangel Gabriel holding either a cross or a sceptre of lily in one hand, and stretching out the other, to indicate hailing or imparting a message. Maria, who is based on a figure of Mary, is painted in the vein of Murillo. Wright’s inventiveness is evident in his tactful use of the images of God the Father and the dove, symbolising the Holy Spirit, which frequently appears in Annunciation scenes. Walter is holding the fluttering dove with his left hand, perhaps about to release it, while with his right hand he makes the gesture of blessing generally seen in representations of God. The turn of the figure is reminiscent of Quattrocento putti, such as Verrochio’s Putto with Dolphin.14See illustration in John Pope-Hennessy, Italian Renaissance Sculpture, Phaidon, London, 1958, pl. 78. Nicolson has already pointed out Wright’s imitation of the Dead Persian in his dead soldier15Nicolson, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 66. and the figure of Michelangelo’s Adam in his Captive from Sterne.16ibid., p. 62. In addition to these echoes, it is not difficult to see the influence of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna on the portrait of Elizabeth, wife of Edward Sacheverell Pole, and her son Sacheverell.17For the Sistine Madonna see illustration in Pierluigi de Vecchi, The Complete Paintings of Raphael, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1966, pl. Ivi, and for the Sacheverell Pole portrait see Nicolson, op. cit., vol. 2, pls. 88 and 89. Similarly, the composition, Jane Darwin and her son William Brown Darwin 1776 (fig. 4), was borrowed freely from Raphael’s Madonna della Sedia c.1514, as is indicated by the tondo format and the costume and details of the chair. However, the former is in reverse of the latter, suggesting the use of engraving. Likewise, in the Synnot portrait, which was definitely based on an Annunciation scene, Wright could have used an engraving, for instead of depicting Mary on the right and the angel on the left, the opposite is found. Although the artist might not have positioned them intentionally, one is tempted to see an allusion to the Trinity in the hand of Walter with its gesture of blessing (God), the dove (the Holy Spirit) and the hand of Marcus (Christ), all placed in an almost vertical line. In Annunciation scenes the old masters frequently employed a vase of flowers to separate the divine space of the angel and the earthly space of the Virgin. In the Synnot portrait an empty bird-cage takes its place.
Thus it appears that Wright was ‘borrowing’ and ‘transplanting’ from the ancient and ‘improving the subject’, as Joshua Reynolds had been advocating in his Discourses at the Royal Academy. Reynolds’s notion of ‘artistic borrowing’ (condemned by Blake as ‘thievery’, appreciated by Walpole as ‘wit’ or ‘quotation’, and called ‘conjuring’ by Nathanial Hone) has been dealt with by various art historians18Edgar Wind, ‘Humanittsidee und heroisiertes Porträt in der englischen Kultur des 18. Jahrhunderts’, in Vortrage der Bibliothek Warburg, 1930–31, Leipzig/Berlin, 1932, pp. 157–229, and ‘“Borrowed Attitudes” in Reynolds and Hogarth’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, 1938–39, pp. 182–5; Ε. H. Gombrich, Norm and Form, Phaidon, London, 1966, pp. 129–34; Lawrence Lipking, The Ordering of the Arts in 18th Century England, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1970, pp. 164–207; Ronald Paulson, Emblem and Expression, Thames & Hudson, London, 1975, pp. 80–94; Joseph Burke, English Art 1714–1800, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1976, pp. 198–211; John L. Mahoney, ‘Reynold’s “Discourses on Art”: The Delicate Balance of Neoclassic Aesthetics’, British Journal of Aesthetics xviii, 2, Spring 1978, pp. 126–37; see also the selected bibliography in Robert R. Wark (ed.), Sir Joshua Reynolds: Discourses on Art, Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 1959. and does not require reiteration here. However, Lawrence Lipking’s statement regarding Reynolds’s theory of ‘imitation’ could be applied to Wright: ‘By commanding a large repertory of attitudes, poses and effects derived from older paintings, the painter demonstrated his independence from everything but his art. He was literate; he was liberal. (Since even when executing a commissioned portrait he could select his own artistic precedents)’.19Lipking, op. cit., p. 175. In fact, Wright, following the practice of Reynolds, has ‘elevated’ the Synnot portrait ‘by association with istoria’.20Burke, op. cit., p. 206.
In addition to the ‘imitation’ of an ancient model, the costumes of the Synnot children are in accordance with Reynolds’s advice to portrait painters. He advocated that a portraitist who wished to ‘raise and improve his subject has to change the dress from a temporary fashion to one more permanent, which has annexed to it no ideas of meanness from its being familiar to us’.21Reynolds, in Wark, op. cit., 1959, p. 72. A similar idea had already been expressed by Jonathan Richardson, the father-in-law of Thomas Hudson, the teacher of both Reynolds and Wright. Writing on the art of portrait painting, he stated that ‘portrait painters seeing the disadvantage they were under in following the dress commonly worn have invented one peculiar to pictures in their own way, which is a composition partly that and partly something purely artistary’.22The Works of Jonathan Richardson, Strawberry Hill, 1792, p. 83. The Synnot boys are dressed in a Vandykian costume, whereas Maria’s dress is classicised.
It is possible that The Synnot children is purely a portrayal of children playing with their pet bird, but the bird-cage, through its central position, and realistic treatment, dominates the scene, suggesting a deeper meaning. Nicolson has written about Wright’s preoccupation with the imagery of a single captive as described by Laurence Sterne in A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy.23Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, Henry G. Bohn, London, 1768, pp. 443–4. Although Sterne/Yorick’s imagined state of captivity was caused by his failure to bring his passport to Paris, which may have resulted in imprisonment in the Bastille, his awareness of the cruel loss of liberty was triggered by a voice from a cage.24ibid., p. 442. In the corridor of his hotel a starling trapped in a cage was complaining, ‘I can’t get out, I can’t get out’. He tried to free the bird but was unable to open the cage, and so was greatly troubled. This incident lingered in his mind for a long time during his stay in France. In A Sentimental Journey this episode is followed by Sterne’s encounter with Maria and her dog Sylvio,25ibid., pp. 470–3. an event which Wright painted in 1777 as a companion to his Captive, painted three years earlier. In 1781 Wright painted a larger, upright version of Maria as a companion to Edwin, from Dr. Beattie’s Minstrel. This was the year he painted The Synnot children and it is to be expected that in reviving his memory of the episode of Maria, the earlier event of the trapped starling was recalled. The plight of the caged bird is described so vividly in the novel that it is not far-fetched to assume that, while Wright painted The Synnot children, he was attempting to carry out Sterne’s wishes, even though a dove is represented rather than a starling. The open door of the cage is clearly indicated, and the bird’s freedom is sanctioned by Walter’s gesture.
After describing the sad state of Maria and his own grief for her, Sterne states that the picture of grief-stricken Maria was ever-present in his mind even while he was at a scene of enjoyment. Sterne elaborates on the dual emotions – ‘joys’ and ‘cares’ – that simultaneously arise and balance each other from ‘dear sensibility’, which is the source ‘of all that’s precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows’.26ibid., p. 473. This description of ‘sensibility’ aptly fits the Synnot portrait, in which Maria’s apparent anguish and Walter’s joy ‘balance’ each other.
It is interesting to note that Lorenz Eitner, in theorising that the idea of ‘freedom’ could be defined and made vivid by its opposite ‘captivity’, uses as his example Sterne’s episode of the caged bird,27Lorenz Eitner, ‘Cages, Prisons, and Captives in 18th Century’, in Karl Kroeber & William Walling (eds), Images of Romanticism, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1978, p. 14. but he uses the Synnot portrait to exemplify the image of sheltered innocence.
The image of a caged bird was a popular metaphor of love in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, where a trapped bird symbolised the lover, but it was also used as a symbol of childhood.28Victor Chan, ‘Time and Fortune in Three Early Portraits by Goya’, Arts Magazine Iv, 4 December 1980, p. 114, n. 73. This latter symbolism, which became more popular in eighteenth-century Europe and England, also represents innocence being protected through confinement. The imagery of caged birds watched by cats or an eagle was frequently used as a warning of the dangers of the outside world.29For cat watching the bird-cage see Chan, op. cit.; for eagle hovering above the bird-cage see Arthur Henkel & Albrecht Schone, Emblemata, J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuch Handlung, Stuttgart, 1967, p. 855. Hence the open cage and a bird outside the cage would imply loss of innocence. If the Synnot portrait is interpreted in this vein, the posture of Maria turned to one side expressing fear for the safety of the bird, and the raised hand of Marcus denoting either comforting speech, or deterring Walter from releasing the bird, assume greater significance. The use of the dove is also significant because it symbolises both the Holy Spirit and innocence and gentleness.30Arnold Whittick, Symbols, Signs and their Meaning, Leonard Hill (Brooke), London, 1960, p. 175. As stated earlier, Walter’s gesture of blessing identifies him with an image of God, yet he holds the bird ready for release. This blessing of the bird may be seen as a metaphor for the protection that God gives to the child, taken from its cage of innocence, and released into the adult world.
If this interpretation is permissible, the appropriateness of the ‘borrowing’ of an Annunciation scene becomes more evident when seen in context with the traditional link between the loss of innocence (fall of man) and the Annunciation (the redemption of man). Theologically, the Annunciation represents God’s incarnation and the incarnation occurred solely for the redemption of mankind after the fall.31Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, tr. Janet Seligman, Lund Humphries, London, 1969, vol. 1, p. 10. In Western art from the ninth century onwards the representation of this link between the incarnation and the redemption became widespread.
In a German relief of the fourth quarter of the tenth century, depicting the Annunciation, Mary and the angel stand on either side of a tree.32ibid., p. 40. As Schiller points out, the tree that occupies the important position in the composition denotes the Tree of Life in Paradise. ‘It also points back antithetically to the tree of Temptation and contains an allusion to the relationship between Eve and Mary, between Fall and the Redemption.’33ibid. If the empty cage symbolises loss of innocence and the rest of the picture represents the Annunciation, is it not possible to see in the Synnot portrait an intertwining of theological and moral symbolism?
At this stage, without literary evidence, it is impossible to prove whether Wright consciously adapted these religious and moral images and was aware of their symbolism. However, a recent revelation of his adaptation of old-master Nativity scenes for his ‘night pieces’34Paulson, op. cit., pp. 190–1; Francis D. Klingender, Art and the Industrial Revolution, ed. & rev. Arthur Elton, Adams & Mackay, Evelyn, 1968, p. 60. strengthens the possibility of all this being intentional. Wright could also have been assisted in the choice of the imagery by his friend and poet, William Hayley, upon whose help he often relied.35Nicolson, op. cit., pp. 141–9. In fact Hayley was in Derby in 1781 and visited the artist.36ibid., p. 142.
Besides adapting pictorial ‘quotations’ from the art of the past – advice advocated by Reynolds – Wright, in the Synnot portrait, also pays allegiance to Italian masters of the High Renaissance through the use of a balanced, pyramidal composition and enabling movement from one figure to the other by his skilful arrangement of details. The subject matter of the painting is common in the eighteenth century – popularly defined as the ‘Century of Childhood’ – but the children are endowed with puzzling and improbable ‘adult’ gestures. Following the Renaissance concept of decorum the artist has restricted movement and instead introduced expressive baroque gestures and appropriate expressions. The portrait of the Synnot children demonstrates Wright’s sophisticated technique. It may certainly be added to the growing list of works that attests to the artist’s capacity for highly original ideas and ‘intellectual complexity’.37For the philosophical history and literary background for borrowed attitudes in English eighteenth-century art, with many interesting examples, the classic authority is Edgar Wind. For further comparable parallels in painting see C. B. Tinker, Painter and Poet, Cambridge, Mass., 1938. For interesting parallels in literature see C. B. Tinker, op. cit., and Kenneth Clark’s ‘English Romantic Poets and Landscape Painting’, in Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Society, vol. Ixxxv, also privately printed at the Curwen Press, January 1945. Clark, like Ellis Waterhouse, acknowledges his debt to the pioneer study of Tinker.
Dr Emma Devapriam, Senior Curator of European Paintings, National Gallery of Victoria (in 1986).
Notes
* My grateful thanks go to Mrs Patricia Hawker, Mrs Sally Hood and Mr David Fraser for information received.
1 Pliny, in H. Rackham, Natural History, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1952, vol. 9, pp. 309–10.
2 William Bembrose, The Life and Works of Joseph Wright A.R.Α., Bembrose & Sons, London, 1885, p. 52.
3 Burke’s Irish Family Records, 5th edn, 1976, pp. 1091–2.
4 I wish to thank Mrs Sally Hood for drawing my attention to the relationship between the Berry sisters and the Synnot family. The facts about the relationship between Walpole and the Berry sisters can be learnt from W. S. Lewis et al. (eds), The Correspondence of Horace Walpole, vols 11–12, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1941; Lady Theresa Lewis (ed.), Extracts from the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry from the Year 1783 to 1852, 3 vols, Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1865.
5 Letter dated 13 May 1981, Public Record Office, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
6 Robert Seton, An Old Family or The Setons of Scotland and America, Brentano’s, New York, 1899, pp. 259–60.
7 Lewis et al., op. cit., vol. 12, p. 243.
8 Seton, op. cit., p. 290.
9 It is interesting to note that it was on the recommendation of Horace Walpole, perhaps at the request of the Berry sisters, that Walter Synnot was appointed to this ensigncy by Lord Amherst, Commander-in-Chief (Lewis et al., op. cit., vol. 12, p. 88, n. 14).
10 Henderson’s Australian Families, Melbourne, 1941, vol. 1, p. 20.
11 My thanks to John Ρ. Fuller of the Victoria and Albert Museum Library for the copy of the press cutting (Victoria and Albert Museum, Press Cuttings, vol. 1, p. 204).
12 Roy Morris, ‘Engravings after Joseph Wright, A.R.A.’, Print Collector’s Quarterly xix, pp. 95–115.
13 Benedict Nicolson, Joseph Wright of Derby, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1968, vol. 1, pp. 70–1.
14 See illustration in John Pope-Hennessy, Italian Renaissance Sculpture, Phaidon, London, 1958, pl. 78.
15 Nicolson, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 66.
16 ibid., p. 62.
17 For the Sistine Madonna see illustration in Pierluigi de Vecchi, The Complete Paintings of Raphael, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1966, pl. Ivi, and for the Sacheverell Pole portrait see Nicolson, op. cit., vol. 2, pls. 88 and 89.
18 Edgar Wind, ‘Humanittsidee und heroisiertes Porträt in der englischen Kultur des 18. Jahrhunderts’, in Vortrage der Bibliothek Warburg, 1930–31, Leipzig/Berlin, 1932, pp. 157–229, and ‘“Borrowed Attitudes” in Reynolds and Hogarth’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, 1938–39, pp. 182–5; Ε. H. Gombrich, Norm and Form, Phaidon, London, 1966, pp. 129–34; Lawrence Lipking, The Ordering of the Arts in 18th Century England, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1970, pp. 164–207; Ronald Paulson, Emblem and Expression, Thames & Hudson, London, 1975, pp. 80–94; Joseph Burke, English Art 1714–1800, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1976, pp. 198–211; John L. Mahoney, ‘Reynold’s “Discourses on Art”: The Delicate Balance of Neoclassic Aesthetics’, British Journal of Aesthetics xviii, 2, Spring 1978, pp. 126–37; see also the selected bibliography in Robert R. Wark (ed.), Sir Joshua Reynolds: Discourses on Art, Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 1959.
19 Lipking, op. cit., p. 175.
20 Burke, op. cit., p. 206.
21 Reynolds, in Wark, op. cit., 1959, p. 72.
22 The Works of Jonathan Richardson, Strawberry Hill, 1792, p. 83.
23 Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, Henry G. Bohn, London, 1768, pp. 443–4.
24 ibid., p. 442.
25 ibid., pp. 470–3.
26 ibid., p. 473.
27 Lorenz Eitner, ‘Cages, Prisons, and Captives in 18th Century’, in Karl Kroeber & William Walling (eds), Images of Romanticism, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1978, p. 14.
28 Victor Chan, ‘Time and Fortune in Three Early Portraits by Goya’, Arts Magazine Iv, 4 December 1980, p. 114, n. 73.
29 For cat watching the bird-cage see Chan, op. cit.; for eagle hovering above the bird-cage see Arthur Henkel & Albrecht Schone, Emblemata, J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuch Handlung, Stuttgart, 1967, p. 855.
30 Arnold Whittick, Symbols, Signs and their Meaning, Leonard Hill (Brooke), London, 1960, p. 175.
31 Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, tr. Janet Seligman, Lund Humphries, London, 1969, vol. 1, p. 10.
32 ibid., p. 40.
33 ibid.
34 Paulson, op. cit., pp. 190–1; Francis D. Klingender, Art and the Industrial Revolution, ed. & rev. Arthur Elton, Adams & Mackay, Evelyn, 1968, p. 60.
35 Nicolson, op. cit., pp. 141–9.
36 ibid., p. 142.
37 For the philosophical history and literary background for borrowed attitudes in English eighteenth-century art, with many interesting examples, the classic authority is Edgar Wind. For further comparable parallels in painting see C. B. Tinker, Painter and Poet, Cambridge, Mass., 1938. For interesting parallels in literature see C. B. Tinker, op. cit., and Kenneth Clark’s ‘English Romantic Poets and Landscape Painting’, in Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Society, vol. Ixxxv, also privately printed at the Curwen Press, January 1945. Clark, like Ellis Waterhouse, acknowledges his debt to the pioneer study of Tinker.