What
do we see ?
3 figures in the countryside, either in or just outside a wood. They are
between a single very mottled, slender and not very old oak tree (foreground,
slightly off centre to the right and also leaning slightly to the right) and a
lone low stone wall that runs right across the background
of the picture. The wall is broken to the right of the tree. Behind the
break in the wall is what looks like a spruce tree, which in the 19th
century was being used as a Christmas tree. There are many ferns and brambles in
the foreground
The season is autumn, recognisable from the ferns' colour and the yellow
oak leaves, and humanly, from the colours of the clothes of the figures. The
period is that of the English Civil War, perhaps c.1650 (fading Cavalier)
The
cavalier (perhaps
between 20 and 40 years old) is
sitting with his legs out parallel on the ground; he is supported by the woman.
Only the book carried by the standing man, the cavalier's
lower legs and feet (in light brown boots) and his dark purple hat with
its white feather and yellow (golden?) brooch protrude into the space to the
right of the tree. At his feet amid the brambles are some playing cards (?). On
them is a heart. The cavalier's sword broke, the blade is still stuck in the
tree, the tip is pointing to the cavalier's guts. A red butterfly is either
sitting on or crawling up the part of the blade that is to the left of the tree.
It may therefore be crawling in the
direction of the tree and the large book (most likely a Bible) held by the man
standing in dark clothes behind the tree. The cavalier's
right hand lies listless on the ground; under it is his red, blue and
yellow coloured sash. The golden hilt of his broken sword lies just beyond his
hand, pointing up at the tree. His trousers and cape are dark purple; his hair,
beard and moustache are golden yellow. He wears a light-coloured steel
breastplate. His shirt is white and his face is very pale. His eyes are almost
closed and his mouth slightly open. He could be speaking or trying to speak. He
could seriously or mortally wounded.
The
woman (who looks
between 25 and 35) is wearing the clothes of a Puritan lady, identifiable from
the sombre colours, lack of decoration and white shoulder cover. Her right arm
is behind the cavalier supporting him
while her left hand holds a handkerchief over the wound in his neck where some
blood can be seen. Her gaze is down towards the ground but at some distance from
the cavalier. She appears to be listening to what he is saying or else thinking;
she has a thoughtful expression. The cavalier has his left hand on
her left hand.
The
man watching them
both, standing in the middle of the picture very vertical, behind the tree is a
Puritan, perhaps between 25-40 years old, identifiable from his black clothes,
tall black hat, short white collar. He has a broad (leather?) sash over his
shoulder from right to left. It goes down towards the big book (probably the
Bible) he is carrying in his (invisible) left hand; his right hand visible
hangs down by his side. The look on his face is ambiguous but not
particularly sympathetic. His face is at the same level as the withered oak
leaves hanging down from the tree. The book has two white book markers in it in
the middle (Old Testament?). The book is same colour as the cavalier's boots and
is situated close to the break in the wall. The broken blade of the sword
finishes at the book and the level of the Puritan's hand so that it appears as
if the Puritan is holding a sword that proceeds from the Bible down diagonally towards
the cavalier's guts.
Everything to the right of the tree (except
perhaps the book) is not as it should be or is in decay (it could be said that
spiritual knowledge in a book is
also in decay). Broken wall, so wall doesn't function. Feet not on ground, so no
human uprightness, heart at feet, as it were trodden below them, hat on ground,
so not covering the head but the earth.
What do they seem to feel and what do we feel ?
Cavalier:
gentleness, gratitude.
Woman:
tenderness, compassion, thoughtfulness, love (?) acceptance
Man:
antipathy, scorn, bitterness, distance, contempt, loathing, shame (?) confusion
(?)
We: the
pathos of the whole situation, pity and sadness
for the cavalier, curiosity, interest, admiration for the woman, antipathy
toward the Puritan
What
can we think ?
A fight has probably taken place around the tree. The cavalier's
assailant(s) has/have gone. He was probably defeated when his sword got stuck in
the tree and snapped. The blade is diagonal but nevertheless by the tree and the
blade we are reminded of the Cross. The Puritan as a kind of negative
St John
figure with his Holy
Scripture and the woman as
Mary
the two figures
traditionally seen at the foot of the Cross. The
cavalier is all radiant but dying his era is over, and his age of
history passing with autumn. The future is with the Puritan and his wife/fiancιe/love(?),
for she is going with him, not the cavalier, even though it is possible (as shown by the hearts, the hands?) that she and the
cavalier know each other or are even secret lovers. The cavalier is a symbol of
nobility, aristocracy, monarchy, all the old order that is rooted ultimately in
the classical world of Greece and Rome and the ancient theocracies of Asia
the beautiful otherworldly (for westerners) realm that is also relatively
feminine in mood.
The
Puritan man
symbolises the new dominant age coming ruled by a new theocracy, one that is
more earthbound, book-bound and abstract rule-bound, rigid unyielding,
disciplined, uniform and effective more masculine and western in nature.
Ultimately, the Puritans and other Dissenters like them would lose their civil
rights after the Restoration and many would turn to industry and commerce. Many
would become the leaders of the new industrial
(black and brown) age of the satanic mills. The cavalier therefore represents
the end of the distant past (that culminated in the Middle Ages); the Puritan
represents the more recent past -
the age from the Reformation to 1900 (or arguably, the 1960s). The Puritan, even
if he does not hate the cavalier, cannot overcome his antipathy enough to give
him help and comfort nor can he even show it. He does not even read to him from
his Bible but simply stands detached and observes. He is a lonesome figure,
whereas the other two have formed a relationship, albeit temporary, despite
being on opposite sides. Ultimately, he too will need comfort; his book will not
suffice.
The
woman represents
the future. She is a woman but she is wearing the sombre masculine uniform
clothes of the Puritan. She is between them both, embracing the past in love and
compassion even as she prepares to go into a dark future. She faces this future
in acceptance. She thus embraces past, present, future. She has a thinking heart
and a compassionate soul. She is not ruled by opinions and ideology or any other
label but by her own individualised humanity. She makes her own moral choice not
to reject this dying enemy but to comfort him. The woman is the English Folk
Soul between the Devil (Lucifer) and
Satan
(Ahriman). Like
Christ
on the Cross between the two
thieves, she welcomes the one but the other holds himself off. She empathises
with the cavalier, goes down to his level, embraces and gets close to him, pays
attention and listens to him, even though he will soon be the past. Her
flexibility of soul is what
Britain
will
need in the coming decades and centuries.
William
Shakespeare
Burton
(1830-1916) was
on the fringes of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, that select group of seven
British artists who strove in an almost Rosicrucian manner to be faithful both
to the world of physical Nature and to the world of the numinous spirit revealed
in
Man.
In "The Wounded
Cavalier"
Burton
unites the spirit of
Gabriel
(Earth Nature) and
Michael
(Sun Spirit) to produce a
marvel of a painting that communicates a very great deal about the spirit of
Britain
. According to
Rudolf
Steiner
, the period 1510-1879 was
influenced by the Moon archangel
Gabriel
who always draws Man into
incarnating deeper into things, including into physical existence; during this
period natural science and nationalism developed, with all that it brought for
the intensification of national cultures. Since 1879 we have been in the age of
the Sun archangel
Michael
, who brings the opposite
impulse the spiritualization of life and thought, the overcoming of
nationalism and the spread of a cosmopolitan spirit.
The painting also points to a key period in British history 1649-51.
Steiner describes how there is a time in a nation's history its guardian
archangel (Folk Spirit) descends from the spiritual world as far as the etheric
life plane above and around the people and their land and from there can work
into the Folk Soul of the people (their collective feeling life, or as Jung
called it, their collective unconscious) to the point where their very physical
culture is deeply affected. Prior to that point, the archangel, who is, as it
were further removed from the people, only influences the people's
soul life. This crucial point for
Italy
was 1530, for
France
1600, for
England
1650 and for
Germany
1750. What happened in
England
c.1650?
Oliver
Cromwell
was at the peak of his
power. He had effectively won two Civil wars and would finally defeat
Prince
Charles
at the Battle of Worcester
1651, the final end of the Civil Wars; he had carried through the execution of
King
Charles
I in 1649 the first time
a monarch had ever been publicly executed in the history of Christendom. He had
demonstrated
England
's ability to control
Scotland
and
Ireland
by his ruthless military
campaigns. He dominated Parliament. He was a very religious man in his own
Puritan way and sought to bring about a Puritan purification of
England
. Puritanism stressed the
individual soul, its personal relation to God and the individual conscience. His
secretary
John
Milton
, called the Commonwealth 'a
paradise on earth';
Cromwell
's royalist enemies thought
it was hell and that the world had been turned upside down. The philosopher
Thomas
Hobbes
would have agreed; in 1651
he published his materialist doctrine of support for authoritarian rule, Leviathan. Hobbes inoculated into the English that fear of anarchy
('the war of every man against every man' in which life is 'solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish, and short') and respect for authority that they have had ever
since.
England
was now
Europe
's first large scale Republic
since the days of
Rome
. The British army and navy
were strong, effective, and feared.
Britain
's commerce was rapidly
expanding, and
Cromwell
had a dream of colonial
empire. His government seized the first colony by military force,
Jamaica
, in 1655. This would become
England
's main sugar-producing
territory, based on slavery of course; the English became increasingly hooked on
sugar and what it did for the organism. The Commonwealth government also forced
a war with England's main commercial rivals, the Dutch (1652-54) after passing
the Navigation Act in 1651 which sought to restrict exports and imports to
English ships. This was maintained and built on by later governments and became
a major factor in
England
's global trade expansion.
Cromwell
was clearly
England
's
Bismarck
- greater than
Bismarck
in fact as he was involved
in all three realms: religion, politics, and economics. The German empire
Bismarck created lasted only 48 years, whereas, although the Commonwealth itself
did not survive beyond 1660
(Cromwell died in 1658), what Cromwell achieved in terms of trade, military
might, parliamentary power, control of Great Britain, the cultural influence of
Puritanism arguably lasted until the mid-20th century. He created the
basis for
Britain
's industrial take-off 100
years later and thus the basis for
Britain
's world role for good or
ill. A large part in
Britain
's financial strength after
1750 was played by Jews, and they were readmitted to
England
by
Cromwell
in 1656, having been
banished since 1290.
Cromwell
readmitted them because he
hoped for their aid in shifting
Europe
's financial centre from
Amsterdam
to
London
, and because of his Puritan
Biblical beliefs that the Second Coming would not occur until the Jews returned
to the
Holy Land
and that God had chosen the
English to make this happen. All in all then,
Cromwell
was a towering figure in
British history at just the time
Steiner
claimed the English Folk
Spirit descended into the English Folk Soul. Interestingly,
England
's last great composer,
Henry
Purcell
was born in the last year of
the Commonwealth 1659. From now on,
England
was to put her main energies
into more worldly things.
The
fading of artistic culture, so strong before
Charles
I, and the rise of the
commercial and industrial culture,
is also obliquely suggested in The Wounded Cavalier. In this sense, it is
somewhat similar to Turner's Fighting
Temeraire, which shows a beautiful old ship of the line, caught in the rays
of the golden sun, being towed away by an ugly little steamer for scrap as the
sun rises on a new industrial age.
In the mid-19th century when the industrial age was carrying
all before it, there was a great sense of nostalgia and pathos (as well as
mawkish sentimentality) for the age that had preceded it and the culture that
was being lost. Three years after this painting was exhibited, in 1859,
Tennyson
would publish his hugely
popular Arthurian Idylls
of the King, whereas
Darwin
would publish his theory of
our ape-like origins, Origin of Species.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had been founded in 1848, the same year as the Spiritualist
movement took off in
America
, but
Marx
and
Engels
in the same year issued
their Communist Manifesto of
materialism. These were just a few of the contrary symptoms of the
19th century's constant cultural struggle between an ahrimanic
element dominating the surface of society in science, technology and industry,
and a luciferic element beneath it in the subconscious which manifested in the
arts: between them the confused human soul. The mediaeval neo-Gothic style
was finding ever more acceptance as the Romantic mood in the arts
permeated society as a reaction to the dominance of industrialism and it would
continue to make headway in the arts throughout the 19th century.
Finally,
the painting was painted and exhibited in 1855-6, the period of the Crimean
War (1853-6). This was the last major war in which British soldiers fought
in the splendidly colourful (and luciferically beautiful) uniforms typical of
the Napoleonic era and also the last war in which the ramshackle corruption and
inefficiency of the British Army were tolerated. After the war, the ahrimanic
scientific element penetrated the army also, as systems were tightened up and
merit and efficiency became more the watchwords of the military. The Crimean War
was also the war in which Florence
Nightingale came to national prominence and founded her nursing movement, as
well as being the first war which was subject to modern reporting techniques
with frequent illustrations and even photographs from the front. The image of
the gentle woman comforting a dying soldier would have been one very much on
people's minds at this time.
The
Wounded Cavalier
(painted 1855, exhib. 1856) by William
Shakespeare Burton (1830-1916)
When
this painting (length 104cms)
was exhibited at the
Royal
Academy
in 1856 (painted 1855), it
caused a sensation. Why ? Because of the extreme naturalism and realism with
which the painter had rendered the natural suroundings of 3 subjects. Five years
after the success of the Great Exhibition at
Crystal
Palace
, three years before the
publication of
Darwin
's Origin of Species, this
was the high noon of early Victorian materialism. The first photograph had been
taken by Niepce only 17 years before.
The glorification of science and technology was already beginning to infect wide
swathes of Victorian society. What so many visitors to the
Royal
Academy
wanted in 1856 was a
photographical faithfulness in art to what their physical eyes saw around them.
They marvelled at the way in which the artist had dug himself into a hole at
ground level to get right down to the eye level of the flora and fauna he wanted
to paint. This accurate grasping of the physical world, a further example of
western humanity's much vaunted mastery over Nature, was what they exulted in.
One cannot help feeling that those who saw the painting in this way must have
missed the artist's main point.
William
Shakespeare
Burton
(1830-1916) was
on the fringes of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, that select group of seven
British artists who strove in an almost Rosicrucian manner to be faithful both
to the world of physical
Nature and to the world of the numinous spirit revealed in
Man.
In "The Wounded
Cavalier"
Burton
unites the spirit of
Gabriel
and
Michael
to produce a marvel of a
painting that communicates a very great deal about the spirit of
Britain
.
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/speel/paint/burton.htm
William
Shakespeare
Burton
is known by his Pre-Raphaelite
painting The Wounded Cavalier,
and by little else. He was born in
London
,
his father abandoning the family to become a noted comedian in
America
.
He started as a black and white artist, but after finding a patron in the
dramatist and critic
Tom
Taylor
,
was able to become a student at the
Royal
Academy
,
where he won a gold medal in 1851. He exhibited at the Academy from 1846,
achieving success with The Wounded
Cavalier in 1856, which was hung next to Holman Hunt's The
Scapegoat. The picture shows the injured Cavalier discovered by Puritans,
his sectarian enemies. The man stands aloof, the girl is more humane. The
dramatic pale face of the injured Cavalier recalls Henry
Wallis's Death of
Chatterton
,
exhibited in the same year. The Wounded
Cavalier was nearly not shown at all - it had been abandoned, face to the
wall, in a remote corner of the
Royal
Academy
(by RA porters not being suitably bribed,
Burton
believed). There it was found by A. S. Cope, an Academician, after the pictures
to be hung in that year's exhibition had already been selected. Cope not only
took the forgotten picture to the hanging committee to get their approval, but
selflessly withdrew one of his own pictures from display so that there would be
room for
Burton
's
picture.
Burton
suffered from ill-health, a weak temperament, and various family tragedies, so
that his painting career stopped and restarted several times. His output seems
to have consisted mainly of religious pictures, although the occasional
Pre-Raphaelite figure appears, as in the sleeping girl in An
Uninteresting Novel.
The
Wounded Cavalier
is in the collection of The Guildhall,
London
.
"The wars between the Puritans and the
Cavaliers provided the most popular setting for dilemmas of loyalty in
nineteenth-century English painting. In Millais's
The Proscribed Royalist (1853) (see
next page) a
sequestered cavalier kisses the hand of the young woman who has smuggled food to
him. William Shakespeare Burton's A
Wounded Cavalier (1856) complicates matters further by implying the
possibility of an amorous attraction between the cavalier and the Puritan lady
who is nursing him."
http://www.oldandsold.com/articles36/modern-painting-4.shtml
"One can see the influence of both Holman
Hunt and Millais in the work of Collins ; the influence of Millais alone is to
be seen in that of W. S. Burton. His picture, The Wounded Cavalier, hung next to
Holman Hunt's Scapegoat in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1856, could never
have been painted, one thinks, but for Millais' Proscribed Royalist. It is the
same theme differently treated a Puritan maiden succouring a Cavalier; only, in
Burton's picture, it is obvious that the help is given out of pure humanity.
While the lady seeks to staunch the wound of the Cavalier, a Puritan youth is
standing by. They have found the unfortunate man lying in the woodland, and,
apparently, near to death. There may be already, or there may be soon, a
personal attachment between Millais' Puritan maiden and the Cavalier to whom she
is bringing food. Burton's picture strikes the deeper note. The painting of
detail is marvellous. The composition, with respect to the figures at least, is
conventional. They are arranged pyramidally, and a broken wall and some trailing
under-growth are placed so as to complete this conventional design. Yet, through
all the subject-interest of the picture being concentrated to the left of a
birch-stem that divides the picture into two not very unequal parts; the humanly
untenanted space to the right of the stem gives an effect of unconsidered
naturalness to the scene. This tree-stem has clearly played an important part in
the fight between the Cavalier and the victorious enemy who has gone his way.
The fight has taken place around it. A sword-cut, intended for the Puritan, has
been intercepted by the tree, and the broken blade is still fixed in it. This
mischance left the Cavalier at the mercy of his foe. Thus something of the
course of the fight, its end, and the help that has come, perhaps too late, to
the wounded man, are all either suggested or shown to us. It is interesting to
note that a butterfly has alighted on the broken sword-blade. In Millais'
picture, The Blind Girl, shown in the same exhibition, a butterfly has similarly
alighted on the girl's shawl. There is a difference of motive in their
introduction, but the coincidence, if such it be, is interesting, and
illustrative of the close observation of detail that characterised the
Pre-Raphaelite movement.
Burton has not fulfilled, at any rate in the
amount of his work, the promise of this picture. His picture of the following
year, A London Magdalen, was rejected at the Academy; and ill-health,
nonrecognition, and trouble unconnected with his work, have combined to prevent
him from putting his unmistakable powers to fullest exercise. Depth of feeling,
sincerity, dignity, and excellent workman-ship mark all his work."
* * *
See below for The
Proscribed Royalist 1651 by Millais (exhib. 1853)
Millais
The Proscribed Royalist 1651 (1853)
This
page was created on 17th Sept. 2006 Last updated 30.5.2009
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