EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Brief Description of item(s)
Twenty beautiful and detailed watercolours by James Henry Nixon recording
the Eglinton Tournament of 1839, one of the most remarkable and influential
manifestations of the Gothic Revival in 19th century Britain. They are drawn in
pencil on individual sheets, with watercolour, heightened with gouache and
touches of gold. They are in part unfinished, with decorative borders, as they
were drawn to be used by the lithographers Day & Hague for a deluxe folio
account of the tournament published by Colnaghi and Puckle in London 1843:
A Series of views representing the Tournament held at Eglinton Castle in the
year 1839 from drawings made on the spot expressly for this work by J. H.
Nixon with historical and descriptive notices by the Rev. John Richardson LLB
Most drawings are signed and some are dated 1840 or 1841. They are
approximately 34 x 50 cm and several are inscribed (a complete list was
supplied by Abbott and Holder with the application). The condition of the
drawings varies considerably – they were originally stored in an album or
portfolio and some are fresh and un-faded (fortunately these are usually the
most finished works), while others have suffered from discolouration caused
by the album paper and possibly damp. They have recently been conserved.
The artist, James Henry Nixon (1802-1857), was a pupil of John Martin. He
was an illustrator of Walter Scott and exhibited paintings of literary and
historical subjects regularly in the 1830s, including Queen Victoria’s Progress
to Guildhall on November 7th 1837 (exh. RA 1837, now Guildhall Art Gallery).
His watercolour drawings are scarce and there are none in the BM or V&A.
No research has been done on him apart from his role as the artistic partner
of the stained glass firm Nixon and Ward from 1836 to c.1850 during the
revival of stained glass design and manufacture which flourished on the back
of the contemporary fascination with all things medieval.
Waverley criteria
The item meets Waverley criterion one: ‘Is it so closely connected with our
history (including local history) and national life that its departure would be a
misfortune’. These drawings are the most comprehensive and detailed record
of the Eglinton Tournament. The prints made from them played a crucial role
in disseminating information about and sustaining popular interest in this
romantic event which was a pivotal moment in the British and particularly
Scottish romantic revival.
DETAILED CASE
‘The Eglinton Tournament is the most obviously famous product of
nineteenth- century chivalry in Britain’ (Mark Girouard). Privately funded by
Lord Eglinton and held in front of the Gothic revival castle on his Ayrshire
estate in 1839, the tournament was the culmination of a number of personal,
cultural, political, economic and industrial factors. In the previous half century,
the early Gothic Revival epitomized by Horace Walpole’s Otranto and
Strawberry Hill had evolved in architectural and literary form into Sir Walter
Scott’s Ivanhoe and Abbotsford and myriad imitations. Mallory’s and other
early accounts of King Arthur and his knights, medieval courts, ceremonies
and tournaments had created a new romantic obsession with recreating the
Age of Chivalry in 19th century Britain. King George IV’s coronation and his
visit to Edinburgh had demonstrated the type of national feeling that could be
generated by lavish public pomp and ceremony but it was followed by
disappointment among the peerage, rising wealthy merchant classes and,
indeed, the local tradesmen, in the Whigs’ penny-pinching coronations of
William IV and particularly of Victoria in 1838.
Sir Charles Lamb, Lord Eglinton’s step-father, was the hereditary Knight
Marshall to the Court, and was one of the many Tory peers who had lost the
one opportunity in their lifetime to take part in the ceremonial role to which
they were entitled. Like his friend Sir Egerton Brydges, he was fascinated by
heraldry and was the author of chivalric poems. In this he was imitated by his
son, Eglinton’s half-brother, Charles Lamb, the original owner of these
drawings by Nixon. Feeling their ancient rights were under threat, they and
several other friends, including the Marquesses Londonderry and Waterford,
encouraged the young and wealthy Archibald Montgomerie, 13th Earl of
Eglinton (1812-1861) to announce that he would hold a tournament to
inaugurate a new Victorian age of chivalry.
All interested parties convened in the autumn of 1838 at the showroom of
Samuel Pratt, a decorator and dealer in antiquities who specialized in armour,
who offered to provide everything from costumes and tents to gothic designs
for the grandstands by the architect Lewis Nockalls Cottingham. They decided
on a format that would include a procession, jousting by tilt and melée, with
blunted pine lances (easily snapped so no one would be injured), ceremonial
roles for the marshall, king and queen of the tournament, followed by a
banquet and a ball, with all attendees in appropriate costume. When the costs
were realized (up to £1500 per knight) all but 19 dropped out. A successful
rehearsal was held on the Finchley Road in July 1839 and the papers were
filled with accounts which captured the public’s imagination in Britain and
around the world, and ensured that all the new steam ships and the recently
opened railway line serving the area were filled to more than capacity. The
opportunity to attend an actual tournament as described in the novels of
Walter Scott, for a journey that would take less than a day at the cost of £3.13
shillings first class, one way from London, proved irresistible to thousands.
On the 28th of August 1839, the day of the tournament, 100,000 people from
Scotland, England, Europe and even America converged on the grounds of
Eglinton Castle in Ayshire. They arrived in the area by various forms of
transport the night before and on the morning of the day itself, when the roads
leading to the grounds were completely impassable with traffic and people
abandoned their vehicles to join the rest on foot. The grandstand could
accommodate 4,000 of which 2,000 were the invited guests to attend the
banquet and ball at the castle. All local hotels and larger houses were filled
with those guests and their parties – the general public had to fend for
themselves. They had managed well-enough overnight in random buildings,
fields and hedgerows while the weather co-operated, but just as the
procession was about to begin, the heavens opened and the torrential rain
never ceased. The Knights processed but the Queen of Beauty and her
attendants arrived at the stands in a coach, robbing all but a few of the sight
of their costumes. Three tilts were held of three runs each, and even those
who could see them found them tedious, as there were long pauses in
between each and most resulted in complete passes. Abandoning the
planned melée and the rest of the programme, the invited guests retired to the
castle, their costumes ruined. The rain made a quagmire of the grounds,
collapsed the jousting pavilions, and leaked through the roofs of the stands,
banqueting and ball rooms. Chaos ensued when those trying to leave found
there weren’t enough trains or ships to accommodate them. Many gave up
and stayed, having been promised the tournament would resume when the
weather improved. The next day, Thursday 29th, the temporary buildings were
hastily repaired and on Friday 30th of August the tilting was repeated and the
rest of the full programme that had been planned for the 28th, including the
melée, banquet and ball, was finally run.
The popular and historical perception of the tournament was coloured by all of
these factors, particularly the rain which added a wry comic element. But Lord
Eglinton’s generosity and attention to the beleaguered public gave him a
reputation of good sportsmanship and chivalry which the loss of his fortune
(the tournament cost him personally £40,000) and later gambling debts did
not tarnish. As an event, it drew attention to Scotland and its heritage and fed
the flames of the romantic Gothic Revival, helping to define the direction and
form of visual culture that the new chivalric age would take during the reign of
Queen Victoria.
The event captured the public imagination; the papers were filled with
accounts for months afterwards and the tournament was re-enacted in
London theatres. Many accounts were published between 1839 and 1843, six
of them illustrated. Of these only two were comparable with the lavish
publication of 1843 after Nixon’s watercolours: James Aikman’s in 1839 was
published by Hugh Paton in Edinburgh and had five coloured lithographs of
the main events based on ‘sketches taken on the spot by Mr W. Gordon’; and
Hogson & Graves published an account by ‘B’ illustrated with eight lithographs
by Edward Henry Corbould after his own drawings. The latter is the most
comparable in quality and detail to the 1843 Nixon version, but it makes no
mention of the rain or the lost days and is a fantastical account of the third
day, Friday 30th, only, with confessed artistic license in the written and visual
accounts, turning it into a modern-day version of Froissard.
Nixon’s watercolours were the most ambitious visual account and are the only
original ones that are known to survive for any of these publications. Given
their Charles Lamb provenance, they were evidently the ‘prime’ or ‘official’
record, advertised as ‘made on the spot’. The 1843 Colnaghi & Puckle deluxe
folio edition with lithographs after Nixon’s drawings was dedicated to Lord
Eglinton and is very rare (BL copy is printed in monochrome, NGS is handwashed). It provided a complete text of all three days, an appendix with a full
description of every costume, and each plate was accompanied by a full
description of the people depicted within it, prefaced by appropriate literary
quotations. Only this publication provides plates describing all the details of
the procession, so that it covers not only the main events but also individual
plates for the king, queen, marshall and lord of the tournament as well as
every knight that took part with all of their retinues and with particular attention
paid to the details of costume and heraldry. The twenty-one plates are by
three lithographers working for Day & Hague in a uniform trade style, and not
only the beautifully vivid colours but much of the detail and liveliness of the
original watercolours by Nixon were lost in the translation. A detailed study
needs to be made of the specific differences between the watercolours and
lithographs but many are instantly visible, not only in the poses, heraldry and
certain details, but most significantly in Nixon’s two watercolour versions of
the melée and accompanying instructions for changes to the composition.
Participants were later painted in their armour and costumes and many of the
trophies, lances, shields and pieces of armour still survive. Eglinton is now a
public park encompassing the castle ruin and jousting grounds, and the
Gothic bridge over which they processed has recently been restored. Scottish
and local pride in the event has not waned and South Ayrshire council has
recently set up a company, Ayr Renaissance, to regenerate the historic town
and local sites. In the appropriate public collection, these watercolours, vivid,
easily exhibited, fully of historical detail, ripe for further research, and key
documents of an international fascination for the romantic gothic past, would
be assets that could contribute enormously to this revival of local Ayrshire and
national Scottish culture.
The ability of these watercolours to capture the imagination and revive interest
in this event was signalled by the interest in them when they went on display
at Abbott & Holder in June, which generated articles in Apollo and Country
Life.
Kim Sloan, Curator of British Drawings and Watercolours before 1880,
on behalf of Antony Griffiths, Keeper, Prints and Drawings, British Museum
18 August 2009