Lot 75: JAMES COLLINSON

SIGNED AND DATED (MAKER'S MARKS)
signed J. Collinson and dated 1855 (on trunk, lower left); also inscribed on a label attached to the reverse: No. 2/ Bleeding a Freshman/ Price 88gs./ 11 Queen's Road West/ Chelsea

21 by 16 1/4in.<br><br>53.3 by 42.5cm

oil on panel

London, Royal Academy, 1855, No. 217

London, Christopher Wood, Life and Landscape, 1983, illustrated in catalogue

New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, The Edmund J. and Suzanne McCormick Collection (Susan P. Casteras, ed.), 1984, pp 30-1, No. 7, illustrated on the cover

Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix Art Museum, Englsih Idylls: The Edmund J. and Suzanne McCormick Collection of Victorian Art, 1988, No. 8

"The Royal Academy", The Art Journal, No. 17, June 1, 1855, p.174

Thomas Bodkin, "James Collinson", Apollo, No. 31, 1940, p. 132

Leslie Parris, ed., The Pre-Raphaelite Papers, London, 1984, pp. 73-4

Charles Nicholls & Son, Manchester

Anonymous (Sale, Phillips, London, Dcember 13, 1982, lot 132)

Christopher Wood, London

Edmund J. McCormick (Sale, Sotheby's, New York, February 28, 1990, lot 132, illustrated)

Acquired at the above sale

James Collinson was one of the seven original members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He subtitled this anecdotal work Bleeding a Freshman. The story, according to The Art Journal, is that "of two Eton boys, of whom one is just returning to school, and holds in his hand a piece of money, for which the other offers him some article of hardware... The scene is the bed-room of him who is just arrived, and every object in it is most carefully made out"(The Royal Academy, p. 174).

Susan Casteras interprets the narrative thus: "A field surgeon's knife, with a blood-letting instrument (fleam), is being traded for a crown coin, hence the pun in the subtitle inscribed by the artist on the back. The trunk label is marked "G.W.R./ Slough", this probably indicating the Great Western Railway route to the destination close to Eton. However, the attire, type of bedding, and the room decorations do not correspond with actual Victorian Etonian customs... The details of the contents of the chamber - the carpet bag, Puginesque wallpaper, Inverness cape, and oversized cricket equipment - are all meticulously rendered. A kindred work of similar size that functions almost as a pendant is Collinson's 1858 The Bankrupt" (Casteras, ed., p. 30).