The Portrait of Dr. J. Joachim also known as A Lamplight Study

Painting height: 91.4 cm
Painting width: 66.6 cm
Frame height: 129 cm
Frame width: 100 cm

A portrait of a world-renowned musician who became a close friend. Before becoming one of the greatest violinists of his age, Hungarian born Joseph Joachim (1831–1907) was a protégé of the German composer Felix Mendelssohn and a collaborator of expert pianist Johannes Brahms. In addition to his public performances in London, Joachim was a frequent guest at the musical soirées at Little Holland House. It was here that Watts became acquainted with Joachim and sought to capture him mid performance, in the artificially lit setting. As a great lover of music himself, in this portrait Watts expertly explores the relationship between music and art which was to become a key feature of the early Aesthetic movement in the 1860s.

When exhibited at Watts’s memorial exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1904, one critic declared his portrait of Joseph Joachim to be ‘the profoundest and most striking of Watts’s studies of musicians’ [1]. In this half-length portrait, Joachim stands before a piano. His face illuminated by lamplight is engrossed in playing his violin. Although his eyes are almost lost in the shadows of his furrowed brow, they are fixated on the positioning of his hand on the foreshortened fingerboard. His right hand is poised, perhaps in the middle of a note or about to make a bow change. Of the portrait, ‘many good friends […] never thought the likeness good’. The power instead rests on the painting’s ‘embodiment of Joachim’s feeling for music’ [2].

A few years after Watts depicted Joachim, he turned his attention to the pianist and composer Charles Hallé, who often accompanied Joachim during his performances at Little Holland House. Then in 1888, Watts painted Lady Hallé (COMWG.41, 1865-1881), who herself enjoyed tremendous success as an international solo violinist. In both of the Hallé portraits, they are posing with their instruments, but not necessarily actively engaged in the act of music making. Of the three portraits, only Joachim is immersed in his performance.

The performance captured on canvas was not depicted in one sitting, or in one evening. ‘[…] I have sat for the painter Watts for several hours, for the third time, and I shall have to do so twice again; but I am consoled by thought that it will be a real work of art’, Joachim explained in a letter to his wife in the spring in 1867 [3].

However, when the Joachim portrait made its debut at the Royal Academy in 1867, it confused the critics with one wondering why Watts had submitted an unfinished work [4]. Watts’s decision to capture the musician in an artificially lit setting seems to be the reason behind this judgement. The lighting and the alternative title ‘A Lamplight Study’, were unusual for Watts as he traditionally titled his portraits straightforwardly after the sitter’s name. As a result of this decision, it was argued that he had ‘strongly exaggerated the greenish tones that occur in the lamplight’, with the peculiar outcome that ‘Herr Joachim [had] so much green in his complexion as to remind us of nothing human’ [5].

Nevertheless, we can regard the portrait as Watt’s contribution to a ‘fertile period in English art’ in which the relationship between music and art played a key role in the early Aesthetic movement of the 1860s [6]. Music was integral to many Pre-Raphaelite works including Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The Blue Bower, 1865 and Veronica Veronese, 1872. Although the instruments in each are executed with a high attention to detail, they are side-lined as props to the main event of each picture, namely the beautiful women who are not actively or passionately using them to make music.

In depicting one of the most prominent musicians of the day, one could assume that Watts intended the portrait to enter the National Portrait Gallery’s ‘Hall of Fame’ series, as he did with Charles Hallé’s portrait. Yet, in a letter to his patron Charles Rickards, Watts divulged that: ‘With respect to the Joachim portrait, I don’t think I can let you have it […] because if belongs to my gallery’[7]. And indeed the portrait has always remained as part of the Watts Gallery collection. Watts did however agree to paint a replica, which is now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. By keeping the portrait for his own collection, it remained an affectionate keepsake of his friend and a record to ‘preserve for future generations his aspect on [those private] evenings’ at Little Holland House [8].

Explore:

Lady Halle [COMWG.41]

Footnotes:

[1] Frederick Wedmore, ‘The Royal Academy Winter Exhibition. The Work of G.F. Watts’, London Evening Standard, 31 December 1904, p.6.

[2] Mrs Russel Barrington, G F Watts: Reminiscences (London: George Allen, 1905), p.36.

[3] Nora Bickley (ed., trans.), Letters to and from Joseph Joachim (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1914), pp.356-357.

[4] ‘The Exhibition of the Royal Academy: Second Notice’, Manchester Guardian, 21 May 1867, p.5.

[5] ‘Picture of the Year’, The Saturday Review, vol. 24, issue 614, 3 August 1867, p.147.

[6] Marks Bills and Barbara Bryant, G.F. Watts: Victorian Visionary (New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with Watts Gallery Compton, 2008), p.158.

[7] Letter from G.F. Watts to C.H. Rickards, 30 May 1867, Watts Correspondence, Heinz Archive, National Portrait Gallery, GFW/1/2.

[8] Mary Seton Watts, George Frederic Watts: Annals of an Artist’s Life, vol. I (London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1912), p. 202.

Further Reading:

‘The Exhibition of the Royal Academy: Second Notice’, Manchester Guardian, 21 May 1867, p.5

‘Picture of the Year’, The Saturday Review, vol. 24, issue 614, 3 August 1867, p.147.

Mrs Russel Barrington, G F Watts: Reminiscences (London: George Allen, 1905).

Nora Bickley (ed., trans.), Letters to and from Joseph Joachim (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1914)

Clive Brown, ‘Joseph Joachim’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004.

Marks Bills and Barbara Bryant, G.F. Watts: Victorian Visionary (New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with Watts Gallery Compton, 2008).

Mary Seton Watts, George Frederic Watts: Annals of an Artist’s Life, vol. I (London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1912).

Mary Seton Watts, Catalogue of Portraits by G.F. Watts O.M. R.A., Vol. II, c.1915, p.82.

Watts Correspondence, Heinz Archive, National Portrait Gallery, GFW/1/2.

Frederick Wedmore, ‘The Royal Academy Winter Exhibition. The Work of G.F. Watts’, London Evening Standard, 31 December 1904, p.6.

Text by Dr Stacey Clapperton