AustLit

'George Meredith (1828-1909), novelist and poet, is noted for his views on the entitlement of women to equality with men, yet his behaviour as father to Marie Eveleen (Mariette) shows him as extremely protective of her – a characteristic contradiction. For a period of about nine months, Madame Susan Ponsard (née Fetherstonhaugh, 1834-1917) was employed as Mariette’s governess. At first enthusiastic about Madame’s suitability for the job, Meredith found her too exuberant and dispensed with her services after she became ill, though their relationship continued to be cordial. Two of the three new letters published here are addressed to Madame, the other to one of her four sisters. They have an erotic metaphorical undercurrent, treating with the traditional association of love and death. Further, the letters give access to Meredith’s circle of friends, among whom all five of the Fetherstonhaugh sisters figured, most prominently Frances Jane (1839-1924, first married to Albert Sitwell, then to Sidney Colvin). The Fetherstonhaugh family migrated to Australia in the 1850s –father, mother, three sons and five daughters. All the daughters eventually made their way back to Europe, where various connections with Meredith were made. These relationships constitute one of his few associations with Australia.' (Publication abstract)

'Frederick McCubbin (1855–1917), watching students copy chromolithographs and casts in Melbourne’s National Gallery School of Art, concluded it was “no end of a place to study”. The Arundel Society’s prints and other works of art acquired by the Public Library, Museum and Gallery reveal the alignment of education with the elevation of taste. The School’s use of the collection was not unusual at the time, and the tradition of copying in art education continued into the twentieth century. More worthy of remark, perhaps, are the students’ models: the Society published trecentro and quattrocento frescoes from northern and central Italy, as well as altarpieces by van Eyck, Memling and others.

'The prints, fictile ivories, photographs and texts produced by the Arundel Society (1848–1897) were disseminated from Britain around the world. The high-quality colour lithographs were available framed and glazed. They were used for reference, as objects of veneration or for interior decoration. The Society promoted its subscribers: members of the aristocracy, politicians, churchmen, scholars and artists; these included, for a time, the Pre-Raphaelites William Holman Hunt and William Morris. Writers such as William Rossetti, in the New York journal The Crayon in the 1850s, and James Smith in The Argus in Melbourne in the 1860s, devoted substantial space to the Society’s didactic aims and preservation activities.

'This richly-illustrated paper explores the vexed question of Arundel Society chromolithographs in museum collections, and their impact on the nascent discipline of art history. It examines intellectual networks in Australia and other British colonies, as well as American and European patterns of circulation, to consider knowledge of ‘the Primitives’ and expectations about art.' (Publication abstract)