Eyre Crowe (1824-1910)

‘De Foe in the Pillory’ by Eyre Crowe (1862). Engraving by J.C. Armytage, published in the ‘Art Journal’, New Series 7 (1868), p. 27.

Medium: oil

Size: 110 x 141 cm

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1862; Messrs John Hay and Sons exhibition, Newcastle, 1869; Chelmsford Shire Hall June 1875; Manchester Jubilee Exhibition, 1887; Guildhall Art Gallery, 1900

Current owner: Salford Museum and Art Gallery, on display in their Victorian Gallery

A smaller painting with the same title (Defoe in the Pillory, 1862, oil on wood, 12.5 x 16 inches (31.8 x 40.6 cm) was the gift of Henry C. Hutchins and is part of the collection of the Yale University Library, Connecticut, U.S.A. Reference: “A checklist of American paintings at Yale University,” New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1982, no. 363. This is probably the ‘little copy’ that Crowe made in July-August 1862.

Original caption: ‘July 31, 1703, Daniel Foe, alias De Foe, this day stood in the pillory at Temple Bar in pursuance of his sentence, given against him at the last sessions at the Old Bailey for writing and publishing a seditious libel, entitled The Shortest way with the Dissenters. During his exhibition he was protected by the same friends from the missiles of his enemies: and the mob, instead of pelting him, resorted to the unmannerly act of drinking his health, etc.’

One of Crowe’s most popular paintings, De Foe in the Pillory won the medal for Historical Painting from the Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in 1863. It had been sold to the art dealer William Agnew for the large sum of £400 on 2 May 1862, just after the opening of the Royal Academy Exhibition, and was sold on again at Christie’s on 6 May 1865 to Julius Sichel. James L Newell was the painting’s owner in 1887 and 1900. In May 1907, the painting was donated to the Salford Museum and Art Gallery by the Mayor of Salford, Alderman Isadore Frankenburg, J.P., in memory of his son Ralph, who had been killed in the wreck of the SS Berlin at the Hook of Holland in February of the same year. The painting is still owned by the Gallery and is hung on the wall of their Victorian room.

It was one of the pictures featured in ‘Beautiful Pictures by British Artists, 1800-1870’. Edited, with notices of the artists, by Sydney Armytage, M.A. (London: John Camden Hotton, 1871), according to a review in the Birmingham Daily Post, 27 December 1871

Daily Telegraph, 12 May 1862:

A pendant to this admirable work [After the Battle by P.H. Calderon] is (457), “De Foe in the Pillory” by Mr. Eyre Crowe. The undaunted author of “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters” is duly suffering the penalty for that “seditious libel”, by standing in the pillory at Temple Bar; but the mob, instead of pelting him, are drinking his health from full pottle-pots, and crowning the monument of infamy with garlands of flowers. This overt expression of sympathy is resented by the guard of soldiers present, who are using the crowd very roughly, showing them, at the bayonet’s point, their notion of “the shortest way” with a London mob. Drawing, grouping, expression, and colour, in this picture, are alike admirable; and in the background is a famous delineation of the “Bar” – from which, however, we miss the spikes that, whether ornamented with or destitute of traitors’ heads, would still have been there – and an animate tableau of the old houses and signs and windows, crowded with spectators, as in Hogarth’s engravings of “Burning Rumps” in “Hudibras”.

Athenaeum, 17 May 1862:

One of the best figure pictures in the gallery is Mr. Eyre Crowe’s De Foe in the Pillory (457) … A picture full of character, awkward in drawing of parts, yet generally excellent.

The Times, 26 May 1862:

‘De Foe in the Pillory’ (457) is another biographical picture added to the gallery of such pictures which Mr. E. Crowe has painted. It is his best picture for management of the many figures, and for colour and manipulation, if not for expression … Mr. Crowe has shown in this picture unexpected power in the management of a crowded composition, though we might which for a little more animation in the faces and action. His colour is simple and agreeable.

Daily News, 30 May 1862:

Mr. Crowe has made a great advance in his “De Foe in the Pillory” (457). There is not so much humour or variety and force of expression and character as Hogarth would have put in such a subject, but the picturesque composition is excellent, the execution free from former rigidity, and the colouring agreeable and harmonious…

Illustrated London News, 31 May 1862:

Mr. Crowe has made a great advance in his ‘De Foe in the Pillory’ (457). The colouring of this picture is agreeable and almost entirely free from the black and threaded appearance of former works.

Art Journal, 1862, p. 131:

The success of any pictorial narrative depends upon the truth, point, and persistency with which the theme is dwelt upon. This success, in a great degree, characterises the work; there are no mere expletive figures in the composition: each person is interested either sympathetically on the side of Defoe or on that of the authorities, which are principally military, acting in restraining the crowd in the good offices they proffer to the condemned. The painting and drawing are unexceptionable; the former is creditably earnest, without any affectation of eccentric manner.

The British Quarterly Review, July 1862:

A less apocryphal subject is Mr. Eyre Crowe’s capital ‘De Foe in the Pillory’ (457), standing on his platform of triumph, that ‘bugbear of the law’, as he called it in his spirited ode, and listening, well pleased, to the shouts, and receiving the flower peltings that were so abundantly bestowed on him. The officer of the Guards; the gentleman drinking the bold satirist’s health so heartily on his knees – the whole grouping indeed, admirably reproduces for us one of the pleasantest political scenes of Queen Anne’s reign.

Art Journal, June 1864:

[The painting was hung ‘on the line’ in the Royal Academy exhibition], a tolerably sure proof of the opinion formed of it by the hangers, and undoubtedly it deserved the honour awarded. The story is told with great point and truth; the characters are living, and have a purpose in the event that causes the assembling, and the manipulation is throughout most careful, solid, and artistically honest.

The Newcastle Courant etc, 12 February 1869

The fine art exhibition of Messrs John Hay and Sons is a treat worthy the attention of all lovers of painting, and it says much for the enterprising spirit that they have, at no small trouble and expense, secured so fine a collection. There are upwards of two hundred and fifty examples of good work from both London and provincial artists … Eyre Crowe’s “Daniel Defoe in the Pillory” is a well-painted picture, full of life and action. The drawing of the soldiers as they are vainly endeavouring to keep off the crowd is very masterly and spirited, and altogether forms a nice little cabinet picture.