Eyre Crowe (1824-1910)

Medium: oil

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1874

Nothing is known of subsequent sales of this painting. An unframed oil painting or sketch, ‘The Coalfields, with Figures’ (30 x 44 inches) was part of an auction of the works of the late Eyre Crowe by Messrs Furber in 1911, fetching 13 shillings. It is possible that this was ‘A Spoil Bank’, or a sketch for it.

Daily Telegraph, 5 May 1874:

… let us hasten to acclaim Mr. Eyre Crowe, who, in three highly finished pictures, displays his usual painstaking accuracy and technical skill, combined with the much higher qualities of minute introspection of his subject, and the thoughtful and delicate refinement of what are apparently the driest and dreariest realities of industrial life. Mr. Eyre Crowe has shown over and over again that he can give a realistic aspect to things poetic; of late years he has evinced equal aptitude in imparting a poetic tinge to topics essentially realistic. Take for instance (537) “A Spoil Bank”; and (676) “The Dinner Hour, Wigan”. Here we find Mr. Eyre Crowe quietly setting up his easel in the very heart of the manufacturing districts; patiently studying the faits et gestes of factory lads and lasses; conscientiously rendering all the prosaic details of a pit-bank side and a mill yard; and, it must fairly be owned, doing a great deal towards the removal of the impression from the popular mind of that disagreeable and not altogether impartial aspect of factory life drawn in “Hard Times” by the pen of Charles Dickens. In this very straightforward and useful course we counsel Mr. Eyre Crowe to persevere. There is a great deal that is picturesque, aye, and a great deal that is suggestively poetical, to be got out of “the melancholy-mad elephants” of machinery: out of mules and spinning-jennies, slubbers, and billy-rollers. We should very much like, in particular, to see the artist’s version of a Saturday pay-table at a great Lancashire factory: and, ere the abominable system of “truck” altogether disappears, we should be indeed grateful to Mr. Crowe if he would give us a graphic, faithful draught of factory “hands” – not in Lancashire; “truck” has disappeared from that enlightened county – receiving the price of their labour in a “Masters’ Tommy-shop.” This good artist should not, at the same time, confine himself to such subjects; since, from the hand which painted, the poor folks who stood weeping at the door of those Temple chambers in which Oliver Goldsmith was lying dead, we are entitled to expect works of a more ambitious character than “spoil-banks” and operatives’ dinner-hours.

Athenaeum, 9 May 1874:

Another work by him, though decidedly more grimy than [The Dinner Hour, Wigan], has higher claims on our attention, yet photography would have sufficed for this occasion too, as the picture is the representation of A Spoil Bank (537), one of these heaps of useless material brought up, and rejected at the mouth of a coal pit, with figures. The temporary wooden frame-work which supports a railway from the pit’s mouth to the end of the bank, and which is extended as the ‘spoil’ increases, rises on high towards the front of the picture; a truck at the end of this road has been tilted, and deposits its load in a cloud of dust and smoke with abundence of noise; the whole looks harsh, foul and painful. There are groups of persons, women and children, who rush to obtain chance scraps of coal from the overthrown truck load, and who grovel eagerly in the dust, – five kneel in the smoke, two are in the front, and in this group, the vitality of Mr. Crowe’s genius may be compared with that of Nature herself on the spot he has so well, if not wisely, represented. As she insists on, at least, blades of scurfy grass, so the painter must have incident and character, however trivial and mean they may be. One of the children has formed a little pile of coal, and fenced it with a circle of brick-bats, vain fortress against a grimy treasure. We admire Crowe’s conscientiousness in painting such uninviting subjects as these, but we submit that he might often have used his time more wisely, and that photography was made for such work as recording all that these pictures tell us, and that inferior hands might be trusted with the colour they display.

Illustrated London News, 23 May 1874:

… we are taken to the neighbourhood of a coal-pit where grimy girls and children are gleaning fuel from one of the huge refuse heaps known as ‘spoil banks’.

The Times, 26 May 1874:

Mr. Eyre Crowe’s ‘Spoil Bank’ (537), with the kerchiefed Wigan lasses and women groping for lumps of coal among the slack under the shoots, and the tall black colliers, davy in hand, looking down upon them, is one of two praiseworthy attempts to find paintable material in the rude life of some of the most unlovely regions of Lancashire.

The Graphic, 6 June 1874

In his “Spoilbank” and “Dinner Hour, Wigan” – illustrations of factory life in Lancashire – Mr. Eyre Crowe has apparently aimed only at strict fidelity of transcription. His method of execution – bright, solid, finished, firm, even to harshness, is in keeping with the prosaic literalness of his method of observation. He has not attempted appeal to the imagination or the slightest reference to sentiment. Thus his works this year have all the merits and the defects of photographs. His art has been employed on unattractive subjects, and he has not so dealt with these as to endow them with interest. Still Mr. Crowe’s conscientious workmanship is well deserving of applause.