The Life of a Deaf Artist in the 19th Century | Boy and Rabbit | Kelvingrove Talks

Welcome everyone to the Looking at Art Gallery here at Kelvin Grove Art Gallery and Museum. I'm Jo Meacock and I'm the curator of British art and I'm going to be talking today about this painting here by the Scottish artist Henry Rayburn and it's called Boy and Rabbit and it dates from around 1814 and I hope to show in my talk that it's really quite a significant painting in lots of different ways. First of all the artist Henry Rayburn, he was a key painter of the Scottish and unlike many of his contemporaries, he was unusual in building up a successful portrait practice here in Scotland, in Edinburgh actually, rather than feeling the need to go down to London like many of his contemporaries did. He basically painted the Scottish elite of his day, so judges and politicians, writers, intellectuals, landowners, he painted them. He painted over a portraits in all and his portraits are notable for their expressiveness, their freedom in brushwork and the directness and their lack of idealisation. He was actually portrait painter to King George IV in Scotland and he was the first Scottish member of the prestigious Royal Academy in London and this was his diploma piece. It was painted, as I said, around 1814 and submitted in 1816. Originally Rayburn had submitted a self-portrait but this was disallowed under Royal Academy rules. Now this painting's interesting as a child portrait and this is a time when children were beginning to be treated as children and not just as mini adults and so you can see a kind of new informality creeping in to this portrait. There's a lovely kind of intimacy and relaxed nature about this painting and the boys sitting in a kind of relaxed attitude that's maybe typical of a child. The clothes he wears are the beginning of kind of children's wear, they're intended for movement and for play and they're easily laundered as well. So it's very interesting in that regard but it's even more interesting as a child portrait because the artist knew the sitter and this perhaps helps explain why there's such a kind of intimacy and relaxed feel to this painting. The sitter is actually the artist's step-grandson Henry Rayburn Ingalls. Now Rayburn married in 1778 a rich widow called Anne Leslie. She was the daughter of Peter Bridgelands and she married a Count James Leslie and they had three children and the mother of Henry here, Anne, was one of these three children and she had two sons, Charles and Henry here who was born in 1806. So he was around eight years old when this particular painting was made and he was brought up at Dean Hall House which was the maternal home which Rayburn lived in for a while as well. Now Henry Rayburn Ingalls here, the little boy, he's also interesting because he was actually deaf and if you look at this painting it seems to be very much tied up with the senses. You'll see how the boy has his arm around his pet rabbit and he's fondling the rabbit's fur and he's also feeding it dandelion leaves. Now Rayburn did fairly often paint his sitters beside animals, sometimes horses or dogs and occasionally a rabbit. There's another picture of a child portrait of a girl with a rabbit here that you can see. This is the children of Professor Douglas Stewart and it's in the National Trust collection but I think the relationship between the boy and the rabbit in this painting is particularly important. We've been working with our deaf guides on the interpretation around this painting and they mentioned how important animal relationships are for deaf people and how often close bonds can be formed. Sometimes day-to-day interactions can be frustrating, there can be miscommunications but often there's no such kind of communication barriers with animals and it's like the animals instinctively understand. One deaf guide talked about her two deaf sons who would often be maybe stressed by school but would come home and immediately be calmed by their family dog. So I think the relationship between this boy and his pet rabbit is really quite significant here. Now Henry, the little boy here, he was brought up in Edinburgh and it wasn't perhaps the worst place to be brought up as a deaf young boy at the time and in fact Edinburgh was the first place in the UK to have its own deaf school, the Braidwoods Academy which was founded in 1760. Unfortunately in the mid-1780s the school was relocated to London and there wasn't a deaf school for a while but in 1799 to 1805 in the Edinburgh directories it mentions an institution for the dumb and defective of speech which is maybe a bit distasteful sounding to us today but was a deaf school and a second Braidwood school also opened up in 1810 and Henry may well have attended the second Braidwood school. The Braidwood schools were really pioneering because they taught lip reading and also an early form of signing. We don't know however if Henry did attend the Braidwood school. He may have been schooled at home but what we do know is that he went on to higher education. In 1824 he was admitted into Edinburgh's art school, the Trustees Academy. Now our deaf guides again said that in their experience deaf people are often drawn to creative and expressive professions that use their hands so it's quite interesting that this little boy went on to become an artist but he was no doubt also inspired by the example of his grandfather and probably had access to his grandfather's studio and maybe his materials as well and he was no doubt an encouragement to the young boy. Rayburn may also have been inspired by, sorry Henry may also have been inspired by Walter Geakey. Walter Geakey was another Edinburgh deaf artist. He attended the Braidwood school in 1810 and then went on to study at the Trustees Academy and in fact he was the first deaf person to enter the Trustees Academy and he became very well known in Edinburgh drawing scenes of quite comical satirical scenes of Edinburgh life. He became a member of the Royal Scottish Academy and exhibited frequently. I've got an example of the kind of humorous everyday life scenes that Walter Geakey produced so he may well have been a source of inspiration and his entrance to the Trustees Academy may have paved the way for subsequent deaf people to come to the school. He may also have been inspired by Joshua Reynolds, the president of the Royal Academy in London. Joshua Reynolds wasn't born deaf but he became deaf in his 20s after a riding accident and he could only hear with a hearing trumpet and this did affect his day-to-day interactions with people but in no way curbed his ambition and his enthusiasm and he became one of the most important painters of his day as well as the president of the Royal Academy so what a role model for the young Henry to have. We don't know much about Henry's professional life as an artist. There are no works by him in public collections in the UK. There may be some in private collections. An 1861 census when he was 56 years old describes his profession as an annuitant so he wasn't described as an artist at that point. He was obviously living off his inheritance but that doesn't mean to say that he still wasn't painting and living as an artist. This is a really inspiring portrait. It must have been so difficult for Henry to get to art school and to make it as an artist and yet he did it against the odds. A contemporary of the day talked about deaf people doomed to ignorance, idleness and uselessness. This was the kind of environment that he was brought up in and the area where the first deaf school was established is still known today as Dumbie Dykes. There was so much prejudice and misunderstanding so it's really quite something that this little boy went on to actually study at the Trustees Academy and become an artist and it is a wonderful portrait and it's also a wonderful portrait and kind of saying something about a relationship between a grandfather and a grandson and a boy and his pet rabbit and you won't be surprised to learn that it's been a very popular painting with our visitors particularly with our young visitors and we've had a number of workshops around this painting particularly with some deaf children and we had an animal handling session which enabled us then to move on and talk about the painting which was very successful. The painting is with us until June next year. It's on loan to us from the Royal Academy Collections. We're very lucky to have it and we've got a programme of events planned around the painting so I hope you enjoy it. Thank you.