History in art: Arms and the Men
Continued from https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/06/painting-from-history-two-artists-at.html
Budleigh resident Nick Speare as The Sailor in the 2018 ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’ re-enactment by Fairlynch Museum volunteers. Photo credit: Rob Coombe
Young Walter as portrayed in Millais’ The Boyhood of Raleigh
As Millais and every artist knows, hand and arm gestures play a key role in their work, guiding the viewer to a certain conclusion. Young Walter’s gaze is internalised, fixed on the world of his imagination, thousands of miles distant from what we actually see in the painting. He seems to be looking through the sailor rather than at him.
The Boyhood of Raleigh, on show for the third time at Budleigh Salterton’s Fairlynch Museum, on loan from Tate Britain
The sailor’s words and above all that outstretched arm were the stimulus for that imagination. Now, in turn, it takes ‘The Boyhood’s’ Victorian audience beyond the horizon to inspire them – and particularly young boys – with thoughts of creating an even greater British Empire.
‘The sailor’s arm points into the distance, taking the eye out of the main frame and implying a world of romantic adventure beyond its confines,’ comments Professor Linda Dryden in her book about the novelist Joseph Conrad.
To his right is Captain John Hewes, who had been sent with sailors and fishermen by West Country investors in an attempt to claim abandoned assets of the bankrupt Dorchester Company, especially the barrels of salt, an expensive commodity.
To Conant’s left is the diminutive Captain Miles Standish - rudely named 'Captain Shrimp' by his enemies - and a troop of armed marines who had been sent by Governor Bradford from the Plymouth Colony to protect what it saw as its assets.
Conant’s arm, the palm of his hand open in sign of friendship, keeps the viewer firmly within the frame and focused on the smiling central figure. I notice that it’s his left hand that he extends to Standish. Was he left-handed? Who knows.
His right hand firmly clasps a book. Perhaps it’s a folder of legal documents which he has consulted. As Gloucester historian Mary Ellen Lepionka explains, ‘According to accounts of the 1625 confrontation, Hewes and his men barricaded themselves behind barrels of salt in the flake yard and Standish threatened to open fire on them, when Roger Conant and company “rushed from their huts” (modified wigwams with chimneys instead of smoke hole) to explain that by English law everything in Fishermen’s Field was still Dorchester Company property pending the outcome of bankruptcy proceedings’.
The statue of Roger Conant outside the Witch Museum, Salem, Massachusetts
Photo credit: Kate Fox
Smiling in contrast with the rather grim-faced statue of Roger Conant that is one of Salem’s landmarks.
The sketch marks a crucial point in time and hints at a few seconds of suspense. Conant’s gesture is open and friendly, but Standish has not responded. He looks nonplussed. His background is military and he is a man of action. Will he give the order to the heavily armed soldiers behind him to open fire on the fishermen and sailors? The latter’s gestures – clenched fists and pointing fingers – are openly defiant and hostile.
An artist’s image of Captain Miles Standish from The Courtship of Miles Standish, an 1858 narrative poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The American artist N.C. Wyeth was known for his illustrations of The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and Treasure Island (1883).
How will the situation be resolved? This moment could easily have been the start of an early civil war between white settlers in America? By 1625, when the incident took place, Captain Miles Standish, one of the most prominent in the group of Plymouth Puritan separatists who had sailed on the Mayflower, had proved that he was capable of extreme violence.
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